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There's another issue with firing up dozens of gas turbines: they don't spin up instantly. Hawaii (and California) are already starting to run into this issue,

There's another issue with firing up dozens of gas turbines: they don't spin up instantly. Hawaii (and California) are already starting to run into this issue, where peak use follows sunset. So even if you don't need it, you have to keep some generators going so they can ramp up fast enough when solar drops off and peak use starts. Otherwise you get outages. They've named this issue the duck curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

Aloha 3y ago
With at most a ~30 min dispatch time, I dont know why a turbine wouldn't be adequate - what the turbines can't do, I would think a battery storage should be able to do. I suspect we have the same issue in Texas too. What gets me is people propsing battery storage as a replacement for turbine peaking plants - which seems like a poor mix. I wish more places could build pumped storage, but it's hard to build. I'm still a firm believer in nuclear though, with a mix of nuclear, renewables (solar, hydro, wind), batteries, and gas turbines, we should be able to solve this.