Talk:Base load

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Nuclear power plants do not take days to reach the required temperature. This is a false belief. I do not have the proof in written form, and for this reason I write it here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.62.103.169 (talk) 11:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Statement about a week is correct. Some details can be found in dispatchable generation. Викидим (talk) 01:10, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths is a political piece, certainly not npov. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.34.96.216 (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Variable Baseload

The opening paragraph cites EnergyVortex, which claims to be "an open industry energy site designed to serve as a B2B community and e-commerce center." It does not seem to be an energy industry regulatory, academic, scientific or professional body.

I wish to contests the statement "Baseload values typically vary from hour to hour in most commercial and industrial areas", since it appears to conflict with the opening statement that "Baseload is the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers". If a customer is significantly intermittent or discretionary in their use of energy as per the vagaries of commercial and industrial activity then isn't the baseload for that area still the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers, which might be the "hotel load" of a EAF specialty metals steel mini-mill when the EAF steel mill is not producing, but would include a predominantly and continuously on EAF recycling steel mill (for example)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.64.0.254 (talk) 02:21, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Myth of Baseload

http://www.foe.org.au/baseload-power-myth-even-intermittent-renewables-will-work Extract The renewable energy deniers rehash, among others, the old myth that renewable energy is unreliable in supplying base-load demand. In a previous article I reported on the initial results of computer simulations by a research team at the University of New South Wales that busted the myth that renewable energy cannot supply base-load demand. However at the time of the article I was still under the misconception that some base-load renewable energy supply may be needed to be part of the renewable energy mix.

Since then Ben Elliston, Iain MacGill and I have performed thousands of computer simulations of 100% renewable electricity in the National Electricity Market (NEM), using actual hourly data on electricity demand, wind and solar power for 2010. Our latest research finds that generating systems comprising a mix of different commercially available renewable energy technologies, located on geographically dispersed sites, do not need base-load power stations to achieve the same reliability as fossil-fuelled systems BLOCKED LINK.

Dr Mark Diesendorf is Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Institute of Environmental Studies at University of New South Wales. 60.242.247.177 (talk) 12:57, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

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An upside-down article -- needs complete rewrite

For some reason, and regardless of the intentions, this article -- which is literally titled "load" -- is all about power production, and as such has gone off into the weeds of left/right political/power dynasties and legends and possible futures. In short, as-is it's ridiculous.

Base load is just that -- the (electrical) load required/demanded by the base...whatever that base is. As such, "base load" is a noun...not an adjective. A power plant is capable of supporting that "base load" if it does indeed provide a substantial percentage of the overall base demand.

Sheesh.

--104.15.130.191 (talk) 11:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Per Merriam-Webster..."baseload" is indeed a noun, not an adjective: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baseload

--104.15.130.191 (talk) 11:49, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

More expensive flexible generation

@GliderMaven: Flexible generation is always more expensive than baseload generation. If you build a plant that can produce any time, and then you use it only half the time, the capital costs per kWh produced are double. No matter what the technology is, any flexible generation source used only some of the time is more expensive than if used constantly. This is a fundamental economic aspect (and limitation) of grids with high penetration of renewable energy, and I think it should be clear in the article. --Ita140188 (talk) 04:15, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

You'd think so, it seems obvious, but cost (LCOE) is a mixture of many factors, mostly fuel cost and capital costs. Baseload plants (traditionally almost always coal) generally aren't hugely efficient, and while they amortise the capital costs better, the fuel costs are relatively high. However, the modern CCGT plants have low construction costs but also have very high efficiency when running in steady state and so generally have low fuel costs, but also start up fast (albeit at initially reduced efficiency). In typical usage patterns they're cheaper than traditional baseload, while being far more flexible. Because the gas turbines feed power into both peakload and baseload they amortise down the capital costs extremely well, but they're not a baseload generation plant that just runs flat out. GliderMaven (talk) 15:42, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

The specific technology has nothing to do with what I was talking about. If you could run a gas plant 100% of the time its LCOE would be lower. This is a general result of energy economics and does not depend on the type of plant. Renewable energy sources force other plants to work at partial loads, so that their operation cost is higher than if they operated continuously. --Ita140188 (talk) 02:42, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Baseload generation is a form of generation that uses ear-marked baseload generation plants. If you earmarked the CCGT plants for baseload by running them 100% flat-out, yes, that would give cheap baseload, but then you would need specific peakload plants as well and their costs would be higher. Nobody does that because it's more expensive. They typically run the CCGT fleet on variable partial power and don't use two separate sets of generators, and that's true whether or not renewables are present in significant quantities. GliderMaven (talk) 04:18, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

You specifically wrote: "Grids with high penetration of renewable energy sources generally need more expensive flexible generation rather than baseload generation" and this still seems to be false (and unreferenced). GliderMaven (talk) 04:18, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Again, my point does not depend on the technology used. Whatever plant you are using to produce electricity, if you give priority to solar power and wind power you will necessarily need to run the (still required) dispatchable plants at lower capacity factors. This increases costs, no matter what those plants are. Note that the loss of capacity factor in this case is necessarily much larger than in the case of demand variability alone, which applies to conventional grids, since demand variability is still present and is generally largely uncorrelated with renewable generation (think windy days vs calm days). This is such a basic concept that it's difficult to find explicit references. --Ita140188 (talk) 04:25, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

You're stating that as a fact, that it will increase costs, but we care about overall costs and whether it does increase those or not also depends on the costs of the renewables. If the renewables are cheap enough (they're roughly at or below the cost of CCGT plants and they're still decreasing in costs) then the system costs end up going down. It also depends on the kW costs (as opposed to kWh cost) of the dispatchable sources. CCGT plants are among the very cheapest per kW, so having spare plant hanging around not generating anything is not very costly, most of the cost of a kWh produced by a CCGT plant is the fuel, so not producing is less relevant. And the idea that wind and solar are uncorrelated with demand- that's very location specific. In many cases in Europe solar is well correlated with daily demand and wind is well correlated with seasonal demand. By definition, baseload is uncorrelated with EVERYTHING, so having baseload generation causes problems you're ignoring- it also pushes up costs! GliderMaven (talk) 16:51, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

But I've barely scratched the surface with the different factors. The primary point is that it's all very complicated with many tradeoffs- and that's why you're not going to find any references, and why you shouldn't write things, that, in general, aren't necessarily correct. GliderMaven (talk) 16:51, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have no time to reply to all points and find the proper references (lots of real-life work these days), but it is indeed a fact that running plants at lower capacity factor increase cost per kWh. It's simple arithmetic and you can't avoid it. Then we can argue if the total cost for the whole electricity system increases or decreases, that depends of course on the relative cost of renewables, grid infrastructure, and dispatchable generation. By the way, just to make it clear, I'm a big supporter of renewables, and I think we should go all renewable whatever the cost. But this being an encyclopedia, we should also be accurate about what we say and imply. --Ita140188 (talk) 03:13, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The extra cost depends of the percentage of variable renewable energy. According to this source (Getting to Zero Carbon Emissions in the Electric Power Sector) the system cost is not so much higher if renewable energy is 50% or less (like in the graph). If you have higher percentages of variable renewable energy on the other hand, the system costs are quite high. This issue of cost should not be discussed in the image (as it is not really to the point), but in the text itself, for example based on this, or another source. --PJ Geest (talk) 12:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

On the other hand if the price of solar is divided by 4 every 10 year (Swanson's law) and the system cost of 100% renewable is 4 times higher than the cost of renewable on it's own, this means that in 10 years the system cost of solar panels in a 100% flexible generation system is lower than baseload generation. --PJ Geest (talk) 13:07, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Which plants baseload?

The article says:

Unvarying power plants can be coal, nuclear, combined cycle plants, which may take several days to start up and shut down,hydroelectric, geothermal, biogas, biomass, solar thermal with storage and ocean thermal energy conversion.

I understand that if cost and the environment were ignored any kind of plant could be baseload. But surely nowadays if baseload is needed at all it should be geothermal or nuclear shouldn’t it? Because they are low-carbon and high capital cost. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:04, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

It is my understanding also that almost any type of plant can be used as baseload, although I still cannot find a source that clearly states it. The only requirement is that it should be able to operate for a long time at a reasonable cost, this, in the absence of government regulation, usually makes coal plants the choice. The obvious parts of "almost" exception is variable renewable energy due to it being variable and, to some extent, the "large" hydro that in most places has very severe limitations due to finite supply of water and therefore is rarely used as baseload ("pumped" hydro might eventually help). Викидим (talk) 17:35, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Base load power/Base load demand

I think the article should not use these phrases. My belief is that these phrases are concerned with reliability of supply and are beyond the scope of the article. The term base load is concerned with classical power engineering, where base load power generators, such as coal and nuclear, are built to supply the minimum or base load. The remaining load is supplied with on demand generators such as gas and hydro. The term base load has nothing to with the modern debate over whether renewables backed up by other technologies can provide reliable power. A wind or solar generator isn't a base load power generator. Obviously and so what. Caviare (talk) 02:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I don’t completely understand what you are saying but if you have reliable sources please could you update the article Chidgk1 (talk) 06:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, "base load" indeed has two meaning, but they are closely related and can be kept within this article (as is the case now). Викидим (talk) 06:58, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Interconnected wind farms

We use Archer and Jacobson (2007) as a sole source to state that wind farms can be combined to deliver base load power. This a very strong statement on our part, while the paper does not quite support it:

1. the authors chose probably the best location for the onshore wind in the US, arguably one of the better ones in the world
2. the authors compare the wind outages (that are random) to the conventional plant outages that are almost always pre-planned and thus can be prepared for months in advance
3. the wind power still comes up short in terms of the reliability
4. the replacement of base load with wind have not been tried, this is a purely hypothetical paper

Some details can be found in https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml1315/ML13155A422.pdf on page 7-11 (note that authors of this source are also likely biased, but in the opposite direction). Oher studies of the wind do not support Archer and Jacobson: wind (predictably) is very much correlated across wide areas (when there is no wind in one location, there is usually none around it, too). See, for example, study [1]: there are some gains from averaging wind across the Northern Europe as compared to Denmark alone (generation duration curves on page 12), but they are not dramatic.

IMHO it is better to delete Archer and Jacobson references and text supported by them altogether. Alternatively, they should be moved to a separate section, where some context is provided. As-is, 17 years after the proposal, no utility dared to actually try to run on wind power alone, we should not list this theoretical calculation alongside (just separated by commas) the techniques that are actually use to keep the light on. Викидим (talk) 12:18, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Agree to remove this. Especially since Jacobson's research is often notoriously flawed and biased (for context see also my comments regarding Jacobson work on Talk:Growth_of_photovoltaics#Predictions_for_2020_all_wrong). Ita140188 (talk) 13:32, 16 August 2024 (UTC)