Aidan,

I understand the definitions, but clearly you don't.

Wind and solar in themselves cannot provide baseload supply, they need to be backed up by coal, gas or nuclear.

The running costs of wind power are a lot higher than you would imagine, as maintaining hundreds of widespread small generators 20 stories above the ground is not cheap. The cheapest of all running costs is nuclear. If you include the running costs of the gas plants required to fill the gaps in wind and solar supply, the running costs far exceed any other base load generation.

Of course it is more profitable to supply peak load, as prices during peak periods are up to 20x the price of off peak power. That is why the hydro schemes generate during peaks. However, industry, hospitals etc rely on continuous supply and need a reliable base load, which as yet renewables cannot provide.

Base-load power can, if called upon, deliver a major city's needs 24/7/365

Your position is solar and wind can do this with enough infrastructure storage and maintenance. These are at a massive cost, far, far beyond affordability. To have faith that this will change is simply hoping, along with the wait for fusion.

There is a feasible, tried, true and tested pathway to abate AGW. Spending what little time and money we have on this will bring guaranteed results.

Shadow, you understand the definitions but fail to understand that people disagree with you for reasons other than a lack of understanding. And worse still, when there's a lack of understanding of the facts, it's often on your part.

Solar thermal can provide baseload supply, but it makes a lot more sense to configure it for peak supply instead. That way there wouldn't be so much need to make use of OCGT plants to fill the gaps.

Where did you get the idea that "the cheapest of all running costs is nuclear"? In the comparisons I've seen, that only applies if the nuclear fuel costs are excluded.

Industry, hospitals etc rely on continuous supply. The base load is no more important than the load at any other time, and baseload plant is becoming far less important as more wind power is installed.

Designing solar thermal to supply peak load will push down peak prices. Also, peak demand often doesn't last long enough to exploit the greater efficiency of combined cycle gas turbines; enabling solar thermal to supply peak loads solves that problem.

To claim that as yet renewables can't provide a reliable base load is misleading. What can be done with renewables depends on what infrastructure we have installed. As with nuclear.

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Luciferase,

"Base-load power can, if called upon, deliver a major city's needs 24/7/365"
In most circumstances that is false. Although it is possible to build enough baseload power infrastructure to meet peakload demand, few would as it's unnecessarily expensive.

Although the cost of renewables is high, so are the benefits. It's far from unaffordable, and is likely to be cheaper than nuclear power in Australia, though in much of the world nuclear power is the cheaper alternative. The difference is because of our lower population density and the huge number of good renewable energy sites we have. And to a much lesser extent, also our lack of experience with nuclear power.

Reword title to: Feeble Quixotic power anti-crusaders...

Solar power systems increasingly generate power in Australia.
(Wikipedia: Solar_power_in_Australia )

- - - - -
" Australia has the highest average solar radiation per square metre of any continent in the world. "

" More than 2 million Australian households now have solar hot water systems or solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on their rooftop. Deployment of megawatt-scale solar electricity generation systems is still at an early stage of development in Australia. "

" The increased deployment of solar energy generation depends critically on the commercialisation of large-scale solar energy technologies. "

Source: http://arena.gov.au/about-renewable-energy/solar-energy/
- - - - -

Move is towards heating tanks of hot salt, insulated it can store heat for a week, ending cloudy weather or night problems.

A tank about 9 m (30 ft) tall and 24 m (80 ft) in diameter can power a 100-megawatt turbine for four hours.

More heat holding tanks, longer turbine operating time.

Spain's Andasol solar power station uses 200 ha of land with a 150-megawatt (MW) concentrated solar power station, while the solar collectors take up around 51 hectares.

Australia's ample supply of less arable land, is well suited to solar generation and storage.

Australia easily can generate, store then transfer enough energy to satisfy Australian market demands.

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Aidan,

You have been retreating on your claims whenever you are challenged due to your complete ignorance. It is clear that your knowledge is only what you can google.

It is impossible to supply a city or country without baseload supply, and the only workable renewable base load supplies such as biogas and hydro etc are limited. There are no other workable renewable baseload supplies, and even the test sites of molten salts cannot provide continuous load.

Presently there is no workable country wide supply possible without either coal, gas, oil, or nuclear. Your comments that renewables are expensive but affordable are vacuous and unsupported.

Shadow,
"You have been retreating on your claims whenever you are challenged due to your complete ignorance."
I have not retreated on my claims. However when challenged I have explained them further, so that you're no longer able to make the false assumptions that you previously made.

" It is clear that your knowledge is only what you can google."
Like many things that seem obvious to you, it's not actually true.

"It is impossible to supply a city or country without baseload supply,"
If you mean baseload plant, that's false.
If you mean sufficient electricity to supply the base load, that's true but irrelevant because the limiting factor is the peak load not the base load.

"and the only workable renewable base load supplies such as biogas and hydro etc are limited."
Although they are limited, there is scope to use them in a much more intensive  way than at present.

" There are no other workable renewable baseload supplies, and even the test sites of molten salts cannot provide continuous load."
The purpose of a test site is to test, not to provide continuous supply. There is no technical reason solar thermal with MSS can't provide continuous load, but commercially it makes no sense to do so — it makes much more sense to design it to meet peak demand and fill the gaps in the supply from wind and solar PV.

"Presently there is no workable country wide supply possible without either coal, gas, oil, or nuclear. Your comments that renewables are expensive but affordable are vacuous and unsupported."
There is no technical reason why we can't install sufficient renewable energy capacity to meet demand. It would be expensive, but I think it would pay for itself in the long run.