"Now there's a simplistic analysis. One could also suggest that...

"Now there's a simplistic analysis. One could also suggest that people working from home means more electricity used by heating/cooling, computers, TVs, etc."

I think someone here can help me out by pulling out some data comparing electricity consumption by industry versus residential. But just as a unscientific comparison, do you leave your computers on for 24/7? Most IT-related businesses do and to add to that, servers and UPS which generates so much heat they require their own AC ducting. That alone blows home use computer electricity use out of the water. Heating/cooling for the home compared with HVAC systems and their cooling towers. Whoo what a beatdown for comparison. I think it's not me being simplistic.

"If there was underlying value in the company, there may have been a small drop if there was a reduction in demand, but not 60-70%. But when you look at it, the share price was trending down well before Covid, and just continued down at the same rate. This suggests something more fundamental than Covid, and that electricity usage either did not change significantly or was not a factor in the share price."

Google, facebook, netflix, Amazon? They all dropped a huge percentage recently. In the dotcom bust Amazon gone from $100 to $2. A 98% drop? And today it stands at $2300 and a recent high of $3300. Again, assigning value to a company by it's share price is why people get poorer from the stock market. The market is not efficient and to infer some fundamental flaws with a company because it has dropped in share price is not smart at all.

Judge fundamental flaws with fundamental analysis and not by inferences from share price movements. A free lesson from me.

"Rather like the people who knew all about power stations but nothing about renewables and batteries pronouncing that none of that could substitute for a power station? Ignoring the fact, for example, that batteries can switch on in milliseconds when required, while a power station takes 20 minutes to days to ramp up. So their ideas of how to manage a transition are likely to be reliable?"

I think you haven't read up on the AGL saga and are here just complaining about the hurt you felt. AGL had to write down a loss from renewables PPA. Go back in history and read up. The guy responsible Redman has left. They knew about renewables contrary from your accusations.

Also, batteries can only do just that - fast response. Why do everyone treat them like it's some god-given technology that can solve all problems. They cannot hold enough charge to be economically useful to back up renewables generation. Look to hydro for that. Tasmasnia is a good example. But to judge someone because they had one slip up and to throw out the baby with the bathwater is just ... stupid.

Anyway, great discussing with you. Wish you the best and please do not fall for MCB's tricks. I have got other stocks I need to tend to and AGL is going just fine.