Ballymacarney Solar PV Park Project - Meeting Ireland's Climate Action Plan, Essay.

Project Purpose/Justification

The construction of Ballymacarney Solar PV Park is probable to produce energy to provide power to more than 40,000 homes. It is Ireland’s major solar farm with a 200MW project intended to meet ambitious climate action for aiming 70% renewables by the year 2030 (Ieefa.org 2021). The 200MW project is benefiting the local community as it is delivering more than €40,000 per year to the native community creativities and creating energy to control the homes in Ireland. The project is making a process improvement as solar energy is the solution to some of the issues like reduction of emissions and fights the climatic changes (Donohoe 2021). The capacity of Ireland is to deliver renewable energy, and it is benefiting Ireland to meet the Climate action plan to target 70% of energy requirements for renewable sources by the year 2030.

Construction work of the solar PV Park ensures that in the impending years, it will help Ireland to happen with 2030 targets to decarbonize the electricity system and ensure carrying on for green development path (Guerra and Lennon 2021). Delivering this solar project is significant as solar has low impact, requires low maintenance and is a foreseeable system of energy.

The project is being developed and funded by Statkraft to manage the operational factors of the construction of the solar farm. This particular project is positive in the initial auction of the government of Irish’s renewable electricity provision scheme in the year 2020. There is the generation of electricity by the solar farms traded under the acquisition power agreements, and it is maintained by the government valid till the year 2037. The business objectives for the Ballymacarney Solar PV Park 200MW project are meeting with the climate action plan 2030 to target 70% renewables sources.

• Provide power to nearby industries and the business energy users
• Promotion of renewable energy along with decarbonizing of the economy
• Contribute to Ireland’s lawfully obligatory target reduction of CO₂
• Make €430,000 growth involvement to the local authority preceding the construction work (Gain 2021).
• Produce energy to provide power to more than 40,000 homes
• Reduce emissions along with combat the climatic changes
• Decarbonize the electricity system and ensure to carry on for green development path
• The total budget for the project is approx. €39 million, excluding the cost of the finances (com 2021).
• Functional and operational of the solar farm project at the end of 2022

The project involves the building of a 200MW solar power plant within Ballymacarney, Dublin, Ireland. The building work of the solar power plant is commenced within the third quarter of 2021, and it is expected to be finished in quarter 4 of 2022. The project is considered Ireland’s initial operational solar farm to power more than 40,000 homes. The project is committed to working toward meeting a target of a zero-carbon future (Donohoe 2021). The solar power plant is delivering all types of renewable energy to meet the determined climate activities to target 70% of renewables by the year 2030. The significant benefit of this project is time-saving for the private developer. Ireland will reduce the carbon footprint by avoiding any emissions equal to the fitted capacity of the solar park along with energy generation.

The 200MW project triggers economics of scale to reduce cost, make technical improvements as well as achieve a reduction in emissions of greenhouse. It enables Ireland to bring investment from the project developers to meet solar renewable acquisition responsibilities and deliver employment openings to the resident population of Dublin. The main challenge of this project is the acquisition of the land for construction purposes (Bandaru et al. 2021). The land is acquired for the construction of solar parks in the land of Ireland’s government. The other challenge of this project is meeting the scheduled timeline of the project between developments of the solar parks, including evacuation arrangements of the power along with the setting of the solar projects. Active involvement of the Ireland government is required to get over the mentioned challenges. The project is helpful for the Ireland government as it helps to meet the expansion of energy demands among the local population (van Summeren et al. 2020). The project is helpful to meet with objectives of the climate action plan of 70% renewables by the year 2030.

Business Need/Case

The objectives of solar power plant projects are supporting project milestones as well as deliverables to meet the scheduled timeline of the project. In order to get success on the 200MW project, the succeeding are the project objectives to be met in the scheduled timeline as well as the allocation of budget:

• Acquisition of the land within the next 30 days
• Development of the internal transmission system and its maintenance in the next 15 days
• Performing forecasting as well as schedule as per the scheduled timeline
• Maintenance of the internal supply of power as well as a water supply by the next 120 days
• Completion of the security support for the structure of the solar power plant in the next 60 days
• Technical support services like consultancy completion by the next 45 days
• Granting permission from the Ireland government for a 20OMW solar power plant project
• Payments are done by the developers of the solar project against the purchase of land and take lease by them as part of the project after the signing of the contract
• A loan is taken from other financial institutions to meet a budget of €39 million, excluding the cost of the finances
• Completion of the project within quarter 4 of 2022 with an estimated budget of $150 million

The success criteria of the solar power plant project are listed as follows:

• Completion of the project with the estimated budget of $150 million
• Commencement of the project by 2021 and completion of it by 2022
• Meet with the project and business objectives to reduce emissions along with combat the climatic changes
• Promotion of the project among the local population for public awareness of renewable energy along with decarbonising of the economy
• Commit to working towards meeting a target of a zero-carbon future

Following are list of the project requirements to get success:

• Minimize consumption of energy and save a lot of the energy consumption
• Generate electricity for powering up the home of approx.40,000
• Pollution-free, and there is no emission of greenhouse gases after the installation of the solar power plant
• A high return on investment is unlikely to pay for utility bills (Finn and McKenzie 2020).
• Considerable space for the solar plant due to requirements of a large array of the photovoltaic panels mandatory to be uncovered to the sunlight
• Require 5 acres of land per 1MW of the output; therefore, installation of the solar power plant for Ireland is 200MW energy, which means 1000acres of land is being acquired
• The increasing value of the home after the installation of 200MW of solar power plant
• The generation of power from the solar power plant is environmental friendly; therefore, special permission is to be taken from the Ireland Government to install it (Assereto and Byrne 2021).
• The solution to the challenges like reduction of emissions and combating the climate changes
• Solar parks are being proposed to be set up in the span of five years, beginning from 2021-to 22

The following constraints pertain to Ireland’s solar power plant project:

• The security requirements must be companionable with the existing IT platforms
• The hardware, as well as software requirements for the solar power plant project, will be purchased as per the estimated budget of $150 million
• Completion of the project will be done by quarter 4 in the year 2022 by following the project timeline
• There will be enough availability of the project resources for the project so that the project will meet its scope to target the climate action plan 2030
• The quality requirements of the project will be the good quality of the building materials required to install the solar power plant. It will be needed to avoid rework and sunk of the project cost.
• Customer satisfaction will be a project constant if the project manager will not finish the project on the scheduled time and within budget. There is required to meet the expectations of the key project stakeholders and customer goals.
• Scattering of 200MW solar power plant project will lead to having a higher cost per MW along with the high transmission of the losses.
• There is taking a long time for the developers to acquire the land and getting various permissions that can cause project delays.

Based on approval of the project agreement and signature of the project charter document, the following is a list of the project assumptions that help to get project success:

• The resource manager is responsible for providing required resources to the project manager if required.
• The project manager will require entire support from the sponsor, key project stakeholders and project team members.
• Communication will be performed among the company owner and project manager by conducting weekly meetings.
• Project management software will be used to manage the project timeline, deliverables, milestones and project activities to be finished on the scheduled time.
• Cost estimation methods will be used by the sponsor to determine all possible project expenses.
• The quality of the materials and equipment will be checked and maintained properly so that it will meet the project objectives and requirements.
• All the project objectives will be followed by the team to provide an eco-friendly environment to Ireland's population.
• All the project risks and challenges will be mitigated using risk management strategies to reduce the limitations of the negative impact of the project on the country.
• The team members assigned for the project will have the required technical and construction skills to install the solar power plant.

The scope of the project is exploring the possibility of the usage of solar energy for the generation of electricity for 40,000 homes in Ireland. The main scope of the project is the promotion of future investments in technology in Dublin. A feasibility study is conducted for the project to analyze the financial and technical factors of the solar power plant project. It focuses on the physical requirements related to the technology. The project personnel and physical and technical resources will be achieved by the project team. The Ireland government will collect funds for the project, and it is to be managed by the project manager. The funding related documents are to be approved by the project sponsor. There is documentation of the technical requirements, and it is to be distributed to project personnel. The technological improvements will show that solar energy has become cheaper and it is considered a significant source of energy for the production of electricity in Ireland. The scope of the project is the completion of the project work by quarter 4, 2022, with an estimated budget of $150 million. The project intends to meet the climate action plan with a target of 70% renewables by the year 2030.  

Following are list of the risks connected to the development of the solar power plant project, besides the risk manager is responsible for determining the required risk mitigation strategies against the identified risks: 

• Potential disruption to the operations and maintenance due to breakdown of the machinery and downtime
• Human resource risks due to difficulty in hiring skilled IT employees to work in the technical field for the installation of a 200MW solar power plant
• Land acquisition issues if a selection of the site for the construction work is not feasible for the project planning (Buganová and Šimí?ková 2021).
• Financial risks of the financial status of the project as compared to other similar projects is a loss
• There is no selection of the health and safety guidelines for the employees to safeguard their health against the hazards
• The environmental risks like high temperature, rain and change in weather conditions are badly impacting the installation process of the solar power plant
• There is a high cost for the maintenance of the solar energy project lead to an increase in the cost of the project (Ma et al.2018).
• There is a lack of public awareness about the project and the governmental policies required for installation purposes.
• The financial initiatives are taken by the government to make aware the potential customers are less while implementing the 200MW project.
• The solar scam is being badly impacted the project work.
• There are design and permission issues while the development of the PV project for Ireland.
• The specifications of the solar system are not designed properly to work with the requirements along with equipment (Bond-Barnard, Fletcher and Steyn 2018).
• There is a risk whole managing the solar grid due to instability problems, and it results in a lack of addition of the new renewable power group resources to the existing systems.

Following is the list of the project deliverables which are required to be met for the completion of the solar power plant project in a successful way. If there are any changes to the deliverables of the project after the initiation phase, then those deliverables are to be approved by the project sponsor:

• Full installation of the solar power plant
• Test installation of the solar parks
• Technical documentation for the power plant
• Statement of the work (Aanbari and Kwak 2018).
• Project scope statement to target 70% renewable by 2030
• Project status report to record the planned start, finished date, planned working hours, completion of work in percentage and task assignments
• Signed contracts with the Ireland government
• Expense statements considering the total budget of $150 million and $36 million excluding the financial cost
• Project reports that show how the construction project is moving forward with respect to the scheduled timeline
• An engineering report for the construction and installation process
• Technical interpretation report (Filippetto, Lima and Barbosa 2021).
• Report on the site investigation to observe the total land and space required for the photovoltaic solar power plant
• Funding related documents from Ireland’s government
• Recommendations list for the future installation considerations

Based on the project requirements and objectives, the project manager has modified the plan schedule of the project. If there are any changes in the schedule, then it is to be discussed with the project stakeholders in project team meetings, and after approval, it is to be updated with the existing schedule. The below table shows the list of the project milestones required to finish the project plan and meet the schedule.

The summary of the project budget is included the personnel resources, equipment, software and facilities required to install the solar power plant project. Below table shows a instant of the project economical based on the strategic costs and predictable costs for project success: 

Business Objectives

Therefore, from the above table, it is calculated that the total budget for the solar power plant project with 200MW is $150 million. After approval of the project cost, if there are any changes in the budget plan, then the project sponsor’s approval is to be taken and included in the change management plan.

The project will get success only when there is the achievement of an environmentally friendly solar power plant system for Ireland's population. There is the deployment of the technical documentation through the entire project plan in the scheduled timeline and estimated cost constraints as recorded in the project charter. The measurement of the project's success is to be done by completion of the project with the estimated budget of $150 million and commencement of the project by 2021, and completion of it by 2022.

Park developer’s approval is also required to acquire the land, get land clearances and develop approaches for the development of the power plant. The project's success is to be permitted by the project sponsor, who is authorized to complete the project. The project sponsor approves the charter document only when the project manager meets with the project and business objectives to reduce emissions, combat the climatic changes and promotion of the project among the local population for public awareness. The sponsor is also accountable to approve the project deliverables to signing contracts with the Ireland government. The civil engineer is responsible for approving the engineering report for the construction in the addition installation process of the solar plant.

The project manager is liable for completing the Ballymacarney Solar PV Park Project within the scheduled timeline. It is the duty of the project manager to manage entire project activities, schedule, deliverables, and milestones and communicate regarding the project planning. The project manager will interact with the resource manager regarding the requirement of IT experts for the installation work of the solar power plant. There is authorization to approve the expenditures of the project, including the estimated budget amount of this particular project. If there are any extra funds required for the project, then the project manager should request them from the project sponsor. The project manager is also accountable for providing weekly updates to the sponsor on the project's progress. From the project execution phase to delivery, the project manager is accountable to break the entire work into tasks and setting a proper schedule for the development of the project deliverables. Based on the skills and knowledge of the resources, all the project tasks will be allocated to them. Monitoring and tracking of the project progress are done to update the present position of the plan to key stakeholders. Finally, the plan manager will manage project documentation plus reports to present to the client for their review.

References

Aanbari, F.T. and Kwak, Y.H., 2018, June. Impact on project management of allied disciplines. Project Management Institute.

Assereto, M. and Byrne, J., 2021. No real option for solar in Ireland: A real option valuation of utility scale solar investment in Ireland. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 143, p.110892.

Project Description

Bandaru, S.H., Becerra, V., Khanna, S., Espargilliere, H., Torres Sevilla, L., Radulovic, J., Hutchinson, D. and Khusainov, R., 2021. A general framework for multi-criteria based feasibility studies for solar energy projects: application to a real-world solar farm. Energies, 14(8), p.2204.

Bond-Barnard, T.J., Fletcher, L. and Steyn, H., 2018. Linking trust and collaboration in project teams to project management success. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.

Buganová, K. and Šimí?ková, J., 2019. Risk management in traditional and agile project management. Transportation Research Procedia, 40, pp.986-993.

Donohoe, J., 2021. Construction gets underway on Ireland’s largest solar farm | Meath Chronicle. [online] Meath Chronicle. Available at: <https://www.meathchronicle.ie/2021/08/20/construction-gets-underway-on-irelands-largest-solar-farm/> [Accessed 4 April 2022].

Filippetto, A.S., Lima, R. and Barbosa, J.L.V., 2021. A risk prediction model for software project management based on similarity analysis of context histories. Information and Software Technology, 131, p.106497.

Finn, T. and McKenzie, P., 2020. A high-resolution suitability index for solar farm location in complex landscapes. Renewable Energy, 158, pp.520-533.

Gain, V., 2021. Construction begins on Ireland’s largest solar farm in Meath. [online] Silicon Republic. Available at: <https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ireland-largest-solar-farm-meath-statkraft> [Accessed 4 April 2022].

Guerra, C. and Lennon, M., 2021. Identifying salient issues in the assessment of solar energy developments in Ireland. International Journal of Environmental Policy and Decision Making, 3(1), pp.1-15.

Ieefa.org, 2021. Construction starts on 200-megawatt solar farm, Ireland’s largest - Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. [online] Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. Available at: <https://ieefa.org/construction-starts-on-200-megawatt-solar-farm-irelands-largest/> [Accessed 4 April 2022].

Ma, X., Xiong, F., Olawumi, T.O., Dong, N. and Chan, A.P., 2018. Conceptual framework and roadmap approach for integrating BIM into lifecycle project management. Journal of Management in Engineering, 34(6), p.05018011.

Statkraft.com, 2021. Statkraft begins work on Ireland’s largest solar farm. [online] Statkraft.com. Available at: <https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/news-and-stories/archive/2021/statkraft-begins-work-on-irelands-largest-solar-farm/> [Accessed 4 April 2022].

van Summeren, L.F., Wieczorek, A.J., Bombaerts, G.J. and Verbong, G.P., 2020. Community energy meets smart grids: Reviewing goals, structure, and roles in Virtual Power Plants in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Energy Research & Social Science, 63, p.101415.

Armenia, S., Dangelico, R.M., Nonino, F. and Pompei, A., 2019. Sustainable project management: A conceptualization-oriented review and a framework proposal for future studies. Sustainability, 11(9), p.2664.

Chawla, V., Chanda, A., Angra, S. and Chawla, G., 2018. The sustainable project management: A review and future possibilities. Journal of Project Management, 3(3), pp.157-170.

Chen, T., Fu, M., Liu, R., Xu, X., Zhou, S. and Liu, B., 2019. How do project management competencies change within the project management career model in large Chinese construction companies?. International Journal of Project Management, 37(3), pp.485-500.

Chofreh, A.G., Goni, F.A., Malik, M.N., Khan, H.H. and Klemeš, J.J., 2019. The imperative and research directions of sustainable project management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 238, p.117810.

Hair, J.F. and Sarstedt, M., 2021. Explanation plus prediction—The logical focus of project management research. Project Management Journal, 52(4), pp.319-322.

Picciotto, R., 2020. Towards a ‘New Project Management’movement? An international development perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 38(8), pp.474-485.

San Cristóbal, J.R., Carral, L., Diaz, E., Fraguela, J.A. and Iglesias, G., 2018. Complexity and project management: A general overview. Complexity, 2018.

Svejvig, P., 2021. A Meta-theoretical framework for theory building in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 39(8), pp.849-872.

Tereso, A., Ribeiro, P., Fernandes, G., Loureiro, I. and Ferreira, M., 2019. Project management practices in private organizations. Project Management Journal, 50(1), pp.6-22.

Wu, C., Wu, P., Wang, J., Jiang, R., Chen, M. and Wang, X., 2021. Ontological knowledge base for concrete bridge rehabilitation project management. Automation in construction, 121, p.103428.