Look at a typical service station on I-95 or I-5. They typically have a large parking lot, so people can leave their car and go eat something. So simply electrifying some of the parking lot spots would be quite enough to replace the pumps.

Except that Azure is crap and the only reason they are the second is that Google gives even less crap about Google Compute. Amazon is waaaaaaay better in almost any regard (price, availability, API design, documentation, the quality of products, the number of products, and so on).

:facepalm:

We're not speaking about households. We're speaking about huge geographic areas that would have to redo their grids completely. You truly have no idea what you're even posting about.

I gave you a definition from a dictionary.

No, it simply explains how the baseload generation works in Germany.

It works differently in other countries. The definition of baseload is: "Base load power sources are those plants which can generate dependable power to consistently meet demand". That's it. It might be variable or constant, it doesn't matter.

The answer is: "I want a pony". Current proposals for such grids include superconducting geographically-sized DC buses. And these are the most _realistic_ proposals.

It is NOT an easy problem. Energy storage might well be easier, and there's even a good prospective technology for that (vanadium flow batteries).

Dude, I pointed you at a specific example. Here's the dashboard for the generation in France: https://clients.rte-france.com... - notice the "Generation forecast" graph. It shows that the generation changes drastically throughout the day, even though France uses mostly nuclear power plants.

Yes, it is. Because it implies that somebody else does the balancing.

The distance between TX and Maine is about 3000 km. That's way more than the average length for the power transmission (500 km). And such conditions do NOT require one huge weather system, just several smaller weather systems that happen at the same time. That happens about once or twice a year for the Eastern coast.

So no, current grid can not cope with the variability of renewable sources.

Yep. And other countries have adjustable baseload generation, like France or use hydroaccumulating stations (like Norway). BTW, Germany does NOT export energy into Ukraine, it's exactly the reverse.

Incorrect. You can change the power of coal power plants, it just takes several hours. And France has load-following nuclear plants, so they actually reduce generation during the night time. Then we have hydro (which is also a part of the baseload) that can be adjusted in _seconds_.

So please, stop showing your complete ignorance of actual issues.

No, it doesn't. Emergency shutdowns are rare events and there's enough spare capacity to compensate for them. What green fucking hippies are offering is to make the grid magically compatible with multiple emergency shutdowns at the same time across a geographically large region. Can be done, but at ridiculous cost.

It's possible. It doesn't happen _often_, but it happens at least one time every year on the Eastern coast of the US. Mostly during big storms when turbines must be turned off.

And a pony. Don't forget a pony.

Baseload generation can change and often does. It just changes _predictably_.

No they don't. Germany still has a very reliable baseload generation which produces MOST of the power locally, so from the point of view of the power company their electricity supply IS mostly predictable and constant.

Denmark, Portugal and other postage-stamp-sized countries are simply not interesting - they can overbuild power transmission infrastructure and buy electricity from neighbors.

Imagine two cities with power plants. Each power plant produces 2-4GW of power. There is a power line between cities capable of transmitting 1GW. What is going to happen if one power plant closes one unit producing 500MW for maintenance? Answer: nothing much, since the other plant and transmission line can handle the increased load.

Now imagine that a blowhard greenpeace hippies closed one power plant and installed wind turbines around the one of the cities. What is going to happen if a sudden anticyclone causes a windless weather over a large region? Answer: whoops, your the power line between cities has just melted, even though the other power plant had enough capacity to handle the load.

And this is not a theory, such things might happen any time in Germany now. Its grid is overstressed because renewable energy generation and consumption are quite often not correlated.