> The cost for offshore wind projects has fallen so fast in the UK that the many of the latest projects don't need subsidies I'll have to check that. Sensation

> The cost for offshore wind projects has fallen so fast in the UK that the many of the latest projects don't need subsidies I'll have to check that. Sensational news usually omit quite a few important details. > I'm pretty sceptical about the phrase 'base load', when it comes up, such as in a HN discussion[2] from a last week, it seems to be used to describe wanting to choose slow and/or expensive power plants. No. It means that wind and solar literally produce zero output when there's no wind or there's no sun. However, life goes on: trains run, homes are being heated, businesses operate, factories produce goods. This is base load. So, to cover a wind farm or a solar farm that produces inadequate power you need to get that power from somewhere. Where from? And this is the question that renewables enthusiasts just brush off as not important. "We can store energy". No. We can't. Not in the amounts required. "We just build more". How much more? Does this "more" remain cheap then? Yea, you can transmit it from afar, but it's no mean task in itself. And not cheap either. But sure. "It's all about keeping slow power plants". What the hell does "slow" even mean in this context, when we're talking about wind/solar which can't even be properly used in load following precisely because they are extremely slow.