Sorry this is a late reply. I can see that mentioning molten salt was a bit left-field, However, it is one of the more realistic ways to store the huge amounts of power needed to fuel an economy for a couple of weeks (which you need in northern europe if you want to use solar/wind). Here’s a link about it:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000137

I am pro nuclear, but if we are going to descend into this renewable hell, then we need to actually think about how you store terawatt-hours of power. I really think that this kind of storage might be the nearest we have to a solution. we’ll only need it once we try to turn off the gas turbines, of course. It is fascinating that so many smart people don’t see that the whole jigsaw is missing vital pieces.

This is interesting, and meets my needs. I tried Gnucash, but the double entry bookkeeping was a bit to advanced for my small-business’/smooth-brain needs (amortising my stock of utility bills seemed a bit excessive! - though I am sure I was doing it wrong)

This is not tangental - I am heartened, my hope is that this would become normal. Despite my moan, it isn’t that bad and I’m sure I would have had different IT headaches on windows - security comes to mind.

I still use proprietary android software on my phone, but I try not to do anything secure on my phone (this is also getting harder as banks are insisting that I convert to apps)

yes it is. I have tried messing with user agent now. Chromium works on linux, not firefox. :(

Which is?

It works on chromium, not firefox. I guess I should be more flexible. It is likely that the bug is in the bank’s site, so I wasn’t sure about putting in a bug report. The website pauses on the ‘loading’ animated icon, when you try to navigate away, it tells you ‘Your session has expired’. It hasn’t been fixed by changing the user-agent (assuming I got it right). I don’t know if the bank would give them a dummy account for testing, but I’ll file a report anyway.

I’m not worried about privacy, it’s a business not a person. If the government want to look through my business’ data, they just need to arrange an audit. I like good security, but am a small target.

It’s about free as in freedom.

My worry is that if linux is allowed to become just a hackintosh of steamdeck, rather than an actual operating system. It will go the way of hackintosh.

[edit: apostrophe, edit2: added last paragraph]

I don’t know if the UK is worse than anywhere else (?)

This sounds smart

Thanks - I had not thought of this. I’ll give it a go… [edit: no dice :(] It works in chromium, so there is a solution… its just tiring to remember which browser to use for which site.

Also, please feel free to answer if you aren’t based in the UK, I assume this isn’t a UK only problem, but I’m based here.

Sorry - What?

You said Denmark had converted to green energy. I pointed out that they haven’t done anything like that. You are now moving the goal posts and saying “where is the comparative essay defending nuclear power”…

If you must, France turned completely green in the 70s. So they’ve provided 50 years of clean energy. Its a classic story and not as simple as I’m going to make out, but still. Look at the map link in the last post - any area that stays green is either using hydro or nuclear. Hydro is great, but you need mountains and water.

That is actually very impressive. Thanks! I remain a bit skeptical as its only 1/5th of what they need and it’s only one region of one (rich) country. Still, 10GW of lithium battery would be one hell of a fire ;-)

The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - “a massive lake of molten salt under every city” (I actually like that one!)…

Negative energy prices are a bad thing! That means that someone is dumping energy into the grid (you should be paying the grid if you have solar panels!!) In the UK all renewable energy had to be called ‘experimental’ so that the pricing was fixed and the government picks up the tab - that’s not good. Check this map - right now the wind isn’t blowing and solar hasn’t got out of bed - so most of the countries using renewables are looking shit - later today solar will kick in, but tonight it will be bad again. That isn’t a solution.

Yeah! Let’s dig a big hole till we hit lava and then throw everything into it. :)

This is wrong. Right now, europe is experiencing high pressure and doesn’t have any wind. Check this out its map that shows you how much wind is being produced right now! Can you provide a source that says " the wind is always blowing somewhere" or is it just a platitude?

No, there is pumped storage. Honestly, despite the plethora of start-ups claiming to have a solution (sodium batteries, molten-salt, etc) The only really proven way to store electricity for later is pumped storage, but that relies on geography (hills) which not everyone has. Batteries are great for phones, and cars but they simply don’t scale to countries.

Denmark looking decidedly not green this morning. It’s sunny, but virtually no wind - might be like this for another week. Check the map regularly to understand why unreliable energy is actually just a way of increasing gas usage.

Please understand that negative prices are the market for electricity breaking down! That is not a good thing. It should mean that if you have solar panels on your roof you have to pay to participate in the national grid because you are dumping energy into the grid when it can’t use it, but special rules have been made for renewable plants. Literally, imagine a contract-to-supply for wind or solar…