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Originally Posted by Arragonis
What is unreliable about a gas or coal station - you turn it on, fuel it and it works - sorted.
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The stations aren't the problem (assuming your probably government-run 3rd world utility can afford to buy fuel for the generating station), it's the grid. If you have sufficient generation on the grid to support demand, all is well*. If demand exceeds generation, then you get brownouts, blackouts, destroyed equipment, &c. See any EE text on powerflow & stability.
*Well, all is well until you get a wind or ice storm taking down a lot of lines. (My neighbor's kid works as an electric lineman in the Midwest, and you just wouldn't believe what he makes in a week after a big storm.) Or you maybe have a solar flare blowing out parts of the grid... Then you have the cost of running power lines all over the place - lines made of increasingly-expensive copper, which people will steal even when the lines are energized, lending a double meaning to "hot" merchandise :-)
Now if you, as a person living in a 3rd-world country (or even a rural area of the US or Europe), just happen to want enough power to run lights, charge a cell phone or computer, maybe run a refrigerator or the occasional power tool, a solar or wind system looks like a pretty reliable alternative.
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how do you power (for example) a steel plant from that ?
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You build your steel plant near a hydroelectric dam or nuclear plant, and ship the steel (or aluminum, etc) to where it's needed. Why do you think that most US aluminium production is (or was at one time) located near the Columbia River? And most other production is located where
renewable hydroelectic power is plentiful?
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You can't which is why the UK energy system requires loads of gas stations as backup to renewables, sitting there at idle just waiting - consuming gas and emitting CO2 but no energy being produced.
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Sorry, but no.
Properly designed peaking plants tend to be gas turbines, which can be brought from cold start to full power in minutes. They're also required for grids that are primarily powered by fossil fuels, since demand fluctuates.
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PS: My apologies for thinking it's only 3rd-world countries that might have problems managing fuel purchases for their grid generation. I see in the news today that we have similar problems right here in the US:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...r/#more-155929