That's an interesting question, and largely hangs on what you mean by 'baseload'. Let us take it to mean the minimum power consumption of a country (or other defined area). This will comprise large numbers of different consumers, and really, most of these could be supplied by local or near-local energy storage systems. Those that could not can be powered by the grid, but a grip powered by biofuels. In effect biofuels enable solar energy to be gathered over a wide area in a form very convenient to store. Beyond that simulations have shown that given a sufficiently large area, there is never a situation in most countries where some form of renewable mix cannot supply the remainder of the load.

I think it's a good idea to drop the concept of baseload for if we do that, perhaps with it will go  the assumption, and justification, that there is a place in the future for fossil fuel power plants. And even nuclear ones . . .

Modern civilization demand more dependence on continuous uninterruptible electricity supply. Most modern devices like air conditioners, computers, televisions, hospitals diagnostic devices, street lights, traffic signals....etc, all rely solely on electricity  supply  and so I think an assured amount of electricity (that is baseload) has to be maintained. Of course the quantity may vary from country to country but for sure it has to be there to run vital equipment. 

Hello:

Baseload power as a definition, in my view, belongs to the past where simple, defined, large chunks of demand was matched with based loads. Expected demand was known and consequently matched with large chunks of loads as well as high capacity transmission. As the demand is growing, globalizing and more importantly mobilizing, there will still be large chunks of power needed to the cities such as: NYC, London, Tokyo. However, small modular baseload providers such as nuclear reactors ranging from 50-300 MW will be in demand. Because of that, maneuvering of the power to the mobile demand will be equally important. Hence, the transmission investment. I hope that this answers your question. 

The baseload is related to the economy of scale traditionally demonstrated by coal and nuclear power plants. As their shares in the energy mix change, the concept of baseload will be reconsidered in one way or another. At least the combination of non-dispatchable renewables and fast-response dispatchable sources leaves less space for the traditional baseload. I suppose we will have to chose between the traditional power mix and the new structure of power generation imposed by the renewables. For example, the "Fortuna" CCGT power plant near Lausward is allegedly underloaded in favor of coal plants, even though it is able to absorb the load fluctuations at 30MW/min.

Base load is the minimum load that is always on the grid over a period of 24 hours. If one consider the daily load curve of a power supply grid, there will be spikes throughout the day but with peak spikes during morning hours, noon hours and evening hours. The load corresponding to the line drawn at the base of the spikes is the base load.

Now, the question is whether we need base load power generation or not (or at least I understood so). It depends. Most of the countries in the world are facing acute peak power shortage rather than the base shortage. But, of course, there are nations where even they are facing base power shortage. Also, it should be noted that in almost all third world countries and countries like China the power demand is steadily increasing (both the base load and peak load). Therefore, we need both base load and peaking stations.

As the cost of thermal based power is high (including the environmental cost), it is a necessity that these plants should function at the highest possible efficiency. Therefore, they should be designed and operated as base load stations.

All of the answers presented so far assume that supply reacts to demand. Baseload power,  as accurately described by others, is the mimium amount of power consumed by a country (or defined area) over a 24 hour period. Baseload power can easily be identified by drawing a rectangle below a daily electricity demand profile for a country. Many of the responses so far are calling for us to drop the term 'base load' power as simulations show that increasing amounts of renewables will always able to meet demand. These responses neglect to consider that under a dynamic 'smart' energy system both demand and supply will be reacting simultaneously. This will be accomplished through a combination of battery technology and other smart technologies and new economics incentives to alter both demand and supply to shift thus minimizing total system cost.  The end result of this is an almost flat energy profile. In other words in the future all electricity demand (and supply) will be "baseload". This is consistent with the definitions for baseload given above as the minimum amount of electricity consumed by the system, but as the demand profile is essentially flat it is also the maximum electricity demand of the system. Under this future state all forms of electricity generation will be considered baseload power. Therefore I will take the opposite stance to many of the respondents in this article and say that baseload power will be the ONLY form of electricity in the future supplied mostly by renewables.

I understand the term "baseload" lightly different: Basload power plants are those that are constantly running throughout the year, i.e. nuclear power plant, lignite power plants and run-off river power plants. These are usually the most competetive power plants. The question whether the concept baseload will survive strongly depends on the structure of the producers as well as on the poilics. In case we have a lot of fluctuating producers and a governmental guarantee to feed these renewables then it might happen that former base load power plants will have to be shut down to ensure the balance of production and consumption. The concept of baseload will vanish. In case that fluctuating energy producers feed into a kind of storage (like H2 or natural gas-storage) then a base load power plant might convert stored energy from the renewables to electricity., Thus equalising the peaks of the weather-depending renewables. In that case the concepts of base load would survive althrough the type of power plant will probably change.

Thank you to everyone taking the time to answer. Scott - a interesting take on the flattening of the demand curve to meet supply. One of the things that springs to mind is the current assumption that 'baseload' means a static or flat supply - and whether this is likely to change over time e.g. is variable baseload a proper term - or just another oxymoron?

In direct response to Friedrich Gottel - the definition of baseload power being at the level of the 'power plant' is old power system thinking. The electricity grid of the future isn't about a single plant but about the aggregate of demand and supply. Traditionally it was true that power-plants that ran most of the time would cover base-load power (e.g. coal and nuclear) but this reductionist thinking will not work in the future as the energy system evolves over time.

Hi Scott, the definition of base load seems to be cruitial in this point. Definiting it in terms of power plants seems the only relevant in the context of the question. I think (and this is pointed out by all of the above contribution, including your own) it is clear that a more or less industrialised population will allways have a certain base load i.e. a minimum electric demand that has to be produced 24/7. So defining the base load as the minimum power demand gives us the clear answer to the initial question: Yes, we will have base load in the future. But the question is: who will provide this base load? Is it a number of large power plants as in former times? Probably not but I think that depends on the future market development and govermental interventions as well  as the usage/development of storage and smart grid technologies.

And by the way: the technologies used for providing the base load will very likely change - that's true and that's a matter of the market again - the cheapest, most reliable, ... technology will have the highest work load.

@ Grant: can you clarify the intent of your question?

@ Friedrich - the original intent of the question was aimed at the historical provision of baseload electricity that are from high capex low opex plants like nuclear, lignite and to a certain extent coal. The argument for these that they naturally ran as baseload as the electricity was lower down the merit order and therefore should be used as it was cheaper. Given that price may no longer give them a protected piece of the merit order - I think its an interesting concept for the future - do we still need baseload plants - if so  - how are they likely to impact with weather dependent renewables - given that the renewables may well have a price advantage at times of potential oversupply, Its an interesting area - so I'm interested to find out what other think.

Also - an interesting angle from Scott - if I understand correctly - looking at baseload from the demand side rather than a supply side

Just my guess, but I think in the future we will still maintain the concept of baseload, just the way we provide it will be different. Instead of having large power plants that operate 24/7 we will eventually move toward energy storage and load shifting technology to provide it. This doesn't necessarily mean just batteries (although I'm sure a good portion of the required storage will be through them) but also other grid level storage systems currently under development like CAES, cryogenic storage and others.

Baseload is not a concept we can remove from our society (unless we will reach 0 energy needs which seems unreasonable to me) but the way we intend it will certanly change.

Grant,

I would tend to agree with Scott and Marco - that it all depends on the way demand changes with time, or to be more specific does the daily load curve require a base load to be supplied ?

And the answer seems to be a big YES, though the generation mix may change (and has been changing in the past) with

Nice question though ! Liked the discussion it led to :-)

-Sanjay

In a near-medium term I would say: "hopefully, YES". Baseload is not just an issue of money but is now necessary to give stability to our grids. We now need big power plants.

In a long term, with large storage systems, it could be an interesting question.

As Michael states, I think 'Baseload' as a term is becoming dated. It used to refer to that part of consumer demand that never dropped below some defined value, simply because there was such a thing as 'baseload demand'. Now with the possibility of local storage, the issue of baseload demand is going away, and you are only concerned about being able to supply a continuously varying demand, which might be anything, and is more likely high only whenever electricity is perceived to be cheap. Additionally, 'baseload' implies a level of generation which will always exist, as there will always be demand, and should be supplied by generators that can be run at full power all the time. This also implies that there is a very considerable 'reserve' of generating capacity which can be turned on and off at very short notice. Fossil fuel generators, except maybe gas fired ones, can't easily do this.

In my view, in the future we should accept that there will be varying demand, without any concept of baseload, and it has to be satisfied by renewables plus massive storage,  that is, many days of supply, not just tens of minutes as present battery boosted systems can offer.

Thankyou Michael for the links - an excellent source of thinking on this, and Tony thank you for the comment. It made me think that there are different uses of the word "baseload" that we conflate - i.e. baseload generation and baseload demand (and I fell into this trap myself in the question text). In the past - it may not have made much difference - but in future energy networks they could be moving further apart with distributed storage. So maybe the point is that there will continue to be a baseload demand - but this does not necessarily need to be satisfied by lower-marginal cost fuel based centralised "baseload" generation?

http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf