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Mostly all of our potential for pumped hydro is already developed, and there is not a lot left to do for non-pumped hydro.

We can't grow hydro at the required scale, and the usual problem with solar and wind (that we should develop nonetheless, don't get me wrong) apply: we can't produce enough power with those all year (winter nights need power too for heat pumps etc...)


Wind would be particularly effective in Switzerland and it's fast to deploy. The swiss grid has less than 1% wind which was pretty shocking to me. It seems like Switzerland has a particularly bad renewable story for an EU nation.

Wind is not that developed in Switzerland because it's not actually that great of a situation... We have a lot of steep mountains which make building wind farms a real challenge, and the flat plains in between have "meh" levels of wind. And a very strong NIMBY mentality. We do have some projects but those are more exception than rule.

The really awesome wind spots are more the coastal or offshore farms, which... well... we can't have (no access to the sea does that to you).

Solar is really really booming right now however, many houses take themselves off grid completely. Mine is a net producer for example.


> Mine is a net producer for example.

All year? And do you mean you "inject" more than you "pull", or do you mean that you can live without ever pulling anything from the grid?

Because "being a net producer overall" doesn't say that it would work in practice if everyone was doing the same, right?


Almost the latter - I can almost live without pulling anything from the grid. The huge caveat being that my system is way oversized for a normal house, since my building is multi-use (including commercial tenants who obviously only need power during the day). I am definitely injecting more during the summer though, of course.

I have a 40kWp system and a 20kWh battery.


It's not in the EU. It is part of the Schengen Agreement.

It's not an EU nation.

Oh wow, I didn't realize that! That's crazy, basically everyone that borders them are EU members. I was also under the impression (but haven't checked) that it was pretty easy to cross the swiss border both into and out of the EU.

Switzerland unilaterally got out of negotiations with the EU, which also dealt with energy grid coordination.

As such, as of now, the EU can shut down Switzerland without warning if the grid is overloaded and they need to avoid a blackout.



The SVP is not considered "moderate". They are a far-right party. The fact that they are wide spread and gather a lot of votes does not make them "moderate".

Source: am Swiss


Well, they are "moderate" in that they are in the Bundesrat, unlike a real fringe party like EDU or FPS (or PdA on the left).

Exactly - I own a Tesla and an id.buzz and it’s just insulting how bad the user experience is on the buzz.

I don’t need buttons for the rear view mirrors or lights, I need them to do the right thing for me instead. VW not saving the position of the rear view mirrors on my profile is stupid. Having a hardware button for the seat position “profile” is stupid. Having walk away lock locking and unlocking the bus in a loop in you stay within range with the fob is stupid. Having a fob is stupid.

Those are the software issues you need to fix VW, if you ever want my business again.

Edit: and since people seem to care about AC buttons: the id.buzz has AC buttons! But they are right under the infotainment screen… and capacitive :) the Tesla’s screen is much easier to manipulate.


You are absolutely right. See my other post before where I saw essentially the same thing. It is absurd how bad the German companies are; the only thing they know how to do great is the engine.

I never understand these people with their ac knobs... What are they doing that they need to change AC all the time during driving?

I set it to 21.5 with auto, and it is perfect for the whole car. Why do people need to constantly change ac?!!


>the only thing they know how to do great is the engine.

EA888 G1 has entered the chat.


Yeah, they are not so good with that either or just cheats.


Another data point: my entire system in Switzerland cost me 1.3CHF/Watt including a 20kWh battery and 5000 CHF of scaffolding costs (needed because of our local OSHA equivalent laws when installing panels on a tilted roof).

It has become ridiculously cheap indeed.


What's the cost of power in Confoederatio Helvetica?


Around 30 centiCHFs per KWh at the peak tariff: https://www.ewz.ch/en/private-customers/electricity/tariffs/...


What's your weather like? Is it year round sunny? Do you get a lot of snow in the winter?


It's mostly similar to France. My house is in a valley (so reasonable snow) and some good solar irradiation year round.

The roof being at a steep angle also means snow doesn't tend to accumulate much.


Maybe you should visit Geneva then, or most of the "Arc Lemanique".

It's way more diverse than Zurich. Well, if you mean "diverse" as "more brown people" as your comment seems to imply.


SteamOS is really a desktop linux. You can switch to "desktop mode" to see the "normal desktop" and you get a KDE where you can run whatever you want.

It's "just" immutable Arch that defaults to Steam's console mode interface.


Exactly - it's done in public, and not centrally. Any citizen can go and check how it's done in their own Geminde.


As a Swiss citizen I strongly disagree. Most people capable of reading and basic maths (addition!) can understand the counting of our paper ballots. My kids understand how this works since they are like 5.

Any citizen can go and check how votes are counted in their Geminde. Any citizen can check what is reported in the federal tally. I did several times. It's not rocket science.


> basic maths (addition!)

Technically you don't even need that, you just need to be able to count, i.e. find the successor to a given number.


The rules for deciding the winners in proportional parliamentary elections are quite a bit more complex than that...


True.


Custom widgets aren’t particularly hard to do in iced, but I wish some of those common cases would be committed back / made available.

Except the above virtualised lists, another case I hit was layered images (sprites for example). Not very hard to write my own, sure, but it’d be nice to have that out of the box as in eg. egui


Not contesting your claim, but would you mind sharing what major hardware vendor you mean?

I love iced and wrote a decent amount of code using it, but in my mind the biggest sponsor is system76 - and as awesome as they are they aren’t a major vendor yet :)


Has System76 started designing, or more correctly outsourcing more expensive custom motherboard designs, like Lenovo and Dell or are they still selling slightly customized white-label laptops?


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