GoKawiilOne of the recurring meme’s in electricity is ‘baseload’, the idea that there is a consistent minimum level of load that should be matched up against big generation plants to maximize efficiency.
This idea is archaic, once rooted in fact but now obsolete. Its persistence skews otherwise productive conversations about the future of energy, and we need to retire the term like the coal plants that originally powered it.
Share
But let’s back up, where does the term come from?
It originates from two things: the minimum amount of load (energy) that is always needed on the grid, and the operating characteristics of traditional thermal power plants (like those run on coal).
First, it is true that there is a stable level of load that is basically always needed for a given region.
In the chart below, the green line shows the number of hours where a given load was needed in California. There are effectively no hours below ~18 gigawatts—the baseload level in red. At least this much load was needed during every hour of the entire year.
This part is still true, a meaningful amount of load is always required somewhere on the grid.
The gap in understanding comes with the second factor: belief that it is inherently more efficient to match this load with big thermal generation.
This comes from a historical contingency, where large stable loads matched very well with traditional coal-fired and nuclear power plants. These burn coal (or fission) to heat water, creating steam that then drives a turbine to generate electricity.
... continue reading