Comment by craftkiller
4 hours ago
Looking at the charts[0], load shifting all the way to winter seems unnecessary. You only need to load shift until ~6pm, in which case there are plenty of better options out there like grid-scale batteries, flywheels, pumped storage hydro, etc.
[0] The 2nd chart on https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2025.05.28/chart2.s...
It depends on your energy mix. The more solar you go, more load shifting is required. Winter solar production is relatively crummy and you need to offset that loss somehow for the entire season.
That chart is showing some curtailment in winter because the grid knows to expect less production. It is already tuned to spin up more gas because solar will underperform relative to Summer.