Baseload plant, (also baseload power plant or base load power station) is an energy plant devoted to the production of baseload supply. Baseload plants are the production facilities used to meet some or all of a given region's continuous energy demand, and produce energy at a constant rate, usually at a low cost relative to other production facilities available to the system.[2] Examples of baseload plants using nonrenewable fuels include nuclear and coal-fired plants. Among the renewable energy sources, hydroelectric, geothermal[3] and OTEC can provide baseload power. Baseload plants typically run at all times through the year except in the case of repairs or scheduled maintenance. (Hydroelectric power also has the desirable attribute of dispatchability, but a hydroelectric plant may run low on its fuel (water at the reservoir elevation) if a long drought occurs over its drainage basin.)
You can find similar definitions on Shakespeare language if you google the term, like this from an Engineering company:
Base load (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over 24-hours: the load that exists 24 hours a day. A base load power plant (or base load power station) is one that is best suited to serving this load because it takes a long time to start up and is relatively inefficient at less than full output. These plants run at all times through the year except in the case of repairs or scheduled maintenance.
A base load power plant (or base load power station) is one that is best suited to serving this load because it takes a long time to start up and is relatively inefficient at less than full output. These plants run at all times through the year except in the case of repairs or scheduled maintenance.
This is the same concept used by the local grid operator, from whose publications I have the closer contact with this particular issue.
By saying that this is an outdated concept you are alluding at it being somehow time-dependent. While the minimum demand on a grid can eventually evolve through time, it always exists, even if it is zero. Baseload is a concept bound to the concept of Electric Grid. Vencit omnia veritas.
reflects an outdated concept of how baseload should be provided
Now, obviously, if there are outdated and, by implication, up to date concepts of how baseload should be provided, it follows that the provision model is the thing that can go out of date.
So it is a sweeping red herring and non sequiter to say:
By saying that this is an outdated concept you are alluding at it being somehow time-dependent. While the minimum demand on a grid can eventually evolve through time, it always exists, even if it is zero. Baseload is a concept bound to the concept of Electric Grid.
And the glaring mismatch between the claim being attacked and the argument introduced to attack it only reinforces the point about outdated concepts about the provision of baseload. The fact that the minimum amount required over a period has a distinctive name obviously does not imply that it requires a distinctive kind of plant to put specific "baseload" electrons onto the grid.
It can, indeed, as easily imply things about demand management as supply management, and the things it implies about supply management may well be about dynamic throttling of deferrable power sources as about long term construction of 24/7 always on power plants.
The existence of the name implies existing or past institutions within the electricity generation industry, but institutions are always past-bound. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Base load power plant - Wikipedia
Baseload (also base load, or baseload demand) is the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers, or the amount of power required to meet minimum demands based on reasonable expectations of customer requirements. Baseload values typically vary from hour to hour in most commercial and industrial areas.
...so we can say at the least that there are differing interpretations of the term in English. (I note though that that quote is from a for-the-wide-public glossary article again titled base-load power plant, and the same glossary lacks any article on other loads; so I hazard to assume that Harris Group is imprecise there.) Portuguese is yet another thing. (I'm curious if there is a Mittellast equivalent in your language, or is it lumped together with peak load.)
Finally, as Bruce and Crazy Horse said, the issue is how you supply expected demand, not how you continue to supply it in the idealised form of the traditional way, e.g. a near-constant part and daily periodic part. (Where, as I indicated, the shutdowns of large baseload power plants already represent a deviation from the ideal that has parallels with grid operation in the new regime with high grid peneration intermittent generation.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
1) Here is the graph showing the Grundlast - Mittellast - Spitzenlast concept from the German Wikipedia:
2) I find that while Mittellast (c. intermediate load) does seem to lack from English totally, there is a Wikipedia article titled Load following power plant:
A load following power plant is a power plant that adjusts its power output as demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day. Load following plants are in between base load and peaking power plants in efficiency, speed of startup and shutdown, construction cost, cost of electricity and capacity factor.
