Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an economic consequence.
'Flexible' generation is gas and oil, as well as most storage systems. Either we need an enormous overprovisioning of both renewables and storage so that we can handle the 0.1% of cases (~= 1 day every 3 years), or we have something we can actually schedule when we choose, not when nature's chaotic systems choose for us.
Overprovisioning plus a wide regional distribution could work, but then you need lots of extra power transmission capacity, which is also expensive, and will be 80% idle 99% of the time.
Remember, we're engineering for the worst case scenario where we still need to provide power here. If we can think of it, it will happen sooner or later. Nuclear power plants are designed to be safe even if an airplane is flown into them, it's not good enough for renewables to then turn around and say "you need to redesign your entire society around our power being intermittent".
I'm hugely pro-renewables, but only for remote areas. For cities, wind/solar don't make sense due to reliability and energy density.
Yeah, but x0 only happens at night. I'm not sure what the multiplier is in a really bad storm, nor how long that lasts (~= night would be fine, you're already putting in that kind of storage).
> Overprovisioning plus a wide regional distribution could work, but then you need lots of extra power transmission capacity, which is also expensive, and will be 80% idle 99% of the time.
IIRC a global grid is (naïvely) ~= the cost of 6 months crude oil. Expensive in absolute money terms, but not relative money terms; though political cost is something else entirely.
The problem with the global grid is that it would need to be similarly overprovisioned so that during low-probability failure scenarios the few remaining power nodes could supply the entire thing. 10x overprovisioning here looks a lot more expensive.
Is trivially true, and applies to everything. It's not really worth bothering to mention because everything else also sufferers this.
> The problem with the global grid is that it would need to be similarly overprovisioned so that during low-probability failure scenarios the few remaining power nodes could supply the entire thing.
The need to over-provision a grid is obvious, but…
> 10x overprovisioning here looks a lot more expensive.
First: Why do that by a factor of x10? Best redundancy here is geographical diversity rather than a fatter… I was going to say "cable", but it is (or collectively, they are) the order of a few square meters cross section and that feels wrong as a name. But that thing is best spread out, not kept singular and made wider, whatever you call it.
Second: Even x10, the main limit is "that's a lot of stuff to mine, how do we reorganise the miners from coal and oil to metals" rather than the $ cost — while "a trillion" of anything is a lot for one person to contemplate, compared to the cost of what is currently dug up and then set on fire to provide the same power, it's quite cheap.
They're both.
When they are able to generate power, they can turn on and off on a moment's notice. Nuclear and coal plants often need hours for a significant change in output.
It isn’t simply economic. I don’t think you understand the fundamental purpose of an energy grid.
It isn’t just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society.
“Baseload” is an attribute of the grid itself that indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at present carry.
Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone.
Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time.
In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting its minimum design specifications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
> The base load[1] (also baseload) is the __minimum__ level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
It is a constant value. The rest used to be filled by peaker-plants or hydro. While slowly regulating the inflexible "base load" plants to follow the seasonal cycles.
There is nothing inherent to this definition that it must be slow inflexible plants that provide it. More interesting discussions comes from how do you provide system strength, frequency regulation and so on when you decrease the synchronous components in the grid, because those are actual hard questions.
For example, there is ongoing research in grid-forming inverters. This is what you do if you run your solar-powered home in island mode, and as anyone who has done it knows starting electrical engines sucks. It becomes a much more complex problem with destabilizing factors in continent-scale grids.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-inverter...
Baseload as defined by Wikipedia that you cited does not contradict my point, you don’t seem to understand the nuance of what economic demand is and why that is different from an attribute or minimum design spec.
It isn’t the consequence as you originally declared, it is an attribute of the grid itself. That’s a very important thing to understand. Anything can provide that input to the grid, but that means the source providing input to the grid must meet that very basic design specification.
Flexibility of generation capacity coming online is easily compensated by other parts of the grid such as the storage or load shifting characteristics of the grid.