Faced with worsening climate-driven disasters and an electricity grid increasingly supplied by intermittent renewables, the US is rapidly installing huge batteries that are already starting to help prevent power blackouts.
From barely anything just a few years ago, the US is now adding utility-scale batteries at a dizzying pace, having installed more than 20 gigawatts of battery capacity to the electric grid, with 5GW of this occurring just in the first seven months of this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA).
This means that battery storage equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear reactors has been bolted on to America’s electric grids in barely four years, with the EIA predicting this capacity could double again to 40GW by 2025 if further planned expansions occur.
California and Texas, which both saw all-time highs in battery-discharged grid power this month, are leading the way in this growth, with hulking batteries helping manage the large amount of clean yet intermittent solar and wind energy these states have added in recent years.
The explosion in battery deployment even helped keep the lights on in California this summer, when in previous years the state has seen electricity rationing or blackouts during intense heatwaves that see air conditioning use soar and power lines topple due to wildfires. “We can leverage that stored energy and dispatch it when we need it,” Patti Poppe, chief executive of PG&E, California’s largest utility, said last month.
“It’s been extraordinary growth,” said John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
“It’s still technology that we are getting used to working with because the system wasn’t designed for it, but from a reliability perspective it presents a golden opportunity. This changes the whole paradigm of producing electricity, delivering it and consuming it. Storage gives us a bit of a time machine to deliver it when we need it.”
During the scorching summer of 2023, the Texas energy grid wobbled as surging demand for electricity threatened to exceed supply. Several times, officials called on residents to conserve energy to avoid a grid failure.
This year it turned out much better — thanks in large part to more renewable energy.
The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand. It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.
And the grid held strong even during the critical early evening hours — when the sun goes down and the nighttime winds have yet to pick up — with the help of an even newer source of energy in Texas and around the country: batteries.
The federal government expects the amount of battery storage capacity across the country, almost nonexistent five years ago, to nearly double by the end of the year. Texas, which has already surpassed California in the amount of power coming from large-scale solar farms, was expected to gain on its West Coast rival in battery storage as well.
Last month 0.4% of power available in California came from battery storage, versus 40% from gas. So would 100X as much battery capacity allow gas to be dispensed with ? Use of it could certainly be lowered, but pretty much all the gas turbines would still need to be maintained for shortfalls. You’d also need much more wind and solar to charge the batteries. That’s not considering winter, when gas rose to 52% of demand. Combined wind plus solar output in December was less than half of that for July (3.78 TWh versus 8.12 TWh in July – @ElectricityMaps )
Numerous experts have commented on the ability of batteries (& other new technologies) to disrupt entire industries at incredibly low penetration levels. Tony Seba, Saul Griffith, (speaking especially about Australia & the long-term fallout from the Hornsdale Power Reserve), David Roberts & others, I believe, have all talked about it insightfully.
“Rooftop solar and home batteries make a clean grid vastly more affordable: Distributed energy is not an alternative to big power plants, but a complement.”
David Roberts, Volts, May 28, 2021
This chart in particular is mind-blowing once it’s understood.
“DER Altered Load Duration Curve”
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc24e1c50-51d1-4f51-a8e2-9602d587d57b_1784x1770.png
Just a 5 or 7% shaving of peak demand by DERs—distributed solar plus batteries—can make 30% of the expensive & inefficient gas peaker gang obsolete, & it expands from there, exponentially, like batteries, solar & wind, EVs, & electrification are expanding.
Of course, unlike those gas peakers, batteries are also useful at other times for ancillary services, frequency regulation, etc..
What’s developing with the growth of batteries that can connect to the grid is a new grid approach, and it is going to expand in ways that might be hard to see right now. Look to rural areas in developing nations to see some of it, where solar+battery IS the local grid in a village that wouldn’t be reached by a traditional generate-transmit-consume grid for decades (like the Rural Electrification Act was needed in the US to counter the economics that prevented power reaching un-profitable areas).
But the change is batteries and fuel-free generation are both improving in cost/performance rapidly, and have attracted wide-scale investment so the improvement cycle is really just getting started, and will also roll into power electronics and other, related systems and software that’s going to feature a lot of attention to
– the DC side of power flows and generation, for home-islanding or even DC appliances in remote locations
– the management of charging and discharge to the grid based on real-time or predictive power price
– the growing disruption from a more-turbulent climate, for residents in an area to maintain power and transportation even if wildfires, floods, landslide break their contacts to the larger grid.
Think of one scenario that will change thinking in the US – many rural areas see shrinking populations, aging populations – both leading to less investment in infrastructure, while simultaneously making available electricity life-critical. So there’s a built-in need for homes to be able to use power when available from the grid, but also still have power should the lines drop. This becomes a health/safety/economics issue and will help pull out some of the pro-fossil political oomph.
A new development in Florida went in designed for solar, flood resilience and resilience. Ian camped over the place with category 5 winds and their lights stayed on. Others in Florida should take note.
Do you mean 52% was from gas electrical power plant or does that include gas heating?
The metric should be how much GHG is being displaced and at what cost (including up-front capital, time to construct and test, carbon payback period, and operating cost).
I’m starting to feel almost…hopeful…about fracked geothermal!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/10/17/geothermal-energy-fervo-utah/
That’s just electricity – last year California used about equal amounts of natural gas for power and for industry (over 600, 000 million cubic feet each, out of total 2,000,000.) Domestic use was 450,000. Fossil fuel use everywhere is mostly for other ends than power generation (entirely in places like Quebec and British Columbia with a ton of hydro.) Anyone who says ‘Our electricity was 50% renewable last year, we’re half way there!’ is missing the big picture. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_cons_sum_dcu_sca_a.htm
My first real job in the mid 1960’s was in computers, in those days computers were huge lumbering mainframes, with very little memory and storage capacity compared to modern day equipment. Then in the 90’s smart, academic people were lecturing me to prepare for the coming “paradigm shift” (a phrase I got sick & tired of hearing about) from the giants to small but powerful servers running Unix, and Linux, using open software and the “internet”, instead of expensive proprietary network and operating system software. There was resistance and mutterings from the old-timers (including me I’m ashamed to say). But now it has come to pass at truly amazing speed and you’ll only see mainframes in museums and maybe the occasional bank or airline. And me I was sadly and eventually outsourced and now paint for a living. Methinks a new paradigm shift is nearly here and hooray and good riddance to the old, planet destroying ways of industry and business.
This is an amazing graphic animation of Moore’s Law vs. reality:
Does anyone know what the figures on the top picture represent? Eg: GW hours, output ?? And the fanciful percentages? Straight question.
Possible culprit for rise in methane – microbes on a feedback loop:
Scientists may have solved the mystery behind a top climate threat
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/04/methane-emissions-microbes-climate-change/
On the other hand, industry does not seem to respond much to the need to fix their unwanted methane emissions. And dare I say it but Trump has a good chance of taking the presidency once again.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-11-04/cop29-methane-pledges-aren-t-yet-reducing-emissions