Re:The booming business of knitting together the world’s ele...
by labawi on Monday October 18, 2021 @02:15PM
(#28909039)
> "Baseload" is ... minimum demand you need to meet without the lights going out.
No.
You need to meet all of the demand or you get blackouts / curtailment / power goes out. The least and smallest of the demand over a week is baseload. If you can only provide that, then you will have blackouts all of the time. And pitchforks in your face.
> [Germany] relied on baseload nuclear generators from France being the backup.
Baseload generators are pretty much fixed output (otherwise they wouldn't be called baseload generators). In what clever way do you expect to use a fixed output generator as a backup for your variable output generator?
I don't know what you are saying here.
> WRT baseload demand, I don't see how it's relevant to pretty much anything.
The concept is relevant as renewables cannot currently provide baseload power demand without infrastructure that hasn't been built yet, ie. storage and interconnects.
> Baseload power - I don't see how one would use it as a backup, unless you're throwing energy away, or it's variable, hence not baseload.
Throughout this thread, you have continued to ignore that I have explained baseload power demand and baseload power generators are not the same concept.
Baseload power generators, as the Wiki article mentioned, traditionally provided baseload power demand, but there's no reason why baseload power demand needs to be met by baseload generators. Variable generators can provide baseload power demand:
"Baseload" is not shorthand for "baseload generator", but rather used to describe the minimum demand you need to meet without the lights going out.[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load