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Trevor Johnston

@beerwithsubtitles.net
1.1K followers 569 following 314 posts

Tracking Irish renewable generation at @greencollective.io · Google 2007-2019 · Zürich, New York, Dublin

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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 24/09/2026
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)
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 06/09/2026
Catching up on Irish Traitors and *of course* someone's swearing before the opening credits have even started. Let's go! #TraitorsIRL
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 04/09/2026
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? 🧪
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 04/09/2026
Latest Irish bureaucracy side-quest: seven weeks and counting to close my old Credit Union account.
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 27/08/2026
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 📊
A map of Ireland with markers representing generation at solar farms. Markers are sized in proportion to their output in MW. Those plants most improved since the previous record are in purple, all others in yellow.

Footnote reads: Excludes solar farms not registered with SEMO. Excludes rooftop solar.
Source: SEMO
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 26/08/2026
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 💪
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 24/08/2026
🚨 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. ☘️ ⚡️ 🥇
A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland with the following fuel types: battery, 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 rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 24/08/2026
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 🏔️)
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 18/08/2026
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.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 18/08/2026
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 🤧
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 12/08/2026
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!)
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 12/08/2026
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...
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 10/08/2026
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!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 10/08/2026
G-g-g-galway!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 09/08/2026
"Trevor, stop trying to make 'green corridor' happen!"
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 31/07/2026
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 😆
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 23/06/2026
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.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 25/05/2026
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 🎯
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 25/05/2026
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?)
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 24/05/2026
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 😴
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 24/05/2026
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...
rte.ie
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.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 11/05/2026
Can we book the wind farm developer for Tommy's show? The whole idea is he knows nothing about his guests.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 28/04/2026
Irish mother searching for something to say about the newborn: "he is getting big" HE'S SIX DAYS OLD
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 25/04/2026
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 🇨🇭
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 25/04/2026
The good weather in Ireland keeping me busy this weekend after an EXCEPTIONALLY busy week but...no complaints, you love to see it ☀️
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 24/04/2026
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...
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 14/04/2026
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."
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 04/04/2026
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! ☀️ 📊
A county-level heatmap of Irish solar generation. Counties are divided into three tiers, according to how much energy each produced from solar.

Footnote reads: Excludes solar farms not registered with SEMO. Excludes rooftop solar. Source: SEMOA line chart of solar generation on the island of Ireland. There is one line for each year and each lines shows the cumulative total of solar generation through that point of the year.

Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 03/04/2026
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 😝
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 02/04/2026
NBD, just one of the greenest months ever in Irish electricity 💁‍♂️ Favourite line: "Sometimes, a world in which gas on the Irish grid is but an important backup doesn't appear so far away." Don't worry, we *immediately* proceed to identify a *huge* threat -- the gas industry's doing just fine!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 02/04/2026
People rightly laud the passport office but for a more representative sample of Irish bureaucracy on the internet, I present to you the official website for ordering an Irish birth certificate. Wash your hands! 🦠 (I've emailed the GRO instead -- quaint, but they seem active)
A screenshot of the official website by the HSE for ordering an Irish birth certificate. Amongst other anachronisms, there is a large banner saying: "Due to coronavirus (COVID 19) we are experiencing a high volume of orders and the dispatch turnaround time has increased from 10 to 10. We wish to apologise for any inconvenience caused."
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 28/03/2026
My favourite feeds are those with timestamps in IST only (Irish time zone), and we do handle a few: "null" records when the clock springs forward, and no good way to de-dupe records when the clock falls back in the autumn...just pick one!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 22/03/2026
Real risk of record-fatigue here (and, we predict many more from now until almost October) but this *is* an important metric and, surprisingly, it's the first time it's been broken in almost a year.
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 20/03/2026
🚨 Output from large-scale solar farms on the island of Ireland reached a new high yesterday afternoon of 1078MW, equal to roughly 22% of all-island demand around 1pm. This is the *third time* this record has been broken so far this month ☀️ Solar's now reaching peaks 20% higher than last autumn 📊
A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland with the following fuel types: battery, 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 rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMOA treemap of the electricity mix on the island of Ireland with the following fuel types: battery, biomass, hydro, solar, wind, oil, gas, and waste-to-energy.  Larger sources are annotated with the GWh and percentage of total generation that source comprised.

Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 17/03/2026
GREEN
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 17/03/2026
Today's @letterboxd.social revelation: Father Lonergan in "The Quiet Man" was Bert in "It's a Wonderful Life" 🤯
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 07/03/2026
Exciting times on the grid on a Friday seem determined to keep me working over the weekend 😆
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 04/03/2026
Yeah, we've been doing this for a while now... 🎯 💁‍♂️
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 02/03/2026
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!
A treemap of the electricity mix on the island of Ireland with the following fuel types: battery, pumped storage, biomass, hydro, solar, wind, oil, gas, and waste-to-energy.  Larger sources are annotated with the GWh and percentage of total generation that source comprised.

Footnote reads: All-island figures. Excludes rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMOA county-level heatmap of Irish renewable generation. Counties are divided into four tiers, according to how much renewable energy each produced.

Footnote reads: Renewables comprise wind, hydro, solar, and biomass. Excludes wind and solar farms not registered with SEMO. Excludes rooftop solar.
Source: SEMO
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 16/02/2026
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.
A county-level heatmap of wind generation around the time of the record. Counties are divided into three tiers, according to how much wind energy each was producing at the time.

Footnote reads: Excludes wind and solar farms not registered with SEMO.
Source: SEMO
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 15/02/2026
🚨 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 🥇
A stacked area chart of the electricity generation mix on the island of Ireland with the following fuel types: battery, 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 rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMOA 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 rooftop solar. Source: EirGrid, SEMO
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Reposted by Trevor Johnston
Green Collective @greencollective.io · 12/02/2026
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.
A county-level heatmap of Irish renewable generation. Counties are divided into three tiers, according to how much wind energy each produced.

Renewables comprise wind, hydro, solar, and biomass. Excludes wind and solar farms not registered with SEMO. Excludes rooftop solar.
Source: SEMO
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 03/02/2026
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!)
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 08/01/2026
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 🤬
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 08/01/2026
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.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 07/01/2026
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!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 07/01/2026
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...
bbc.com
Record year for wind and solar electricity in Great Britain in 2025
Wind, solar and other renewables hit a new high last year but the government is still some way off its clean power target.
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 02/01/2026
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!
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 31/12/2025
Badge unlocked (literally): solved Wordle in 1 guess 🏅 💥
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Trevor Johnston @beerwithsubtitles.net · 28/12/2025
I just completed "Movie Theater" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/9
adventofcode.com
Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025
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