Fei Wang

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).

A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland. There are eight fuel types: pumped storage, biomass, waste-to-energy, hydro, solar, wind, oil, and gas. There is also a black line showing electricity demand. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes domestic solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO

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.

🏭 🥇

'Some confusion' over off-grid power back-up systems Clifford John has solar panels and a domestic battery for storing power in his house in Galway.

www.rte.ie/news/2025/10...

*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

A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland. There are eight fuel types: pumped storage, biomass, waste-to-energy, hydro, solar, wind, oil, and gas. There is also a black line showing electricity demand. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes domestic solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO

A stacked area chart of the renewable electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland. There are eight fuel types: pumped storage, biomass, waste-to-energy, hydro, solar, wind, oil, and gas. The y axis indicates the percentage of demand being met by each source. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes domestic solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO

A treemap of solar generation on the island of Ireland. Solar farms are represented by a yellow box with its size proportional to the amount of solar each produced. Solar farms are grouped by county. Footnote reads: Showing solar farms registered with SEMO, accounting for approximately 90% of the island's utility-scale solar generation. Source: SEMO

A map of Irish uiltity-scale solar generation. Solar farms plants are marked with yellow circles of a size proportional to their output. Footnote reads: Source: SEMO

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.

Great news! Congrats!

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

A chart showing a historical battery discharge records on the island of Ireland. Output is in orange and output to demand ratio in blue. Records are indicated with a large circle and the time between with dashed lines. A chart showing a historical demand (load) records on the island of Ireland. Records are indicated with a large circle and the time between with dashed lines. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Source: EirGrid, SEMO

A stacked area chart of battery discharge on the island of Ireland. The area is divided up by individual plants. Footnote reads: All-island figures. Source: SEMO

🚨 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

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced. I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

Some personal news:

I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Thread incoming.

substack.com/@karenattiah...

US cash turned Tommy Robinson into the poster boy of UK f... Outside the Old Bailey in 2018, a reinvented Tommy Robinson flashed his perfect new teeth to 2,000 diehard supporters at a “free Tommy” rally on a stage ...

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...

Mentions of “alpha male” and “we can control her”. Oof so many exhibits!

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

I am particularly gagged by his audacity to label his company page (yes, he is posting on LinkedIn as well) as "Renewable Energy Power Generation."

A screenshot of a reply from November 9, 2024 on X in response to Green Collective/Irish Energy Bot's move to Bluesky, from Murtag (@HydCEng): "So long and thanks for all the fish. I hope you get lots of robust engagement over there on your journey toward net zero Neverland. I'll follow you over there (and your green party friends) when you start to appreciate the need for nuclear power or pumped storage for Ireland."

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)

A county-level heatmap of Irish solar generation. Counties are divided into three tiers, according to how much solar energy each produced. Footnote reads: Includes generation only from larger utility-scale wind farms registered with SEMO. Counties not listed here may have wind farms that are not registered with SEMO. SEMO tracks approximately 85% of the island's wind generation. Source: SEMO

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 ✨

A knitting project (Upstream Sweater designed by Alice Hoyle/ROWS Knitwear) work in progress: a grey sweater with wavy ribbing stitches all over and 2x2 ribbing at the hem. There is a small amount of yarn left in this ball.

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.

A seven-year-old child carrying a small goose for purposes of medication. Her face is not visible. Behind her, her father is keeping the other geese in the house until they can be medicated and released.

The author, who still looks kind of pregnant, squirting coccidiosis medication down a goose's throat with the help of Child 1 and Bjoern Holzhauer.

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 ☀️