This month is the 75th anniversary of the first production of electricity from Ardnacrusha. Paul Duffy recounts the history, design and engineering of this defining engineering project that brought Ireland into the twentieth century and marked the birth of the ESB. The Shannon Scheme was the culmination of a long series of proposals to harness the river for power generation. In 1844, Robert Kane suggested that the area between Killaloe and Limerick could become the industrial heartland of Ireland. He claimed that, if the Shannon were harnessed here, some 34,000 continuous horse power would be available for industrial use. The Famine, however, pushed his ideas into the background. In 1875, there was a major strike by coal miners in Britain, and "the Engineer" suggested that English industrialists should relocate to the Limerick area because of the abundance of readily available water power.
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