The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
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The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
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Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#2Gigawatts are not a unit of energy.... something something zalgo.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#3> The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
So they now have two. /s
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#4Gigawatts are not a unit of energy.... something something zalgo.
Installed capacity is sometimes measured by power output rather than energy storage capacity. Both measures are relevant.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#5It's easy to explain to finance people. It's a form of commodity speculation. Storage is a buy-low, sell-high business, with a daily cycle. This expansion will continue until peak and valley prices start to level out.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#6It's easy to explain to finance people. It's a form of commodity speculation. Storage is a buy-low, sell-high business, with a daily cycle. This expansion will continue until peak and valley prices start to level out.
> easy to explain to finance people. It's a form of commodity speculation
Energy trades unlike any other commodity due to its perishability. There is nothing easy about trading power, though if someone has a background in derivatives, that helps. (They're also irregularly perishable.)
For the lay person, I'd recommend smarting up on Fabozzi's Fixed Income before trying to explain anything to anyone about trading power.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#7How long does the typical battery last before it needs significant new investment (major maintenance or replacement)? In other words, how long before we need to install another 30 GW not to increase capacity, but to maintain it?
I'm not a pessimist but I know that at this stage in an adoption cycle, it's all gain, but that's not the long-term reality. I'm wondering what the long-term looks like.
In part, if the capacity keeps doubling, replacing 30 GW will be trivial compared to the new capacity. But eventually that will flatten out.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#8Anyone else starting to get the feeling that the idea of "base load" power was a scam ? By "base load" I mean the insurmountable blocker for renewable adoption.
The storage industry has already proven it can basically double national installed capacity from one year to the next: It did so in 2023 and 2022, and in 2021 it more than tripled the previous year’s tally. The continuation of this trend just gets more impressive with time: A few years ago, doubling storage capacity only meant building 1 gigawatt. Now, the industry is looking at adding 14 gigawatts in a year, requiring an unprecedented amount of work at project sites around the country.
It's hard to believe how quickly the renewable revolution is happening. The rise of AI? What about the rise of renewables, holy hell.
I was browsing panels the other day for my upcoming project to convert our entire house to solar (we only bought last year, it's top priority for me, for my children's future) and I cannot believe that I can buy top of the range 550W panels for about $200USD per panel, like, my electricity bill is about $400 a month. It's totally ridiculous. I cannot believe people more people haven't caught onto this. I'll be able to pay off the whole system, including batteries in about two year's worth of electricity bills, granted I'm mostly installing myself, it's wild.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#9Anyone else starting to get the feeling that the idea of "base load" power was a scam ? By "base load" I mean the insurmountable blocker for renewable adoption. The storage industry has already proven it can basically double national installed capacity from one year to the next: It did so in 2023 and 2022, and in 2021 it more than tripled the previous year’s tally. The continuation of this trend just gets more impres…
I've been in your boots for 15 years, and I barely convinced anyone. Even my thermal panels are viewed with suspiction, and people don't believe me when I told them my hot water come from them with a little help from an electric heater in the winter. They pay themselves once per year, easily. Frustratingly, the more common doubt is "if it's so good, how are there so few people doing it?"
At this point I gave up. I enjoy my free electricity, and even earn some money, but quietly.
A pending change in households is going 24/48V DC. The inverters are costly, and they feel stupid when you know a lot of appliances have an AC/DC transformer to undo what your $3K inverters are doing 10 meters away, losing maybe 20% in the process.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#10How long does the typical battery last before it needs significant new investment (major maintenance or replacement)? In other words, how long before we need to install another 30 GW not to increase capacity, but to maintain it? I'm not a pessimist but I know that at this stage in an adoption cycle, it's all gain, but that's not the long-term reality. I'm wondering what the long-term looks like. In part, if the capac…
I don't know the actual numbers on that, but I do know that stationary storage lasts much longer than e.g. EV batteries, since there are no weight restrictions, so they're cycled more gently, temps are better, they can be kept in a more optimal window, you can use things like LFP that are heavier, and BMS has more latitude with more cells to work with.