Of course it occurred to me........thats exactly why they are there, for when the wind don't blow n the sun don't shine. The beauty of gas turbines is they can reach superheat very quickly. You just open a valve to start the process. A coal fired power station module must maintain heat even when there is an oversupply of power eg a hot sunny day and all those household solar panels in the cities are churning it out. And where is all this excess going.....its going to "earth"....... or being consumed in resistors which turn electrical energy to heat which is disipated into the earth and atmosphere. Yet the base load coal power station keep producing albeit at a reduced rate, just in case the sun goes behind a cloud! And when this does happen the coal stations start feeding coal, a slow process so the satellite gas plants jump in.
now as for cost yes this contingency is very very expensive. The cheapest alternative by far is to keep the base load coal station powering at 3/4 speed throughout and waste the solar to earth. But then there is the leftist ideology (religion) that the coal is bad.
Do you know why European countries, especially Germany and France, are passionately championing renewables. Its because they have ran out of coal after using it for about 7 centuries to power industry and now they have significant disadvantage to countries that have this cheap resource. So what we do is we invent GW and CC and shame these coal fortunate countries into giving up there advantage and place carbon penalties internationally on their manufactured goods!
Oh n by the way, they have a base load alternative....nuclear, the greenies dont seem to mention that, they focus on the expensive renewables
