Nuclear pushes major industrial users (steel mills, aluminum smelters, etc) to overnight. Nuclear can’t be ramped up or down fast enough to match the normal demand curve, so they use “off peak” incentives to raise the trough and lower the peak. This allows nuclear to meet a much larger percentage of total demand. Without such incentives, nuclear has even more problems than solar. It would only be able to produce about 20% of our power, with 80% coming from “peaker” plants. With those incentives, nuclear can meet about 80% of out need, with peaker plants filling in.
By driving consumption overnight, those same incentives prevent solar from being able to meet the overnight demand.
Removing those “off peak” incentives, and providing new “on peak” incentives pushes those customers to daytime consumption that can be easily met by solar.
Stop thinking of nuclear as a “backup”. Its not a backup. It is baseload generation. “Backup” is not provided by baseload generators. “Backup” is provided by generation that doesn’t suffer from the limitations of baseload generators. “Backup” is from generators that can ramp up and down to match a fluctuating demand curve. “Backup” is provided by “peaker” plants.
Nuclear cannot be used as a “backup”. France is using nuclear for baseload generation, just like every other grid with nuclear generators.
And that is the underlying problem. Like all grid providers, they are incentivizing overnight consumption to improve the efficiency of their baseload generators.
Those perverse incentives are the primary cause of the problems you are describing.
Remove those perverse incentives.
Those industries currently taking advantage of the incentives switch to cheap daytime power instead of cheap night time power. They increase daytime demand, reducing the overcapacity problem.
Now the overnight baseload has dropped. We can now reduce nuclear baseload generation overnight, which also reduces it during the day. Now the daytime overcapacity problem is also reduced.
Nuclear pushes major industrial users (steel mills, aluminum smelters, etc) to overnight. Nuclear can’t be ramped up or down fast enough to match the normal demand curve, so they use “off peak” incentives to raise the trough and lower the peak. This allows nuclear to meet a much larger percentage of total demand. Without such incentives, nuclear has even more problems than solar. It would only be able to produce about 20% of our power, with 80% coming from “peaker” plants. With those incentives, nuclear can meet about 80% of out need, with peaker plants filling in.
By driving consumption overnight, those same incentives prevent solar from being able to meet the overnight demand.
Removing those “off peak” incentives, and providing new “on peak” incentives pushes those customers to daytime consumption that can be easily met by solar.
Stop thinking of nuclear as a “backup”. Its not a backup. It is baseload generation. “Backup” is not provided by baseload generators. “Backup” is provided by generation that doesn’t suffer from the limitations of baseload generators. “Backup” is from generators that can ramp up and down to match a fluctuating demand curve. “Backup” is provided by “peaker” plants.
Well I mentioned France, who are using nuclear as a backup to the rewables they implemented.
Nuclear cannot be used as a “backup”. France is using nuclear for baseload generation, just like every other grid with nuclear generators.
And that is the underlying problem. Like all grid providers, they are incentivizing overnight consumption to improve the efficiency of their baseload generators.
Those perverse incentives are the primary cause of the problems you are describing.
Remove those perverse incentives.
Those industries currently taking advantage of the incentives switch to cheap daytime power instead of cheap night time power. They increase daytime demand, reducing the overcapacity problem.
Now the overnight baseload has dropped. We can now reduce nuclear baseload generation overnight, which also reduces it during the day. Now the daytime overcapacity problem is also reduced.