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Exactly. In some cases if you do the backup poorly (e.g. with gas like everyone is doing nowadays) you can get into situations where the gas plants run extra in

Exactly. In some cases if you do the backup poorly (e.g. with gas like everyone is doing nowadays) you can get into situations where the gas plants run extra inefficiently due to frequent ramping and end up cancelling out a lot of the benefit of your wind and solar. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53504.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53504.pdf My favorite fun fact on this is that regular old nuclear plants can ramp up at down quickly, at 5% full per per minute! Most people don't know this. They often choose to not due it because fuel is a small fraction of their operating costs, but in a low-carbon capacity markets they could really shine. French and (previous) German reactor do it all the time. https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
From your cited paper's conclusion: > however, these impacts are modest compared with the overall benefits of replacing fossil-fueled generation with variable renewable generation
starkd 4y ago
Nuclear makes for such a good backup, you could just dispense with wind and solar altogether and still reduce total carbon output. That might be why they resist doing it. To some extent, the environmental movement has been overtaken by a corporate racket.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Some in nuclear like to call wind and solar a bridge technology for this reason. Of course we'll need to be more like the S. Koreans and Chinese on our builds before this happens in the west.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  What? Nope. Nuclear is completely unsuitable as backup generation. Being backup generation implies that you will optimize for the minimum possible capacity factor. Nuclear can't deal at all with low capacity factors.
  - starkd 4y ago
    That is exactly my point. It is such a reliable energy it doesn't need any backup. You can skip solar/wind for nuclear. Keeping solar/wind for the margins, preserving a lot of land for other uses.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

From your cited paper's conclusion: > however, these impacts are modest compared with the overall benefits of replacing fossil-fueled generation with variable renewable generation

starkd 4y ago

Nuclear makes for such a good backup, you could just dispense with wind and solar altogether and still reduce total carbon output. That might be why they resist doing it. To some extent, the environmental movement has been overtaken by a corporate racket.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Some in nuclear like to call wind and solar a bridge technology for this reason. Of course we'll need to be more like the S. Koreans and Chinese on our builds before this happens in the west.
marcosdumay 4y ago
What? Nope. Nuclear is completely unsuitable as backup generation. Being backup generation implies that you will optimize for the minimum possible capacity factor. Nuclear can't deal at all with low capacity factors.
- starkd 4y ago
  That is exactly my point. It is such a reliable energy it doesn't need any backup. You can skip solar/wind for nuclear. Keeping solar/wind for the margins, preserving a lot of land for other uses.