> Yes, in for example Sweden these extra costs borne by all consumers for reserves and balancing markets are in the range of $0.0X cents/kWh delivered. You are not financing a nuclear plant with that.

Whatever the ascribed fee/kWh for financing backup power plants that's written on some electric power bill might be, (whether it's 0.05 $/kWh or 0.20 $/kWh) it's completely irrelevant. If there's a backup plant being maintained and run somewhere in your country (or the neighbouring), the people are somehow paying for it. If the fee on the electricity bill is too low to actually cover all the costs, then it's still payed for by the people, through taxes or other fees or whatever. Doesn't matter at all. The backup plant, be it nuclear or fossil, is being financed. Why is that? Because people don't want rolling blackouts and politicians know that.

> Why would a consumer that decided to sidestep the grid care? They care about the average price of all their consumed energy, not the fluctuations. Peak shaving is already a market. Although mostly to sidestep infrastructure costs related to upgrading grid size.

If by sidestepping the grid you mean an almost/entirely self-sufficient household (all year, not just summer), then we're talking about which percentage of households of the northern hemisphere? Is it 1 % or 0.1 % or 0.01 %? These aren't the people who'd care, true. But the issue is obviously not with them but with the other ~ 99.x %.

My impression is, you're failing to see, just how high spot prices and thus peaks in a flexibly priced contract would jump, if your grid were underpowered by let's say 30 % of actual demand. The only reason you're not seeing such high prices, is because those fossil/nuclear plants are somewhere (either in your country or in some neighbouring) ready to run.
Nobody knows just how high the price/kWh would spike, were there a few days with just 70 % of electricity available compared to the usual demand curve (in some country where heating is electricity based). But it would either need to settle damn high, so that only consumers who're willing to pay a lot, still actually consume while enough others are effectively deterred from consuming by the high price so that reduced demand=generation. Either that, or you'll have rolling blackouts or some other intervention to reduce demand, which effectively violates the way that people/businesses in prospering countries are used to operating, i.e. drawing as much power as they see fit, whenever they see fit.

I'm happy to learn about other ways of meeting consumers needs, when dealing with a "significantly less renewable electricity available than urgent demand and regrettably no backup power plants" situation.

I very much doubt people would settle with regularly being in the situation of either (A) being priced out of using electricity or (B) having to turn off their heat pumps or aircon and not use their kitchen stoves during certain hours. No, they'd tell their politicians to (C) bring those fossil/nuclear plants online "chop-chop".

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> Consumers choose a mixture of A and B, because the grid is not only renewables.

No. Noone is actually choosing or would choose A, not even partially. Or can you name an instance when someone did not do XY (drive their EV, go by train, heat/AC their home, cook some food, ..) which they really wanted to do, because there wasn't enough electricity available in that moment? And no, when someone chooses to charge their EV a little less or accepts a waiting time for their EV to be charged to then make their trip doesn't count, because they were obviously flexible enough.
Sure, many industries now closely watch electricity prices and sometimes throttle/halt production. Doesn't count either, when choosing operating times according to electricity prices is part of the business model.

> We will likely need gas backup for another decade or so.

Absolutely. It simply wouldn't work without them, or rather: people will vote whoever would get enough such plants running again, were there any shortage and they wouldn't care about their state spending billions to get it done.

> Your view of the grid is from the 70s, when "baseload" was the god. That is not the case anymore.

Not really, I think. Baseload is not the god, it never was. Stability is, and always was. My view of the grid is about stability and the simple fact, that people just wouldn't accept if the gaps that renewable sources leave (until they're overbuilt 3x .. 4x ..? and there's enough storage) weren't filled in by fossil/nuclear generation.

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> With the marginal pricing model we have today, nuclear requires the whole sale average prices over a year to be ~$120-200/MWh, I and everyone except people advocating for nuclear find such prices unacceptable. That is Ukrainian war gas crisis prices locked in until the plant is paid off, who wants that?

I doubt we'll see electricity prices fall in the next 10 years.

Looks like in Germany people won't be able to blame it on "nuclear generation clogging the net" then.

> Thus the discussion inevitably spirals into "grid costs", "backups" and what else. Because lets through government actions force nuclear to exist to get a better number on your pet metric of "actual price". All while the world moves on.

As to "world moves on". Well, you wrote it yourself: "We will likely need gas backup for another decade or so."

I think our grids will cling to gas powered plants for quite a bit longer than that.

Interestingly, according to some institute, "researchers found that new gas-fired power plants with an installed capacity of 23 GW must be built by 2030."

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-new-energy-tar...

Newly built gas plants ... I don't think they'll only be run for ten years.

> Read and come back, stop thinking we live in the 70s.

> https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

Thanks for reminding me. Quite a few pages there. Did you read them all?

I like this nicely cushioned quote from the chapter "D. RAW MATERIAL DEMAND FOR 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS" (p. 78191):

> All in all, there appears to be reason for moderate optimism that material criticalities will not represent an unsurmountable roadblock towards the transition to 100% RE systems. However, it is also clear that it will be a formidable challenge to ensure the timely availability of resources while simultaneously minimizing the negative impacts of extraction on humans and the environment. This needs to be a focus of upcoming research.

Reminds me of all the stubborn renewable optimists who IMO do the world a disservice by neglecting the inevitability of degrowth.