The first of each month is a busy day at the @greencollective.io home office! Highlights of our September issue: - county-level dispatch down analysis for wind - battery record deep-dive by @feiwang.bsky.social - annual solar growth map Read it online: currents.greencollective.io/irish-grid-m...

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 4d ago

The Irish grid in September: 🔹 43.0% renewables: 36.8% wind 💨, 4.8% solar ☀️, 1.1% biomass 🪵, 0.3% hydro 💧 🔹 39.1% fossil fuels: 37.5% gas 🏭️, 1.6% waste-to-energy 🔥 🔹 1.3% storage: 0.8% pumped hydro ⛰️, 0.5% batteries 🔋 🔌 16.5% imports All this and much more in the latest "Irish Grid Monthly"!

Riveting reading, obviously -- but might be of interest to close followers of @greencollective.io closely who are curious what sort of datasets we have to juggle 🤓 (fun fact: there are at *least* half a dozen sources of Irish solar data, at varying resolutions/timeliness/completeness)

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2w ago

A sunny Monday, and EirGrid's dashboard showing a new all-island solar high: 1402MW ☀️ However, it's too close to call: as our charts show, spikes in real-time data are often later revised down and/or disappear with downsampling. Record or not, it's great to see such highs well into the autumn! ☀️

Catching up on Irish Traitors and *of course* someone's swearing before the opening credits have even started. Let's go! #TraitorsIRL

I don't think we've posted a map of *all* generation before, i.e. one including fossil fuels. I made this one offset some markers slightly so that none overlap -- I think it highlights the wind/solar/gas regions pretty well? 🧪

Green Collective@greencollective.io · last mo.

How Ireland met electricity demand during August: 🔹 26.7% renewables: 18.2% wind 💨, 6.8% solar ☀️, 1.7% biomass 🪵, 0.1% hydro 💧 🔹 49.2% fossil fuels: 47.6% gas 🔥, 1.5% waste-to-energy 🔥, 0.1% oil 🛢️ 🔹 1.3% storage: 0.8% pumped hydro ⛰️, 0.5% batteries 🪫 🔌 22.5% imports (from our latest newsletter)

Latest Irish bureaucracy side-quest: seven weeks and counting to close my old Credit Union account.

Even as autumn approaches, Ireland saw a new all-time solar record on Monday: 1.4GW, about 4% higher than the previous record in May ☀️ How is this possible? Solar capacity has grown faster than the sun's seasonal decline. Below, we've highlighted the most improved solar farms since May 📊

Win win this afternoon: fixed a long-standing intermittent database performance headache and found the perfect opportunity to use the word "folderol" in a code comment 💪

🚨 A record for utility-scale solar on the island of Ireland: 1.4GW at 11.45am, roughly 30% of electricity demand at the time ☀️ This new all-island record was driven by 1301MW of solar in the ROI -- also a new all-time high there, and equal at the time to roughly 34% of ROI demand. ☘️ ⚡️ 🥇

Quick, delicious clear-the-fridge dinner in this Irish-Chinese household: baked beans on frozen scallion pancakes 😋 (beans enriched with slices of home-made sausage bought, on the honour system, from a fridge in some farmer's field -- we live in Switzerland 🏔️)

The other day, I mentioned the wait to obtain my son's Irish passport to a German friend of mine. The face on him when I said it's now been over a *month* without *any* update: baffled, bewildered -- and, I suspect, vindication that he (also) chose to settle in Switzerland over Ireland.

10+ weeks of solid heatwaves here in Zurich (forget about heatwave #1, #2, etc. -- we've had no more than a few days relief since May) are *finally* ending and...*boom*, literally the next day: allergy season 🤧

Very pleasantly surprised to see *such* a clear dip in the data, despite the eclipse occurring so close to sunset! (fortuitously, I did some work recently to improve the frequency and reliability of our EirGrid scraper which certainly came in handy tonight!)

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2mo ago

🚨 Irish solar generation dipped noticeably during the partial solar eclipse earlier this evening, bottoming out at just 8MW. Overlaying today's generation with yesterday's, we see a clear notch around 7pm when the eclipse was at its greatest 🌑 ⚡️ #SolarEclipse #SpeirGorm

Time for a little round-up of our July reporting... 🧵 First, the basics: how much of electricity demand each source (wind, solar, gas, etc.) meet? 🍃 ☀️ 🌊 🗻 🔋 🏭️ 🔥 bsky.app/profile/gree...

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2mo ago

How July's electricity demand was met on the island of Ireland: 🌱 32.2% Renewables • Wind: 23.2% 💨 • Solar: 8.4% ☀️ • Biomass: 0.4% | Hydro: 0.2% 🔥 46.5% Fossil Fuels • Gas: 46% ⛽️ • Waste: 0.3% | Oil: 0.1% 🔋 1.4% Storage (0.9% Pumped Hydro, 0.5% Battery) ⚡️➡️ 19.8% Net Imports

So, more on this... Like an eejit I (kinda sorta) half-believed the "current turnaround times" posted on the passport office's website which, if accurate, would have allowed us travel with our newborn ~1 month later 😇 Spoiler: the times were not accurate, and we did not make our trip!

Trevor Johnston@beerwithsubtitles.net · 2mo ago

My own passport *renewals* have been fast, even when living in the US -- but it's been over three weeks now without any updates on a first passport application for my baby, born in Switzerland. We've just had to cancel our holiday. The consent form, in particular, is just farcical security theatre.

G-g-g-galway!

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2mo ago

Galway reaching #1 for July renewable power is even remarkable given that ~20% of its wind energy was dispatched down during the month — far more than in the usual leaders of Cork and Kerry 🍃 Another driver? The new solar plant at Ballymoneen, which notably saw no dispatch down all month long ☀️

"Trevor, stop trying to make 'green corridor' happen!"

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2mo ago

Solar completely upended our county rankings in July to make Galway #1 and Meath #2 renewable energy producers for the first time ☀️ With Offaly at #4, our map below highlights an emerging green corridor of renewable production stretching from the east to west coasts 📍

No need to wait weeks and weeks -- whether hail, rain, sleet or snow, Swiss National Day or even *a new flipping baby in the house* @greencollective.io newsletter subscribers get their news on the first of each and every month 😆

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 2mo ago

So far this year, the grid's having its greenest summer in recent memory. How well did we do in July? In the next edition of "Irish Grid Monthly" we'll be covering: ⚡️ datacentre demand ⚡️ carbon emissions ⚡️ curtailment and transmission constraints Sign up today to receive your copy!

I'm a ~happy Wise user but they've started spamming me about savings and investments for kids and clearly I've not been clicking "Deny all cookies" (and the like) often enough.

This unit-level analysis of dispatch down was my work focus towards the end of the pre-baby times and...it is just incredibly satisfying to see the near-perfect bell curves produced by stacking metered generation, curtailment, and constraints 🎯

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 4mo ago

Ireland saw exceptionally strong solar generation over the weekend as a heat dome descended over Europe. The charts below illustrate not-insignificant dispatch down, with transmission constraints dominating in Northern Ireland and significant curtailment in the east and south coasts.

Genuinely can't remember the last dealings I had in Ireland which ended without me telling them how to do their job 😆 (this was *such* an interesting call, e.g. the GRO generally doesn't forward tracking numbers for registered post...like, what do you think registered post is for, exactly?)

Trevor Johnston@beerwithsubtitles.net · 4mo ago

Latest: someone from the GRO called me this morning to tell me my birth cert was returned to them, possibly because of insufficient postage. A sum of 16 EUR was mentioned which, after 30 seconds on An Post's website, tells me is insufficient for registered post from Ireland to Switzerland (17 EUR) 🤦‍♂️

A *very* late daily report owing to a restless baby the night before, ongoing database annoyances, and one-damn-typo yesterday morning which really spun out of control 😴

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 5mo ago

Renewable generation and discharging storage equalled 46% of yesterday's electricity demand, with a peak of 61% at 00:15. Fossil fuel generation (mostly gas) equalled 38% of demand. 0% of generation was exported, 15% of demand was met by imports.

Aaaaand, right on cue... (I can't be too mad, as -- hooray! -- @greencollective.io is cited in the actual report which, FWIW, I entirely agree with -- oddly enough, though, it's *not* for our 2025 emissions estimate) www.rte.ie/news/2026/05...

Electricity emissions fall for third consecutive year

Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity in Ireland fell by almost 9% last year, the third consecutive year that electricity emissions have fallen.

rte.ie

Trevor Johnston@beerwithsubtitles.net · 12mo ago

*mentally steels himself for this to get literally no wider attention until, say, June 2026 when the Irish EPA (or a similar organisation - who do great work, but at very different speeds than we're used to) put out a press release* 🤷‍♂️ Our 500+ newsletter subscribers seem to appreciate it, though!

Can we book the wind farm developer for Tommy's show? The whole idea is he knows nothing about his guests.

John Gibbons 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@thinkorswim.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Another triumph for the NIMBYS…this offshore wind farm would have powered 350,000 homes, but no, we’d rather burn the world down with foreign oil, gas. RTÉ chatshow host Tommy Tiernan among the objectors. Well done, Tommy, as long as you’re ok. Joke’s on the rest of us.

Irish mother searching for something to say about the newborn: "he is getting big" HE'S SIX DAYS OLD

Achievement unlocked: carted the first-born home entirely by public transport 👶 🚋 Only blip was an out-of-service elevator but it just needed a few minutes detour, during which a friendly SBB conductor on the platform wished me "Glückwunsch!". And this from the *least* connected Zürich hospital 🇨🇭

The good weather in Ireland keeping me busy this weekend after an EXCEPTIONALLY busy week but...no complaints, you love to see it ☀️

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 5mo ago

🚨 For the second day in a row, we have a new record in Irish solar! Output reached 1207MW shortly after 2pm, iching past yesterdays' 1179MW. With demand lower on the weekend this was equal to 29.5% of the island's electricity demand; *significantly* higher than yesterday's peak of 25.7%. ☀️ 📊

Delighted to see this becoming a FAQ as folks gain a better and better understanding of the how the grid works. Big improvement on "Do your charts include the solar panels on my roof?" -- if I had a penny! bsky.app/profile/gree...

Green Collective@greencollective.io · 5mo ago

We currently have dispatch down data on the next business day. So it probably won't feature in our daily reports anytime soon but we are planning a feature on it in the premium edition of our next monthly newsletter, arriving May 1.

Things you *do not* want the world's-most-advanced-LLM-coding-agent-thingy to say in response to your description of a weird database issue: "This is a really interesting one. Let me search for what's changed in DuckDB 1.5 around macros and transactions."

Exciting times for solar power during March: a real gap is finally starting to appear between last year's running total, and Galway lights up on our map for the first time. This and much more in the latest "Irish Grid Monthly", available now to our newsletter subscribers! ☀️ 📊

This morning's auto-complete, courtesy of GitHub Copilot: // TODO: this file is a bit of a mess, and should be refactored to be more maintainable 😝