[KevinMS]

> We have 10 too much capacity without building any more gas generation.

YOU STILL HAVE TO RUN THEM. Maintenance, upkeep, crews, and then you have to subsidize any loses they have for sharing the load to keep them online. Basically any wind farm is TWO power plants, the wind farm and its backup. They never count that backup in these cost assessments.

[DamonHD]

You do realise that the last 2 times the GB grid had major glitches (since 2000) part of the issue was thermal (nuke, gas, coal) plants going down in big chunks beyond the overall system capacity to cope.

1) The system works as a system

2) Big single plants going down (eg 'tripping') are more hazadous to grid stability than smaller individual generators

3) All generators have to be 'backed up' by spare capacity, especially big thermal

4) Yes this stuff is priced in, especially as in some grids some of the time it is over 50% of the generation