Intermittency is a problem for the baseload electricity that an electric utility must provide to its customers. When it is cloudy, rainy, or snowy, my home solar system does not give me electricity and I depend on the grid. Furthermore, I get relatively little solar power in the shorter days of winter than in the summer. Utilities have to be able to count on baseload electricity production so they depend primarily on coal, nuclear, and hydropower plants to provide that (see Figure 4.2). Residential demand is high early in the morning as people get up and get ready for their day, then drops down but builds up through the afternoon and peaks in the evening (26). Solar is not able to meet that demand because solar energy is very limited in the early morning and evening. However, commercial demand rises during the day as people go to work and use a lot of electricity, which solar can help to meet. Cities especially need large amounts of dependable electricity to meet demand even during the night. Solar can help to meet the intermediate load during the day, especially in the Southwest where air conditioning is a big demand factor. Southern California has excellent solar resources and can get a larger proportion of its energy from solar than other parts of the country. The large concentrations of people in the East and Southeast are not so lucky. Whether solar power makes sense depends mostly on where you live.