Large scale composites are still largely manual labour, and there are few pieces of tooling which themselves need to be one big piece. Mould can be split into sections rather easily.

May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time.

Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized. Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.

>First, the fluctuations in variable wind and solar PV are balanced by flexible renewable energy sources that are dispatchable, i.e. can supply power on demand. These are hydro with dams, Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) and concentrated solar thermal power (CST) with thermal storage, as illustrated in Figure 2. It ‘s not essential for every power station in the system to be dispatchable.

Gas turbines are flexible renewable energy? Concentrated solar power is a fringe technology that is highly dependent on geography. How this is taken seriously i do not understand.

The article goes on to make a rubbish point about "green" gas while completely ignoring that gas in any form is neither "Green" nor renewable.

>In the USA a major computer simulation by a large team of scientists and engineers found that 80-90% renewable electricity is technically feasible and reliable (They didn’t examine 100%.)

Gee, i wonder why 100% wasn't examined. Perhaps it points to an uncomfortable conclusion that solely variable, renewable energy cannot work at scale as the sole source of energy for gigawatt scale grids. The reality is that a combination is required and this reality upsets those who believe the pie-in-the-sky dream that solar and wind can power the entire grid if you only overbuild and dispatch them.

As the February event in Texas demonstrated, all generation can underperform at the same time leading to near disaster. We would be wise to hedge our bets on generation sources.

you can turn on a nuclear reactor anytime you want, but not a solar panel/wind turbine. that is what baseload is about.