alt Hacker News> The statement that somehow "batteries neuter the advantage that gas has over coal" is not something I understand.
In thermal electricity plants it takes a lot longer to go from cold & dark to generating electricity with coal than with either Combined-Cycle gas or especially the Open-Cycle "peaker" gas plants. Both types of gas plant also AIUI have a lot better ability to "throttle" their power output.
This means if you have a bunch of CCGT like Britain, you can use those directly to "top-up" the power from your fleet of solar PV and wind turbines, whether that's 1GW of top-up or 20GW of top-up. The change from weather (sun goes down, wind picks up, clouds appear, etc.) is relatively slow compared to what a gas plant can do, whereas it's too fast for coal to keep up as I understand it.
Coal by it’s nature is much less amenable (from a physics/chemistry) perspective to automation and high resolution control. Less pure/refined, granular instead of a gas, harder to start and burns longer once started, etc.
Contaminants in the coal (due to it being a solid mineral) also means it burns with a lot often toxic ash that is hard to deal with.
On the plus side, you can often literally use an excavator to dig it up and put it in the back of a train and then burn it with minimal other capital equipment.
It all makes sense.