@feiwang.bsky.social
energy analyst focused on grid decarbonization; one half of @greencollective.io We also have a newsletter all about the Irish electricity grid: https://currents.greencollective.io/ Wuhan, New York, Zürich & sometimes Dublin
A little more on this, now we have the full 24 hours of data:
bsky.app/profile/did:...
🚨 A historic double-header for the Irish grid today with two major records broken:
- this morning, battery discharge reached almost 500MW, or roughly 8% of electricity demand 🔋
- just after 12pm, solar output exceeded 1GW (roughly 20% of demand) for the very first time ☀️
Much more to come!
🚨 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 🥇
As long as we've been tracking it, either Cork or Kerry has always been the #1 renewables producer on the island of Ireland. That finally changed in January 2026 🥇
Find out which county it was and much, much more in January's "Irish Grid Monthly". Available now to all our newsletter subscribers!
Our 2025 review is now open to all 📊
How did the Irish grid improve over the past 12 months, and where can it do better? We dived into the generation, demand, availability, and pricing data to identify 10 key indicators to watch in 2026 🔍
www.greencollective.io/post/annual-...
My own version of feeling the shift is when I saw the jeweler who made our wedding rings posted an anti-ICE note to his IG grid this weekend. Folks who have been completely apolitical online are making their feelings clear and public. Also this feels different from those black boxes in 2020...
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
Happy Christmas, Paul!
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
All the messaging around nuclear and "let engineers engineer" just seems like a thinly veiled attempt of climate action delay (more fossil fuels!). Haven't seen anything from recent coverage by major publications that convince me otherwise. I'll check out the podcast episodes you recommended below!
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!
