> And they provide grid stability by having rotating masses on the grid, and thus combine pretty nicely with small to medium amounts of intermittent renewals that can provide some of the peak power.

We already have grids operating without traditional baseload. This is a 2015 talking point.

See for example South Australia keeping either 40 MWe or 80 MWe fossil gas in standby (I would presume this is the lowest possible hot standby power level for said plants). They are aiming to phase this out in the near future as storage comes online.

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&...

Inertia is trivially solved in 2025. Either through grid forming inverters which today are available off-the-shelf or the old boring solution of synchronous condensers like the Baltic states used to have enough grid strength to decouple from the Russian grid.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/baltic-power-grid

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mpweiher 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Tell that to the Spaniards.

	▲	adrianN 17 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Both the government and Redeia said renewable energy sources were not responsible for the blackout. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/what-caused-iberian-...
	▲	ViewTrick1002 16 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This truly shows your ignorance. Please show curiosity rather than redditesque comments like this. First. The final report of the Iberian blackout is not completed yet. It is taking longer than expected due to how complex the situation was. They did release an interim factual report in which they specify the facts. The full root cause analysis and recommendations on how to prevent similar events is coming in Q1 2026. From the factual report we learn that: 1. The cause was a lack of voltage control. Do you see inertia here? 2. They did expect traditional power plants to provide this, without verifying. 3. They did not expect renewable power plants to provide this, therefore they did not. In about all other grids like, like for example the US, renewable plants are expected to provide voltage control. It is trivially done by extremely cheap off-the-shelf components. But if the expectation does not exist then it will not be provided since the cost is non-zero. https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-ib...