Load following and supply following are pretty much the same thing. Either way, the available power in the grid needs to be increased.
If you use them only as backup, it’s dumb. Better to use them as France does.
As for subsidies — wind and solar get massive subsidies. They should pay quality power (i.e. dispatchable power) suppliers to maintain the capacity for when the renewables are unable.
Nuclear is expensive, but a lot of that is due to the use of non-standard designs. In the US, the cost of nuclear has gone up with time (inflation adjusted). In South Korea, it has gone down as one with expect with standard learning curve economics. US does not use standard system designs, and that greatly increased costs — especially because it requires a lot more regulatory review and redesign.
I don’t know what the cost of factory made, standardized reactors would be, but it would have to be far less than that of all these custom made plants. You pay the engineering and tooling costs once, and amortize that across a large number of reactors. The running costs (marginal cost) of nuclear are low.
The grid can tolerate a certain amount of renewables without failing — but only if those renewables pay the capacity costs they incur on the grid. Texas doesn’t require that, so it’s reliable plants are shutting down — they cannot compete with a near zero marginal cost, but that near zero cost doesn’t reflect reality. Plus, with subsidies, the cost of wind energy is often negative — the wind farms pay the grid to take their power. Imagine what that does to the capacity factor (and hence efficiency) of reliable plants. That can only happen when subsidies make it profitable to lose money on your electricity!
Renewables simply are not economic at scale when compared to CCGT natural gas, for example, or coal plants. CCGT has led to the US reducing its CO2 emissions while “greener” countries have had their continue to increase. In other words, the (very expensive) push for the perfect (renewables) has actually had the opposite of the expected effect.
Also, LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) is a poor metric for comparing these sources of energy. It only includes the cost *at the plant (or site)*. It does not include transmission, nor does it include capacity costs (costs of backup generation for when the primary source is unavailable). It includes storage costs if they are on-site, but if they are not, the costs are hidden — not included.
I recommend the in-depth series of power grid with renewables analysis by “A Planning Engineer” on Judith Curry’s blog. The writer is a high level planning engineer and former executive for a power utility. His did not reveal his real name when these were written, as he was still working. It was revealed in a subsequent post. Here’s a link to the first in the series. Warning: he covers a lot of material in multiple posts. https://judithcurry.com/2015/05/07/transmission-planning-wind-and-solar/
Also, his post about his retirement and his identity revealed are: https://judithcurry.com/2019/10/21/reflections-on-energy-blogging/
As an electrical engineer, I learned a lot from this. I studied power grids, but never worked in the area. This guy has done it all, and I think is very fair minded, doing his best to analyze the renewables issue rather than taking a side.
