"Green" policies are destroying this country

The E.U scrapped milk quotas in 2015. From 2016 - 2021 the dairy herd grew by 16%. 2021 - 2022 it grew by 0.3%

So who were the main drivers of increases in dairy cow numbers, a FF/FG government or the E.U.?

What you've described is 100% not on the grid operators though. They tried to build Grid West nearly 20 years ago. Do you know what happened to it? Well, it wasn't the grid operator that put the brakes on it. It was local politicians and TDs that scuppered those very solid plans.

Precisely. On both counts.

Yes, which in no way contradicts what I said, in fact it confirms it. The government didn't consider it a high enough priority to push it through which is what they can do with strategically important infrastructure.

HVAC is an acronym that refers to Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning.

No one refers to AC infrastructure as HVAC except those who don't know what they're talking about.

Where are these allegedly more optimal locations you speak of? Most of the best onshore sites that aren't in Special Protection Areas are already taken according to WEI. Hence the look offshore.

Harvest 2020 did facilitate dairy growth, however it was likely to happen anyway once EU quotas were lifted.

Water quality in Ireland hasn't deteriorated in the last 15 years so it is incorrect to draw inferences linking the two. A longer term analysis of the impacts is needed.

The number of poor quality water bodies has been declining, according to the EPA stats.

Areas in the nitrate derogations have seen consistent declines in water quality which the EPA have primarily attributed to agriculture. This is why the derogation has been reduced.

The government had choices about prioritizing it obligations under the water framework directive or encouraging expansion of the dairy herd to take advantage of the quotas removal. They chose diary in the full knowledge of what the consequences would be for water quality (and biodiversity as a side issue).

They got the derogation to try to game the system and assured the EU that they had plans to control run off pollution. They lied and only started to pay attention when the EU got threatening.

And you me lad would know all about fantasy accounting.

Our current grid operates at rough three 9's of uptime. How can that be maintained with a power source with a 12% capacity factor?

I don't care what someone who has a rooftop full of panels and 5 or 10kW of battery storage can do. It's analogous to someone trying to power the floodlights in a stadium with a bicycle dynamo.

That's why these numbers have to be seen in relation to the transportation/transition and uptake unlike solids like coal or even nuclear which can be much easier regulated. This relation is the bottleneck of wind and solar and unless big advances in storage ie, batteries are made talking about gW is pretty useless. You can only talk about gWh if you actually do the equation with the other end incorporated otherwise it is simply floating. Like the electricity company states on your bill and/or if you are running solar panels tying together production and consumption. Electricity is input+output and everything in between is an important factor especially running an electricity grid system that is super delicate and needs to be stable.

Now, if you want to use the direct electricity from wind turbines to power say, hydrogen production (as proposed by some) those 'in between' stages are stacked lossy even before storing and transporting the troublesome hydrogen and the whole delicate infrastructure.

Every factor needs to be considered unless you are so biased ideologically that you have actually devised deflection and negation techniques as witnessed on this platform and are easily spotted..

On a side note: most people do not know how weird electricity is. For instance, it is a field coupled with magnetism. That field does NOT run through a cable like water through a pipe like most assume.The electrons inside a wire hardly move. Bizarre but true..

So you have no idea about micro-generation, no experience and no information on how people are using it, yet want to lecture people about large scale solar deployments?

See the issue here?