4 ms·

It’s the minimum specification of the grid. Not economic, but functional. For a grid to serve “production traffic” or be used in the real world, there is a mi

It’s the minimum specification of the grid. Not economic, but functional. For a grid to serve “production traffic” or be used in the real world, there is a minimum amount of power it must reliably deliver 24x7 ;

Gwypaas 4y ago
Exactly, that is demand side. For the generation side coal and nuclear got the label "base load" plants, but that is simply a function of them being inflexible and that they used to be cheaper. Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an economic consequence.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  <facepalm> It isn’t simply economic. I don’t think you understand the fundamental purpose of an energy grid. It isn’t just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society. “Baseload” is an attribute of the grid itself that indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at present carry. Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone. Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time. In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting its minimum design specifications.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand "base load". What you are talking about is likely peak load, like the problem of everyone putting on their tea kettles during football pauses. [1] In the UK they went with pumped hydro ~50 years ago to solve this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup > The base load[1] (also baseload) is the __minimum__ level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load It is a constant value. The rest used to be filled by peaker-plants or hydro. While slowly regulating the inflexible "base load" plants to follow the seasonal cycles. There is nothing inherent to this definition that it must be slow inflexible plants that provide it. More interesting discussions comes from how do you provide system strength, frequency regulation and so on when you decrease the synchronous components in the grid, because those are actual hard questions. For example, there is ongoing research in grid-forming inverters. This is what you do if you run your solar-powered home in island mode, and as anyone who has done it knows starting electrical engines sucks. It becomes a much more complex problem with destabilizing factors in continent-scale grids. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-inverter-to-stabilize-microgrids/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-inverter...
    - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
      You are conflating too many popular terms incorrectly while trying to make your point. Baseload as defined by Wikipedia that you cited does not contradict my point, you don’t seem to understand the nuance of what economic demand is and why that is different from an attribute or minimum design spec. It isn’t the consequence as you originally declared, it is an attribute of the grid itself. That’s a very important thing to understand. Anything can provide that input to the grid, but that means the source providing input to the grid must meet that very basic design specification. Flexibility of generation capacity coming online is easily compensated by other parts of the grid such as the storage or load shifting characteristics of the grid.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  Solar and wind aren't 'flexible' though, they are unreliable. You don't get to choose when they start and stop, even for solar predicting sun during the day isn't reliable due to random clouds cutting out 80% of incoming light. 'Flexible' generation is gas and oil, as well as most storage systems. Either we need an enormous overprovisioning of both renewables and storage so that we can handle the 0.1% of cases (~= 1 day every 3 years), or we have something we can actually schedule when we choose, not when nature's chaotic systems choose for us.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > Solar and wind aren't 'flexible' though, they are unreliable. You don't get to choose when they start and stop, even for solar predicting sun during the day isn't reliable due to random clouds cutting out 80% of incoming light. They're both. When they are able to generate power, they can turn on and off on a moment's notice. Nuclear and coal plants often need hours for a significant change in output.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    PV is cheap enough that over-provisioning by a factor of a few-fold is basically a no brainer. Not sure where the crossover point is for long term (not just nighttime) storage or global grid, but a factor of x2 is cheap enough to just do first and ask questions later.
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      Overprovisioning doesn't help unless you distribute it wide enough that they don't all have the same points of inactivity. Even then wide regional issues can still give temporally correlated downtime, eg. Texas's wind turbines all not working at the same time due to low temperatures and icing. It doesn't matter how much you overprovision, 10 x 0 = 0. Overprovisioning plus a wide regional distribution could work, but then you need lots of extra power transmission capacity, which is also expensive, and will be 80% idle 99% of the time. Remember, we're engineering for the worst case scenario where we still need to provide power here. If we can think of it, it will happen sooner or later. Nuclear power plants are designed to be safe even if an airplane is flown into them, it's not good enough for renewables to then turn around and say "you need to redesign your entire society around our power being intermittent". I'm hugely pro-renewables, but only for remote areas. For cities, wind/solar don't make sense due to reliability and energy density.

Gwypaas 4y ago

Exactly, that is demand side. For the generation side coal and nuclear got the label "base load" plants, but that is simply a function of them being inflexible and that they used to be cheaper. Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an economic consequence.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
<facepalm> It isn’t simply economic. I don’t think you understand the fundamental purpose of an energy grid. It isn’t just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society. “Baseload” is an attribute of the grid itself that indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at present carry. Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone. Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time. In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting its minimum design specifications.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  I think you misunderstand "base load". What you are talking about is likely peak load, like the problem of everyone putting on their tea kettles during football pauses. [1] In the UK they went with pumped hydro ~50 years ago to solve this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup > The base load[1] (also baseload) is the __minimum__ level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load It is a constant value. The rest used to be filled by peaker-plants or hydro. While slowly regulating the inflexible "base load" plants to follow the seasonal cycles. There is nothing inherent to this definition that it must be slow inflexible plants that provide it. More interesting discussions comes from how do you provide system strength, frequency regulation and so on when you decrease the synchronous components in the grid, because those are actual hard questions. For example, there is ongoing research in grid-forming inverters. This is what you do if you run your solar-powered home in island mode, and as anyone who has done it knows starting electrical engines sucks. It becomes a much more complex problem with destabilizing factors in continent-scale grids. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-inverter-to-stabilize-microgrids/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/29/grid-forming-inverter...
  - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
    You are conflating too many popular terms incorrectly while trying to make your point. Baseload as defined by Wikipedia that you cited does not contradict my point, you don’t seem to understand the nuance of what economic demand is and why that is different from an attribute or minimum design spec. It isn’t the consequence as you originally declared, it is an attribute of the grid itself. That’s a very important thing to understand. Anything can provide that input to the grid, but that means the source providing input to the grid must meet that very basic design specification. Flexibility of generation capacity coming online is easily compensated by other parts of the grid such as the storage or load shifting characteristics of the grid.
snovv_crash 4y ago
Solar and wind aren't 'flexible' though, they are unreliable. You don't get to choose when they start and stop, even for solar predicting sun during the day isn't reliable due to random clouds cutting out 80% of incoming light. 'Flexible' generation is gas and oil, as well as most storage systems. Either we need an enormous overprovisioning of both renewables and storage so that we can handle the 0.1% of cases (~= 1 day every 3 years), or we have something we can actually schedule when we choose, not when nature's chaotic systems choose for us.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Solar and wind aren't 'flexible' though, they are unreliable. You don't get to choose when they start and stop, even for solar predicting sun during the day isn't reliable due to random clouds cutting out 80% of incoming light. They're both. When they are able to generate power, they can turn on and off on a moment's notice. Nuclear and coal plants often need hours for a significant change in output.
- ben_w 4y ago
  PV is cheap enough that over-provisioning by a factor of a few-fold is basically a no brainer. Not sure where the crossover point is for long term (not just nighttime) storage or global grid, but a factor of x2 is cheap enough to just do first and ask questions later.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    Overprovisioning doesn't help unless you distribute it wide enough that they don't all have the same points of inactivity. Even then wide regional issues can still give temporally correlated downtime, eg. Texas's wind turbines all not working at the same time due to low temperatures and icing. It doesn't matter how much you overprovision, 10 x 0 = 0. Overprovisioning plus a wide regional distribution could work, but then you need lots of extra power transmission capacity, which is also expensive, and will be 80% idle 99% of the time. Remember, we're engineering for the worst case scenario where we still need to provide power here. If we can think of it, it will happen sooner or later. Nuclear power plants are designed to be safe even if an airplane is flown into them, it's not good enough for renewables to then turn around and say "you need to redesign your entire society around our power being intermittent". I'm hugely pro-renewables, but only for remote areas. For cities, wind/solar don't make sense due to reliability and energy density.