Yes, 100% true and also 100% irrelevant. The delta in NYC between base load and peak load is almost 5GW. And the base load itself is about 5GW. Given that peak loads happens only for 0.1% of the year, you can easily see that the problem has almost nothing to do with base load and everything to do with the rapid scaling up of peak load. This is why AC compressors are the culprit. They are fully automated, distributed, and they all kick on under shared environmental triggers. The starting up of ACs during a heatwave is literally almost equivalent to 100% of NYC base load.
Shutting off a few 10s of MW for lighting cannot solve the problem.
It’s actually a bit silly to call lighting a “base load”. That’s not how the grid works. Base load is specifically talking about the grid itself and what the lowest load is on the grid. They don’t have an actuarial table where your refrigerator gets put into the base load bucket while your bathroom lights are put in the peak load bucket. It’s all one load.
What power companies are looking at is the demand curve. The lowest level of the demand curve is the base load. That’s all it is.
Things do get trickier with commercial power, especially when talking about machinery. But for something as simple as lighting it’s completely straight forward. Turning off 150MW of lights frees 150MW of peeker capacity which can be used for more useful things like boiling water in a data center to answer questions wrong (I kid).
Peak load consists of base load plus variable components. Turning off some of the base load reduces peak load.
Yes, 100% true and also 100% irrelevant. The delta in NYC between base load and peak load is almost 5GW. And the base load itself is about 5GW. Given that peak loads happens only for 0.1% of the year, you can easily see that the problem has almost nothing to do with base load and everything to do with the rapid scaling up of peak load. This is why AC compressors are the culprit. They are fully automated, distributed, and they all kick on under shared environmental triggers. The starting up of ACs during a heatwave is literally almost equivalent to 100% of NYC base load.
Shutting off a few 10s of MW for lighting cannot solve the problem.
It’s actually a bit silly to call lighting a “base load”. That’s not how the grid works. Base load is specifically talking about the grid itself and what the lowest load is on the grid. They don’t have an actuarial table where your refrigerator gets put into the base load bucket while your bathroom lights are put in the peak load bucket. It’s all one load.
What power companies are looking at is the demand curve. The lowest level of the demand curve is the base load. That’s all it is.
Things do get trickier with commercial power, especially when talking about machinery. But for something as simple as lighting it’s completely straight forward. Turning off 150MW of lights frees 150MW of peeker capacity which can be used for more useful things like boiling water in a data center to answer questions wrong (I kid).