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| ▲ | zozbot234 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| We'll most likely see off-peak or dispatchable-demand energy prices become effectively negligible due to cheap intermittent sources, but the price for reliable 24/7 supply will if anything trend higher. Storage is not enough to bridge the gap in all cases, so you need either very expensive peaker plants or less expensive nuclear to provide a reliable baseload supply for those critical uses. |
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| ▲ | pranavj 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The baseload framing is increasingly outdated. What grids need isn't constant supply - it's flexible supply that matches variable demand. Solar + batteries handle daytime and evening peaks well. Wind fills different gaps. The remaining "firmness" problem (extended low-wind, low-sun periods) is real but smaller than baseload thinking suggests. Most studies show you can get to 80-90% renewables before you hit hard storage limits. The last 10-20% is the expensive part, but that's a different problem than needing baseload for everything. | | |
| ▲ | jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | And HVDC long haul offsets a lot of those problems as well and is more effective than storage. |
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| ▲ | jacquesm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Demand is rising very fast compared to supply, I don't think that will happen. Energy is like RAM or clockspeed: you can't have enough of it. |
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| ▲ | blitzar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future Hasn't happened ever before, not sure why this time it would be different. |
