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by ZeroGravitas 3553 days ago
"Baseload" isn't a real thing, it's just a framing. You need electricity generated when it's required by users, and in the exact quantities they demand.

Having nuclear power plants running all night when no-one needs the power is sub-optimal. That's why many nations built hydro storage and offered financial inducements for people to use power at night. Because the numbers wouldn't work for nuclear if it wasn't used at max capacity the whole time, producing a static amount, yet demand rises and falls both daily and with the seasons.

Doing the same thing, decades later, for solar is hardly rocket science, the only difference is the power correlates very well with air-con loads on both a short and long term scale which makes it a no-brainer for many locations around the world.