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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Base load is an obsolete concept that nobody needs at all. It applies to some coal and nuclear power plants that take days to startup and cannot throttle back. You accepted this because they are very cheap to run.

Renewables have their issues, but they are different than base load.

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Base load is decidedly not an obsolete concept. Renewables go to zero, and building sufficient peaking capacity to overcome a total loss of grid power would be preposterously expensive. Renewables spread over a large enough geography could, hypothetically, overcome variability, but nowhere in the world has developed the grid capacity (or even renewable generation capacity) to substantiate that strategy, and the odds of the US developing that kind of grid capacity are nil. There will always be a need for substantial base load generation.

What you described is NOT what baseload is about though.

Once again, baseload refers to power plants that deliver exactly the same power 24x7, but only after a couple week startup process. That is not what renewables deliver. It is in fact worthless with renewables because when renewables are at their peak time of day they already provide 100% of power and baseload forces more power on top of that.

Canadian uppercase hello here!

...Here's your baseload: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Baseload_power#:~:te....

Also, I guess: what in your mind is the difference between what baseload is, and what baseload is about?

Baseload is a useless concept except in the context of coal powerplants that don't exist. Anything modern either follows the load without problems or has an unpredictable nature that means you don't care about averages.

Let me rephrase - 'constant output 24/7/365 renewable power'

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