this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Just for another angle on the problem: baseload generation (nuclear) is most efficient at its highest possible output, but it has to maintain that output 24/7; it can't ramp up and down fast enough to match the demand curve, and it can't be ramped up above the minimum overnight demand.
To increase its efficiency, utilities push large scale consumers like steel mills and aluminum smelters to overnight shifts. This artificially increases the over ight demand, allowing the baseload generators to ramp up their relatively efficient production, and reduce the need for peaker plants during the day.
That overnight demand can't be met with solar, and wind generation tends to fall overnight as well.
What nuclear can do is help level out seasonal variation, between the short days of winter and long days of summer.
Pumped storage is also essential, but extraordinarily limited. We need to take a look at demand shaping rather than supply shaping. We need to shift load to times we can produce, rather than shift production to times of demand.
Sounds like demand shaping is already done, but not in a way that's helpful to renewables.