That is actually not the definition of base load.
You have a load curve over a typical day (changes during seasons).
The lowest point in that curve - and the area below it: that is base load.
You can fulfill that demand with base load plants that run 24/7 all year: that is base load.
The problem with this definition is everyday it would change and Why would you want to produce a minimum amount 24/7 even at times when their is no need? and more importantly What happens when there is no demand?
The last question is what Coal fired power stations have to deal with and make sure there is an enough demand to keep the power stations running and their solution
was to make sure that there was always a minimum demand which they called the 'base load' and this is why we have 'off peak' devices such as water heaters that turn on at certain times during the night.
Then your article is wrong.
You never have power demand below base load, unless you have a grid failure somewhere.
hmmm your source for this definition of base load please ?
No, it does not.
It is the minimum demand of the grid.
Has nothing to do with power plants at all.
Huh? ummm can you quote your source for this please? Thats the original term for baseload as Coal fired power stations will switch off when there is too low a demand.
From your link:
"[Base load] refers to the minimum level of output that these big power generators could go to, before they turned off."
It has nothing to do with demand. They could run at base load and pump all their power straight into a space laser. They just can't run at less than base load. Your sentence literally just rephrased itself.
Demand only dictates if it makes sense to run at base load...
Did you even read the article or skim through it ? I will rephrase the first part of the article , The reason why 'baseload' is so important to Coal fired power plants is that if they don't have enough demand the power plants switch off,
power plants that take days and cost millions of dollars to start up again.
Also I like in their analysis they would still have to use gas-fired plants. Oh, but bio-fuel! No problems there!
I will give you that one its a bit of a crutch.
Your definition of base load power is wrong. Base load power is the minimum amount of power that needs to be delivered to the electrical grid over time. The size of the base load is the minimum amount of power people and businesses want to use over some period of time. It basically the troughs of the graph of power usage The word "load" is the clue. I don't know where you got your definition of base load from, but it's just plain wrong.
Here I was thinking on a AC Power Grid the 'load' is nearly instantaneous and supply and demand for Electricity has to be matched almost perfectly for it to work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and No Base load is not about power people and business want over a period of time there are several definitions for it but it generally refers to the demand needed to keep Coal fired Powerplants running.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/sc...
....One last thing. It's very easy to confuse energy and electricity. You hear that the UK (a cold country) got a significant percentage of its ELECTRICITY from whatever I a given month and sometimes you are encouraged to forget that's a tiny fraction of the ENERGY. They heat their houses, their hot water, etc by burning oil and gas (over 80% of UK homes) and some wood. Just home heating is 11% of UK CO2 and that energy isn't considered when you see a reference to "percent of their electricity".
UK (a mild country) could very easy do away with the need to burn oil by doing what other European country's are doing with better insulation and Geothermal heating.
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/g...
The first 47% is the easiest.
Exactly, renewables do not solve the base load problem.....
Without Coal there is no 'base load problem' as the term base load means the minimum power generation needed to keep the Coal powered generators running.
https://www.energymatters.com....
That 75% efficiency can only be reached using post-normal thermodynamics and social engineering. In other words, it's a lie.
Huh ???
The Pilot plant that they have is 50% efficient, the plan for this Commercial Plant is 60% using well known technologies nothing "post-normal" about it
just efficiencies of scale and the capture and reuse of waste heat.
You can lose a great deal of energy in the form of waste heat from compression. Heat energy which is pulled from the environment upon expansion - and in some cases even supplied by burning natural gas.
Not as much as you lose from burning fossil fuels with ICE Cars 80% of the energy is lost to heat and with Coal fired electricity generation its 70% lost to heat.
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.
