A Butlersbridge business is on a mission to put Co Cavan firmly on the global map by using the first of its kind technology to harvest power from a nearby river.
Murph’s Gastro Pub is seeking planning permission to use a world-first technology that would allow the premises to run on power from the Annalee river outside its front door.
The technology is a small, floating turbine designed by GKinetic.
The Annalee River should give Murph’s Gastro Pub at least 70,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually.
That is around 15 times what the average Irish household uses and would meet a lot of the pub’s electricity needs as well as cutting the cost of the businesses energy bills significantly.
Fergus explained: "The technology consist of very small turbines which sit in the river and generate at least 70,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually.
"During the winter months when the water is flowing really well, I'll be getting 100% excess electricity so I can feed that back into the village or whichever way we decide to take things going forward. It works off batteries and the solar element will compliment it during the summer."
Fergus described a community information session which was recently held in the village to explain the project as very positive: "We did have a consultation with local people, local authorities and the fisheries a number of weeks ago and it went very well. We had really good feedback and all questions were answered. It's very early stages, if planning comes through we'll finish the study and then we'll decide at the end if it's going to work for us."
Fergus said it would be "fantastic" to put Co Cavan on the global map with this world-first technology.
He told Northern Sound how the idea first came about: "The idea came to me through Pauric Mc Gearty who is from Butlersbridge and runs ÉireVolt Energy in Cavan Town.
"He was aware of Gkinetic and said it could be a really exciting thing to get them involved to see if I could harvest energy from the river. We all met up six months ago, its the first of its kind so we're in the middle of getting planning at the moment."
