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A comment on Weather-Smart Electric Grids Are Needed for Wind and Solar Power to Surge. Parent comment

Re:Weather-Smart Electric Grids Are Needed for Wind and Sola... by DennisP on Sunday July 15, 2018 @08:58PM (#17538013)
Power plants right now have to optimize for working around varying wind/solar supply, but if we tried to run civilization on wind/solar alone, we'd rediscover the need for good baseload supply when the wind stops blowing at night.
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Re:Weather-Smart Electric Grids Are Needed for Wind and Sola... by Tade0 on Monday July 16, 2018 @01:00PM (#17542851)
Actually no, because this function is already being taken over by gas peaker plants. It's less expensive to have such a plant and fire it once in a while than to keep a large nuclear/coal plant churning.
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Re:Weather-Smart Electric Grids Are Needed for Wind and Sola... by DennisP on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @07:08AM (#17548792)
Both of us were talking about the long run, and what I said was "wind/solar alone." Of course we can run on wind/solar/gas but that doesn't decarbonize the grid.
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