Sure. But as consumers, I'm guessing we only accept intermittent generators given that baseload providers exist. It seems "unfair" that I can build a wind turb

Sure. But as consumers, I'm guessing we only accept intermittent generators given that baseload providers exist. It seems "unfair" that I can build a wind turbine and profit when the wind blows 80-90% of the time, causing me to be the marginal producer and heavily outcompete nuclear. And then during the critical hour/day/week when neither I, nor any other windmill can produce power, the expensive nuclear power plant has to come and save the day. Sure they'll get paid, but not enough to finance it the rest of the year. (The devil is of course in the dynamic details. How big is the correlation between output of different intermittent producers, how much can consumption reduce etc). I'm not sure I understand the lingo in TFA, but I think a similar (but probably worse) mechanism could be: All providers much sell "baseload" power, regardless of how it's produced. You sell yearly contracts on MW capacity. If you are a nuclear plant, you can just sell rated capacity. If you are a wind turbine, you have to hedge the risk of it not blowing. Either by buying baseload capacity from nuclear or some other reserve, buying batter power, or by over provisioning the amount of installed capacity etc.