It does. A lot more. Which is why the Audubon Society (bird folks) feel that fighting climate change and coal power is a bigger deal than fighting wind. http://policy.audubon.org/wind...

Baseload is concept of a 20th century grid run by monopoly utilities with a vested financial interest in operating certain inflexible power plants at maximum output. If I have a paid-off coal or nuclear power plant, of course I want it to run at max output 24/7! And because I'm the monopoly utility (true in 30 U.S. states), I get to prioritize output from my power plant. Winner winner chicken dinner!

In truth, our power system already has a helluva lot of capacity built to accommodate variability from energy USERS (supply = demand at all times or system crashes), and it can also be used to manage variability from energy PRODUCERS, like wind. It's not an extra cost, it's built in until the level of variability far exceeds current situations (except in isolated geographic areas of the grid, or island power networks).

In the long run, we will need a power system with more flexible sources of generation or storage to manage higher levels of variability associated with wind and solar power. But for now, on most power grids? Not even close.

And guess what, fossil fuels aren't without variability, either? What if you can't get a coal train to a coal power plant? http://www.marketplace.org/top...

Yes. They are publicly-sanctioned monopolies with regulated profits. This is Slashdot, so I don't think I need to say more.

The linked article may not follow your standard of cheapest, but this does. Wind is cheapest, with external costs or not: http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

You don't need to factor in "external" costs. I work in the energy policy field, and this is pretty much the gold standard for comparing cost of electricity generation. Other than energy efficiency, wind is already the cheapest. http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Leve...

For me, it was the same year I got married and got a work-issued Macbook Pro. After that, it never seemed like I had the time to build/use a DIY rig or the need for the marginal power increase.

You are a coward to use a term like that for anyone. And so are the folks willing to mod this up. Her behavior was ridiculous, but so is yours.

If you're not trolling, you may want to try re-phrasing without loaded language, e.g. "Do you ever regret spending so many hours playing video games?" Otherwise, we might ask you why you spend so much time posting to pointless Slashdot Q&A articles...

There's nothing at all unclear about when solar is at parity with traditional power prices: http://www.ilsr.org/projects/s...

The title may be manipulative, but it's also right. Even with plenty of coal-fired power still on the grid, electric vehicles offer lower greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas vehicles, and the grid continues to get cleaner as more renewable energy is added to it. EVs are a great complement, too, because their batteries allow for energy storage of variable wind and solar. And even the 1st generation EV batteries have enough storage to power 60% of daily vehicle trips in the U.S. From a climate perspective, we have no business trying to increase extraction of fossil fuels. From an infrastructure perspective, we have no business trying to build another fossil fuel fueling network when we already have electricity everywhere to power electric vehicles.

Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation. Nuclear is fundamentally inflexible because you can't quickly ramp up or down electricity output from a nuclear power plant. See this short video for a nice explanation of the incompatibility: http://www.ilsr.org/coal-nucle...

You can purchase a BioLite camping stove that has USB charging today. We have one at our office for emergency off the grid charging. In our test we recharged an iPad and and iPhone.

There are virtual keyboards on tablets.

Wind Blows.