> Providing base load is a privilege you get to enjoy if your marginal cost is lower than anyone elses (and you want/can keep running basically all of the time)

The "if you can keep running all of the time" is actually the more important factor of base load than just price.

I guess if you want to look at it through purely a price point thing, does the solar price effectively go to infinity when there are clouds out or it's night time?

Maybe base load is the wrong term for it, I don't know. All I'm saying is that solar and wind aren't generating all of the time, and building out the storage capacity to completely cover our existing needs seems kind of unfathomable.