Unfortunately you don’t know in advance when the wind will stop blowing and you can’t crank up a conventional plant in short order so you must keep the coal or gas running even though you are not spinning the turbines. It is called back-stopping and all wind generation has to be supported by conventional means.
>>> Unfortunately you don’t know in advance when the wind will stop blowing and you can’t crank up a conventional plant in short order so you must keep the coal or gas running even though you are not spinning the turbines. It is called back-stopping and all wind generation has to be supported by conventional means. <<<
True.
But ‘backstopping’ is NOT going to result in the claimed increase in usage.
The % of power from wind is not large enought require shutting a plant fully down. They can be comfortably run at 50% capacity.