Baseload

Baseload is the minimum, ever-present level of electricity demand on a grid, the "floor" of consumption that exists 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It is the power needed to keep refrigerators, servers, streetlights, and industrial processes running through the small hours of the night, before any daytime peaks are layered on top. Generators dedicated to meeting this steady demand are called baseload plants, and they are designed to run continuously at a constant output rather than ramp up and down.

What provides it

Baseload power has traditionally come from sources with low marginal fuel costs and high reliability that are uneconomical or technically awkward to cycle on and off: nuclear, large hydro, geothermal, biomass, and historically coal. These plants achieve high capacity factors precisely because they are meant to run flat-out. Layered above baseload are intermediate (load-following) plants and, at the very top, peaker plants that fire up only during demand spikes.

Why miners care about baseload economics

The challenge with baseload generation is that demand is never perfectly flat, at night, consumption can dip below the economic output of always-on plants, creating surplus power that is wasted or sold at near-zero (sometimes negative) prices. Bitcoin miners are uniquely positioned to absorb this overnight surplus, providing a flexible, always-available buyer that improves the economics of baseload assets without competing with consumer demand.

This pairing is a core argument for siting mining alongside nuclear and hydro generation. Contrast with peaker plants, which sit at the opposite end of the dispatch curve.