Talk:Dispatchable generation

Some nuclear power plants are dispatchable or at least load-following

Are we distinguishing dispatchable from load-following ? CANDU reactors and many used in France can load-follow. - Rod57 (talk) 14:19, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, a load-following power plant is certainly dispatchable. CANDU is indeed more maneuverable and starts up faster than a conventional light-water reactor plant. It would be nice to reflect it somewhere in the text. Викидим (talk) 20:06, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

On the "dispatchability" of renewables

@Ita140188 You have said that "solar and wind are not dispatchable" (using a technical definition of the word dispatchable, which is questionable but not relevant to what I want to point out here see edit below) but your edit did not actually change whether the article says that these renewables are dispatchable or not. All you did was seperate a sentence into two and add "however" at the start of the second. Could you justify your edit based on the change you made please?

edit: Sorry, please consider this: I have thought of a clearer way to talk about "dispatchability." I can understand why you may say that "solar and wind are not dispatchable", because they are not dispatchable on their own, but it is correct to say that <these renewables + energy storage> are dispatchable, and I think you would agree, even if you believe this makes it a different technology (a perspective I would have sympathy with, since I am aware of the complexity of adding energy storage.)

But a clearer way to phrase this would be that "solar and wind are sometimes dispatchable." You can say this if you consider <these renewables + energy storage> as a subset of <these renewables>. In that case, it is true that solar and wind are not dispatchable in the case that they are implemented without energy storage, but that they are dispatchable in the case that they are implemented with energy storage. /edit Meansofmultiplication (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Solar and wind are never dispatchable. Batteries are dispatchable. You can choose to install a battery next to solar and charge the battery with solar, for example, but that does not make solar dispatchable. You can charge the same battery with any other energy. It's not a property of solar, but of the battery. This is not just a question of wording, it is a substantial difference. Batteries are often more expensive than the solar (or wind) they would store, especially for longer durations. By your definition, anything is dispatchable, as long as you put a battery next to it. This would make the term useless. Ita140188 (talk) 10:21, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it would make the term useless to say that anything is dispatchable if you connect it to energy storage. I think that would be true. That statement is very useful in fact, because it demonstrates that the value of energy storage is that it can make any energy generation technology effectively dispatchaple.

The fact that energy storage costs more does not take away from the fact that the overall system is "effectively dispatchable." You wouldn't refute that it's effectively dispatchable, would you? If so, you should want to remove the section that says that. But if you agree that it is "effectively dispatchable," my question is, what is the difference between something being actually dispatchable and effectively dispatchable? I thought that something being dispatchable meant that it was able to be dispatched? Meansofmultiplication (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Again, solar and wind are not dispatchable. Storage batteries are dispatchable. This is already stated in the article. Ita140188 (talk) 10:38, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Respectfully, you're not engaging with my point. Please tell to me what you think the difference is between being actually and effectively dispatchable. Meansofmultiplication (talk) 10:40, 3 June 2026 (UTC)