The 20% base load says that there won't be fluctuations at that level of demand.Zixinus wrote:I've never said that it should be built near to a big city. I said that to power a city, you need something big and powerful. Small towns and villages can be run on renewable energy sources, but factories with big businesses have high demand and little tolerance for unpredictable fluctuations.Second - we don't build power plants near big cities (generally).
Excess production over demand could go into liquid fuel production. Or charging for electric/hybrid autos. That would be really good because wind tends to be best at night when demand is at its lowest.
Currently the only control on the system is on the production side (except for some interruptible loads). I'm familiar with aircraft electrical systems where both supply and demand are controlled. When you do that peak power requirements are reduced.
In any case your concerns only become important when wind is around 20% of total production. We are a long way from that.