Quote:All intermittent power requires base load power (Coal & gas) to be on line just in case
Not true, for several reasons:
batteries (of various sorts, including pumped hydro)
peaking suppliers (intermittent hydro, gas fired plants)
demand-side arrangements
On the third point, there is no actual baseload in demand. For the most part it was a response to the historical use of coal fired plants for the majority of the supply. This lead to significant periods in each day where power was very cheap, and a lot of industries evolved to take advantage. Those industries will evolve in exactly the same way to more volatile supplies. Likewise, retail customers became psychologically accustomed to fixed prices regardless of wholesale costs, but again there is nothing fundamental there. We now have the technology cheaply available to manage retail pricing the same way as wholesale pricing. This used to be managed by, for example, having your hot water system on off-peak power, but that's a pretty crude adaptation.
If prices were more rationally matched to supply and demand, there would be all sorts of retail and industrial consumers willing to cease consumption based on the spot price. At the moment this is largely driven by politics and legacy hard investments.