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160 points riordan | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.337s | source
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bryanlarsen ◴[] No.45955571[source]
Baseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation".

Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plants.

In 2025, that's no longer the case. The cheapest power is solar & wind, which produces power intermittently. And the next cheapest power is dispatchable.

To take advantage of this cheap intermittent power, we need a way to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Which is provided by storage and/or peaker plants.

That's what we need. If added non-dispatchable power to that mix than we're displacing cheap solar/wind with more expensive mix, and still not eliminating the need for further storage/peaker plants.

If non-dispatchable power is significantly cheaper than storage and/or peaker power than it's useful in a modern grid. That's not the case in 2025. The next cheapest power is natural gas, and it's dispatchable. If you restrict to clean options, storage & geographical diversity is cheaper than other options. Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage.

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1. thedrbrian ◴[] No.45959492[source]
Its so easy that you can’t name me a single city of more than 10000 people that runs entirely off renewables.
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2. bryanlarsen ◴[] No.45960005[source]
Norway and British Columbia are 99% renewable energy and they have many cities larger than that.
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3. PaulDavisThe1st ◴[] No.45960880[source]
Weakly defined. What does "run entirely off renewables" mean?

We know that in North America, for example, significant energy use comes from transportation and heating requirements, and that at this time, very little transportation is powered by renewables, and not a whole lot of heat either (though both are growing).

On the other hand, the entire current residential electrical demand of the city of Santa Fe (about 82k people) can be met with a single relatively small PV+BESS plant (and might just be if it manages to get built).

4. cgh ◴[] No.45961432[source]
Canada as a whole is roughly 70% hydroelectric.