Good explainer from Public Media in California on the ongoing battery storage boom in California, which is neck and neck with deep Red Texas in deploying clean energy and storage.
The graphs below from CAISO, the California grid operator, shows how batteries are changing the way that grid works – allowing massive and growing solar energy collected during the day to be saved for evening hours, and increasingly displacing gas.
If you wonder why the current Energy Secretary and Gas Baron Chris Wright wants so badly to curb the clean energy transition, this is why. A few more years and where this is going will be obvious to everyone.
Wow — from ~7GW of gas power in 2021 to ~0.25GW gas power in 2026!! This is Real Progress!
exactly. gutting gas in those evening peaks.
cheaper alternative to gas peakers
Yup – they’re coming for the peaker plants! Then the rest. Good video, thanks, especially interesting to hear the resonance issue they discussed.
Earlier this evening I was looking at Utility Dive and a couple of pertinent stories :
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-system-failures-fell-98-in-7-years-but-older-systems-need-special/832882/
“The Electric Power Research Institute analysis found a dramatic drop in energy storage system failures from 2018 to 2025 amid a host of technology and project improvements.”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/scaling-vpps-could-cut-electric-bill-increases-by-half-brattle/832956/
“If all U.S. electric utilities were to achieve a 4% system peak reduction utilizing residential virtual power plants, the resource could help reduce bill increases for average households by more than half over the next five years, according to a report from The Brattle Group.”
Brattle had done a study for ERCOT back in 2015 projecting that grid-scale batteries there could be viable by 2018, and battery storage in Texas now is huge.