Paul,
Donegal simply wasn't on the grid at all at that stage! There was certainly no cross-boarder link. The BBC even went as far as to make sure that broadcasts didn't "over spill" too far by installing sheilds on the transmitters! The towns would have had local power generation systems on a small scale but the entire county wasn't wired up until slightly later. Donegal's extremely rugged and has narrow mountain passes some parts of the north of the county didn't get fully electrified until the early 1960s!!! At the time that map was produced it would have also had a very small population (less than 50,000 people in the area that wasn't on that grid)
And yup, there was just one big 110KV line linking Dublin with Limerick (Shannon hydrostations) and Cork
Dublin and Cork had signifigant power generation capacity at that stage. The main purpose of that 110KV line was to feed power from Ardnacrusha (Shannon Hydrostation) to Dublin and Cork and pick up the smaller towns etc en route.
The consumption of power at that stage was really low in compairson to modern times, most people running a few lights and a wireless (if they were lucky!) The only places in the 1930s that were using electricity for industrial reasons were in Dublin and Cork cities.
The population was pretty insignifigant too:
Total: about 3 million
Dublin was VERY small in comparision to what it is today (like 300,000 people!)
Cork was on a pretty small scale too and limerick wouldn't have classified as much more than a large town by European standards (still prob. doesn't)
Here's a quote from the ESB archive: (1930-40s!)
"The 85 MW of generating plant in Ardnacrusha was adequate to meet the electricity demand of the entire country in the early years. Sometimes especially at night in winter, water had to be wasted because the total system demand was so small"
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 07-26-2003).]
