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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (398542)	7/14/2008 1:21:55 AM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576449

TP, The real problem is that older coal, oil, gas etc power plants don't want to bother with adjusting their output level. They want to just run full out. What is needed is some coordination (and that means some sort of regulation). Competition and correct pricing would do. When the solar and wind sources produce electricity, they should be selling it at the price that coal (and certainly oil/natural gas) can't compete with - at which point the fossil fuel plant shuts down. (natural gas and oil plants have a little more flexibility in how quickly they can shut down and start up than coal). So problem is solved from the market point of view. But certainly not from point of view of viability of solar and wind. This means that solar and wind, due to their unreliability, would have to generate power that is lower than marginal cost of operation of coal power plant minus fixed cost of non-operation of coal power plant. I can tell you that such a point is way below the grid parity point. Joe