Baseload Power Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore - CleanTechnica
▻https://cleantechnica.com/2024/03/15/baseload-power-doesnt-make-sense-any-more
The base load is the minimum load that the grid will have during some period of time. (Wikipedia: Base load) Please note the word MINIMUM! There is a reason the base load was important. It was to save money. It seems that worked, decades back, but my guess is that today it will only work where people insist on running an archaic generating plant.
A baseload power plant is designed to provide the base load, the minimum demand that the grid will have during a period of time. The period for a plant’s design might be its lifetime, which would mean the base load is the expected minimum demand to be placed on it during a period of forty or fifty years.
Designing a plant to do this saved money because the plant did not have to have all the features necessary to match the changes of demand, as it goes through its swings. Which it does all the time. So the reason for baseload power is this:
Baseload power was designed to be cheap, without regard for changing grid demand.
We should bear in mind that addressing the base load was an approach of the early twentieth century. The baseload power plant saved money by producing the same amount of electricity constantly, regardless of demand. Its goal was to run flat-out, at 100% of capacity, day in and day out, for as much of its lifetime as it could.