I wasn't saying you yourself were against renewables. Rather your argument seemed to imply that building one big peaker plant would preclude the demand for rene

I wasn't saying you yourself were against renewables. Rather your argument seemed to imply that building one big peaker plant would preclude the demand for renewables since the peaker could supply the entire load all the time. I don't think we'll ever have "enough" solar+wind to supply base load, since night exists and winds calm down. Talking about "renewables" as a group doesn't really make sense. For example hydro is highly consistent and highly dispatchable, but waterfalls are rare. Spitballing, I would think cooling (especially with California's coast where it's rarely needed) would have much higher variability than heating, since people seem to tolerate a wider range of higher temperatures compared to colder temperatures. At least from personal experience once I enable the heat for the year it mostly stays that way, turning on when it gets even a degree too cold. Whereas air conditioning is a question each day of "can I get by with the windows open", and only when the answer turns out to be an unequivocal "no" do I turn on the AC (which then runs continuously to make up for lost time).