this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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We have incentivized night time consumption. Base load generation (nuclear, coal) can't ramp up and down fast enough to match the daily demand curve. They can't produce more than the minimum overnight demand, but they have keep producing that around the clock. To minimize the need for "peaker" plants during the day, they want the overnight demand to be as high as possible.
So they put steel mills, aluminum smelters, and other heavy industry on overnight shifts by offering them extraordinarily cheap power.
That incentivized overnight load needs to be shifted to daytime, so it can be met with solar and wind. Moving forward, we need to minimize overnight demand.