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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

In 2025 the power consumption of my state (NSW, Australia) on any given day will be greater then 5 GW. https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-...

This "there is no base load" idea is a ridiculous myth trivially disproven: every grid on the planet has continuous demands on it and they're quite significant (5 GW is about 50% the day time peaks).

It doesn't matter what the cost is, because later this evening or tomorrow morning I can guarantee you the same thing: my state will need at least 5GW of power to literally keep the lights on.

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You misunderstand the point though. Sure there is always 5GW of demand - but we don't need generation that always supply 5GW cheap since wind/solar is much cheaper for base load. What we need is non-base load generation that can jump in at a moment's notice when needed because wind/solar isn't enough. Previously we would use those peak plants from when there was 6GW of demand (or whatever), but now between those peak plants coming down in price and wind/solar being so cheap we don't want that 5GW from plants that cannot adjust to load anymore - we are getting the can't adjust to load from wind/solar.

We’re trying that in Germany while we’re still heavily dependent on coal while our electricity prices are twice as much compared to France.

I’m sorry, but wind and solar may be cheap, but they don’t provide cheap electricity 24/7.

which is why dispatchable power is required - not coal?

Baseload is traditionally about generation, not consumption. And baseload generation only makes sense when it is the cheapest option.

When solar and wind produce at near-zero marginal cost, running inflexible baseload beside them just forces cheaper generation to switch off, driving up system costs.

What the grid needs is dispatchable capacity - batteries, hydro, gas peakers (if we must) and demand shifting - that can plug the gaps when cheaper forms of generation cannot.

It sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in practice.

Just compare Germany to France.

This is such a tired trope. The differences between the two countries present day energy situation doesn’t tell you anything about how the world should proceed tomorrow.

Unless you have a time machine that you can use to get every country to build state subsided nuclear 50 years ago.

Not even France can replicate their nuclear construction of decades ago.

That's the current load when the pricing structure actively encourages people to use power at night, because that was when it was cheapest to produce in the last century.

What does it look like if you actively encourage people to use power when it is cheapest to produce now?

I guess we'll find out when 3 hours of free electricity at noon becomes a standard offer next year.

> my state will need at least 5GW of power to literally keep the lights on.

I think this abstraction is missing the elasticity of demand that can by unlocked by end-to-end dynamic pricing. Probably if the production was cut in half for some day, and hourly price hiked up until demand matches production, customers would still choose to keep most of the lighting while postponing some more energy intensive loads.

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