Exciting times on the grid on a Friday seem determined to keep me working over the weekend 😆

Yeah, we've been doing this for a while now... 🎯 💁‍♂️

Wind set new a new record and was the largest source of electricity generation in February, with Cork and Kerry back as top wind producers following January's unprecedented upset by Offaly. This and much more in the latest "Irish Grid Monthly", available now to all our newsletter subscribers!

Presenting a county-level look at last Saturday’s wind record 🔎 Cork and Kerry are typically the top two wind-producing counties, and Offaly's been catching up for a while now. The surprise? Tyrone, which has never been a "top 5" county for wind over the course of a calendar month.

🚨 Yesterday afternoon, wind power reached a new high on the island of Ireland: 4686MW, equal to 73.5% of electricity demand and 66.8% of total generation at the time. The previous record which stood for just over two years has now been broken twice already this winter 🥇

Offaly was the #1 renewable-producing county in January, beating both Cork and Kerry for the very first time. It produced enough power from renewable sources to meet almost 5% of the island's entire electricity demand for the month.

Literally one month after we decided to move away from separate wind and solar county analysis because the rankings so rarely change...the wind rankings changed 😆 (I still prefer the new format, though -- go read!)

30+ years now of footering about with technical stuff for pleasure and for profit, and an Apple user every day of the year...but I've yet to get iMessage setup just the way I'd like 🤬

I unfortunately only really got into Jeopardy *far* too late into my time in the US -- it was a long-time hold-out from streaming and so, when I left the US and my little TV aerial behind, I figured we were done. But next-day episodes on Peacock was one of of the best things happen in TV in 2025.

Why revamp the county rankings? Treating wind and solar separately, things just don't vary that much month-to-month -- new plants being few and far between. However, renewables as a *whole* varies a lot throughout the year, e.g. solar in summer and hydro in winter. Should be much more interesting!

Happened to catch this on the BBC1 news, too: renewables in GB in 2025. Although the TV folk were confusing TW/TWh and (weirdly) the UK with the island of Great Britain, I've a hard time imagining RTÉ doing the same for the island of Ireland's grid *on January 2*! www.bbc.com/news/article...

Happy with this one, *particularly* considering we were (highly unusual for us, who care much more about Christmas than the New Year -- often in bed before midnight) both out until about 3am the night before 😵‍💫 Taking it easy today!

Badge unlocked (literally): solved Wordle in 1 guess 🏅 💥

I just completed "Movie Theater" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/9

I just completed "Playground" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/8

Emerging from Christmas food and TV hibernation just long enough to assemble this wee post. We noticed the Christmas Day afternoon peak years ago but never the Easter Sunday (?); the data doesn't lie! 🤷‍♂️

Sad but unsurprised to see the end of the Christmas Eve broadcast from Grafton Street, as their new favourite presenter obviously wouldn't be caught dead in the city centre (maybe it's okay: the number of kids belting out "Jingle Bells" had almost dropped to zero in recent years anyway). #SpeirGorm

For the past few days, we've been trialling our new pipeline: perfect alignment of the most important EirGrid/SEMO feeds for *little* more accuracy, and more work pushed out to the database for a *lot* less operational load. All going well, nobody will notice! 🤞

I just completed "Laboratories" - Day 7 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/7

I just completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/6

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/5

I just completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/4

I just completed "Lobby" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/3

I just completed "Gift Shop" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/2

I just completed "Secret Entrance" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/1

Yesterday likely to prove the "most Christmas-y" day: - start "Hogfather", over a fine imperial stout 📖 🍺 - dinner at the Christmas market 🌮 - Nils Landgren "Christmas with my friends" concert 🎺 (also had the plumber in, and DIY on the bed...that chaos was actually the *most* Christmas-y thing)

Got it! Spotted this in paperback at @gutterbookshop.bsky.social only a few days after release and obviously had to grab it -- but very much still hoping to pick up a complete trilogy with the @emberwickart.bsky.social covers at some point (should look amazing beside my old Discworlds) 🤓

Badge unlocked: actually bought something in a "Black Friday" "sale" 😬 Current TV refresh rate: once roughly each 10-15 years ♻️

We've been holding off on declaring records based on the new real-time battery data until metered figures are published (usually next day) and this was *so* much higher than the previous record of 275MW we figured it might be a mistake...but no, looks like the data's pretty reliable 🎯

its on github. i uploaded it up on bitbucket. its running in a docker container on gleeple. im selfhosting it on feep. its on a virtual environment in pooble. bro its literally on weewee

"Junior Cert essay" the best take-down I've seen yet of the Collison essay 😆 (mine, less amusing: why would anyone want planning advice from a guy who relocated his mega-corp from downtown San Francisco to the suburbs with no apparent attempt to use his sway to improve the city?)

Firm belief: free parking is theft. My dream world: you don't get to object to parking charges on the grounds that public transport isn't good enough unless you've previously advocated for...better public transport. Likely scenario: the paid parking was going to be, like, €1/day anyway 🤦‍♂️

On a personal note, I was delighted to see batteries suddenly appear in our real-time charts yesterday afternoon. All I had to do for today's report was re-word "discharging pumped storage" to "discharging storage" ⛰️ 🔋 *Pretty* sure @greencollective.io has the best real-time Irish grid data 😊

This edition was -- thanks to some galaxy brain planning -- mostly penned in various Paris coffee shops before polishing it off on the TGV back to Zurich (it's a hard life). Carbon emissions aside, I'm most happy with our dispatch down analysis: why turn down wind generation in favour of imports? 🧐

Always better when @philipb-h.bsky.social is subbing but, of all the problems with Ireland's immigration system, an extended bit on returning emigrants' driving licenses (of all things) seems...cursory? Lots of hoopla regarding the recent R1 presenter shuffle, zero about *producers*. #SpeirGorm

Wondering if Switzerland's concept of oral contracts is behind such an easy switch in mobile phone providers. Spoke with a human for ~15m: they handle number transfer; SIM arrives today; a deal for the other half. Small chance I agreed to something silly, but our monthly bill drops by >100 CHF (!)

Although I really hate when mistakes like this happen, the couple of hours spent debugging usually highlights a bunch of possible improvements to our pipeline 🤷‍♂️ (Bluesky's a great way to share news in near-realtime, at the risk of occasional gun jumping like this - which we'll always correct).

*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!

Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles—it's the Irish electric grid in September!

By an amazing coincidence, we happen to be in Dublin this week for Solar Ireland's annual conference. What a delight it was earlier today to pop into Eason's for a copy of the Irish Times and see Green Collective's name in print before boarding the #4 bus to the RDS 😊

Renewable generation this month is already so far ahead of any previous September month that it'll be a great report even if gas and oil pull ahead in the final stretch; and let's not forget the (very unexpected!) new battery *and* solar records that were set in the last couple of weeks.

This was often on the telly growing up but I'd never watched it properly until recently. Turns out it's really fun and has aged well! And: it was filmed on location all over New York City. I spotted a bunch of my old haunts; but this guy located every single shot!

Look closely at the treemap below and, yes, the two largest Irish solar farms are Gallanstown and Gillinstown, both in County Meath. This has definitely never caused any confusion, given the generally extremely high quality and careful curation of public Irish grid data.

Including a preview of our new unit-level treemaps of which there'll be much more in our upcoming monthly review! 📊

While we were all congratulating ourselves for hosting the best edition of The Traitors, the state chartered a flight to transport 20 people 6500km (11 hours). It's "value for money", apparently, unlike actually improving our asylum and/or visa processes in the slightest 🤦 #TraitorsIRL #SpeirGorm

Doubt I'll ever say this again, but missing Oliver Callan this week. He was pretty good on the first Traitors Uncloaked! Meanwhile, this morning's host thinks The Traitors showed we're basically a nice and decent people. Were we watching the same show? #TraitorsIRL

Traitors Ireland the first RTÉ show to make me fire up the VPN 🧑‍💻 What a representation of modern Ireland: cute hoors who remember keening at funerals; D4 chancers; blatant racism and sexism; survivors of direct provision; so much tea. And that ending. Show of the year! #TraitorsIRL

If I had a penny... 😆 (more seriously: I should probably worry about the day when someone *doesn't* ask this question)

It's still a joy to work on Green Collective's free daily updates. After five years, folks still get excited on the *really* windy days - and, increasingly, sunny days 😊

Looking back a couple of episodes, never resolved: WHO'S YOKIE?! #TraitorsIRL