I was simply saying that this winter it wasn't reliable. That's it . And it wasn't. Yes there were poor choices made to get them there.
Switching gears, "baseload" as a concept is changing as demand response and virtual power plants are really showing promise.
Basically, ever since we started harnessing electricity we've been matching production exactly to consumption. As electricity demand goes up, production must follow exactly. For those that don't follow this stuff, I'll explain quickly. In order to not fry all the components of the distribution and transmission network, electricity must be kept at a pretty constant frequency. If you produce more power than is being consumed, frequency goes up and wrecks stuff. If production is too low compared to demand, frequency drops and fries things too. This has meant that very smart people like DoubleK always have to walk a tight rope in making sure all these things work in harmony. It also means you have to plan your grid to be able to produce enough electricity to meet the highest demand point. Typically, that happens in the early evening as people come home and turn on their TVs, start the ovens, etc. Then demand falls dramatically overnight. The current grids therefore are usually set up to have big inflexible generation for the constant "baseload" demand, and some flexible, or dispatchable, generation for the "peak" demand to be ramped up or down as needed.
This system is fairly incompatible with variable renewable generation like wind and solar. Not only are wind and solar the cheapest form of electricity generation, they're also one of the lowest carbon intensive. The trouble, as has been written about ad nauseum on here, is that generation doesn't match consumption like we currently have. Most of the solar generation is during the day when demand isn't that high, and starts ramping down right as the peak of demand is starting. Wind in most places is strongest overnight and isn't consistent. This is why grid sized storage is often looked at in order to help match the output with the demand.
But what if demand was flexible? A concept called "demand response" has long been studied in small amounts by many utilities. Essentially, consumers give up control of some electricity demand to a utility or service to help flatten the peaks. Most commonly, this is EV charging. If you let Tesla control your charging times you can still plug in when you come home but let them decide when the electricity actually goes in so you still have a "full tank" when you need it. There are other companies that you can give some control of your smart thermostat to. They'll use AI and weather forecasts to heat or cool your home a little early so it can ride through the peak without needing to use any electricity. In Europe there's also hot water control and other devices too. By doing this, it can dramatically alter the normal diurnal demand curves to take stress off the grid. All of this can be overridden at any time by the user, and compensation is paid to the homeowner for this service. In areas with very high power prices it can be quite lucrative for the consumer.
In Britain, a company called Octopus Energy has done this really effectively. Their customers love it because of the savings, and their bottom line is improved by not having to buy crazy expensive power on the wholesale markets at peak times. In a test done this past October, 200,000 household saved 108MW one night which is pretty remarkable. Another really neat solution is Ohmconnect that uses gamification of your power usage to provide financial incentives for power saving and sells the realized power savings to the grid without needing to actually control anything.
The other development that is making waves in this space is virtual powerplants. Essentially, controlling distributed energy storage to provide power back to the grid when needed. Tesla has been doing trials of this in California, and a German company called Sonnen has been doing this quite successfully around the world. For vehicles that can provide power back, this could be a really big source of grid energy. The real difficulty with this though is that in most jurisdictions the ability to sell power is restricted only to a monopolized utility that has zero incentive to do it.
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