We've spent the New Year selecting 10 takeaways that best represent the key changes and trends affecting the Irish electricity grid in 2025. Key takeaways 1-3: flatlining renewables to demand ratio, increasing imports via interconnectors, and wind dispatch down. (1/3)

oh no instantly felt the horrible flashback to the whole “bitcoin is a battery” thing a few years ago

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!

These Static Mittens (pattern by Rows Knitwear/Alice Hoyle) are easily among my top 3 knits this year. The fact that the pattern name is electricity adjacent makes them extra special 🧶⚡️

December 25 is just about the only day when electricity demand in Ireland peaks around lunchtime rather than in the evening 🎄 When else can you expect this behaviour? Easter Sunday. We love our roasts! 🍗 Renewables supplied over half of this year's Christmas Day electricity 🔌 #SpeirGorm

So, the latest here is...we don't really know what's going on 😜 Although we've updated our pipeline to use the new format for metered generation, the old format is *also* still being published...sometimes? Anyway, our December newsletter will still arrive in all subscribers' inboxes on January 1 🥳

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! 🤞

If you're looking for a gift, what about a Dublin Inquirer subscription? For the curious, the involved, the engaged, the newcomer, the old-timer – for anyone you think would want to read about the city.

🚨Our dashboard caught a new all-island wind output record this morning: 4671MW at 9:30am on Friday, 5 December!🚨 www.greencollective.io/records

Is it me or is there a lot more talk about nuclear in Irish media these few weeks?

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 🎯

🚨 Battery discharge early yesterday evening reached a new all-time high of 396MW, equal to 5.6% of electricity demand at the time. Cork's Aghada plant the biggest contributor. Recent changes in scheduling and dispatch already making a difference on these high demand, low wind nights.

Moving out of the US greatly reduced my consumption of *things*. Every time I go back, I note what I wish I had easier access to; the list is short: 1 The Consistency Project (finding well-fitted jeans is hard!) 2 Earrings by Irene Wood (look at them!) Support them instead of black friday madness?

Changes to scheduling and dispatch on the grid manifesting here with the appearance of batteries in our morning report for the first time. As always, we'll be carefully comparing this with the final metered and dispatch data, once available; for now, take this report with a (tiny!) grain of salt 🤞

DHS/ICE used an Olivia Rodrigo song for a video on Instagram and after calling them disgusting, Olivia's team allegedly pulled the song for use on Insta so the video has no background music. This is the second time she's done this - previously it was a tiktok song.

This person took this when they called the race

Every far-right riot and protest that was tolerated, every racist dog whistle from public reps, every bit of hate and misinformation allowed to spread by social media companies, all led to this moment in Drogheda last night where someone felt emboldened enough to try to burn children alive.

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).

During the recent prolonged dunkelflaute we saw some of the worst days for renewable generation in recent years. Well, it's over! We believe carbon-emitting sources reached a new all-time *low* this morning of 899MW. We haven't seen a new record in this category for over two years. 🏭 🥇

*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!

"Houston Street"

So considerate of Taylor to bring Brat summer back

On Monday, large-scale solar generation in Ireland reached a new high of 934MW; about 19% of the island's electricity demand at the time ☀️ This took us by surprise - it's nearly October! It seems transmission constraints on the grid were notably lower than usual, perhaps due to extremely low winds.

Well I certainly didn't expect solar output record to be broken on September Equinox in Ireland!

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

🚨 Batteries reached a new high of 275MW last night, finally breaking the previous record of 266MW set all the way back in January with Cork's Aghada BESS 2 in the lead with about 135MW 🏅 Together with Turlough Hill, storage was meeting about 9% of all-island peak demand at around 6pm 🔋⛰️

Anyone who watches the UK version knows that every fucking series theres a blond girl who gets really overemotional whenever they get accused and then end up cosying up to a male traitor and protecting them right to the end #TraitorsIrl

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

My colleague @thejohnsimpson.bsky.social has done a terrific deep dive into the financial links between US tech billionaires and Tommy Robinson Well worth a read observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Gonna need a 1500 word thinkpiece on the gender dynamics going on in Slane Castle. They talk around it a lot on Uncloaked but why do we think Katelyn was put in the role of mediator between two aggro lads, why is Oyin underestimated, and why do Nick and Ben think they run the castle #traitorsirl

TIL this guy, who posted this message when we announced @greencollective.io's move from X to here, recently started a bot on X posting daily updates on electricity usage/generation in Ireland 🙃 (Fairly sure it's the same dude I blocked, who had 4 bsky usernames to be annoying in my replies in Dec)

From our last monthly newsletter: July's county solar generation map. For the first time in a while, the county rankings look set to shake up a bit in August; find out more in the next edition of "Irish Grid Monthly", available Monday to our newsletter subscribers. Subscribe for free today! 📭

Bluesky 🤝 knitting 🧶: blocking is magic ✨

istg it always feels like it takes forever to finish the last bit of a ball 🧶

Same. I'm grateful I had the options I had. Not everybody is so lucky and I don't for a moment begrudge the ones who had to take a different route.

Child labour was deployed to medicate all fourteen geese on three consecutive days, with weight-calibrated doses. Thank you to @feiwang.bsky.social for the weighing and recording help!

Hello to good ppl everywhere. Yes, I have 3 special colorways to support 4 families in Gaza and the Sameer Project. Crafting and creativity are powerful weapons. Making beauty reminds us of what we are fighting for while showing solidarity with Palestinians. 🧶

After seeing this excellent chart from the folks at @data.ft.com, we had to see how things look across the water. Irish solar in 2025 has already overtaken 2024 as of the second half of July, and it looks likely to exceed 1TWh later this year for the first time ☀️

It definitely feels important to include the fact that Norway specifically is uniquely and disproportionately responsible for the nordic heatwave here, because we profit wildly from supplying the cause of the substance causing these deaths, injuries and environmental catastrophes

EirGrid's continued tacit conflation of 1-min/15-min data is a real pet peeve of mine. Be consistent or -- better yet -- publish the highest resolution data (trust me, we can handle it 🤣). (@greencollective.io used to monitor some regions of the US where 5-min is the norm; 15-min seems so quaint!)

As a long-time FT Weekend reader, it was a real treat to have the newspaper reach out to *us* at @greencollective.io for data to support this article which goes deep on datacentres' continued use of fossil fuels 🏭 Seeing our company name in today's edition was definitely a moment to savour ☺️

Delighted to share that Green Collective supplied hourly Irish generation data to the @financialtimes.com for use in this just-published in-depth story on the continued reliance on fossil fuels by data centres, with a special Irish angle 📊 🗞️ on.ft.com/4lkAjXN

This podcast on petromasculinity and the manosphere (lol) by @amywestervelt.bsky.social and Daniel Penny is characteristically informative and insightful, but also surprisingly funny. Just the theme song (HUUUGH!!!) cracks me up.

🚨 A new all-time high today for Irish utility-scale solar of 864MW, equal to approximately 18% of all-island electricity demand at the time (just before noon). Remember to hydrate and stay safe out there folks 😎

Some key rural Ireland cultural lessons for me: 1. rip dot ie 2. the prevalence of high-vis jackets. people would find walking on a road (no footpaths!) with 80km/h speed limit while cars zooming past totally normal and make faces about “dangers” of Dublin 🙃

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is one signature away from becoming law, and now the clean energy industry is asking itself: Where do we go from here? @zeitlin.bsky.social and @emilypont.bsky.social checked in and found that while the mood is not great, there are still policy solutions to be tried.

This heat wave has been brutal and I'm only managing by a combo of air-conditioned public spaces and spending hours dipping in and out of the river at Frauenbadi (current water temp at 27C/80F). Rivers have been running so hot that a nuclear plant relying on the Aare to cool has to reduce output.