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California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

latimes.com

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Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#71

Post by alecco »

cbmuser wrote: post #63

The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in California: - France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly - California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/5y/year... And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan: - https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of... They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh. Nuclear power…

Nothing to be proud of. Dangerous ancient reactors owned by an almost bankrupt company about to be nationalized.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/03/the-long...

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#72

Post by Gigachad »

nodesocket wrote: post #66

"leaving rolling blackouts behind..." I'll take this bet CA blackouts aren't over.

Adelaide, Australia used to have constant rolling blackouts, including a state wide blackout once. After that, Tesla (pre insanity era) built a grid battery storage system which essentially fixed the problem. I'm sure there were other improvements to the grid at the same time. But these days the grid is incredibly stable while also being majority solar and wind powered. The battery is able to buy and sell power daily and profit on the difference between high and low demand times. And if there's an equipment fault somewhere, it can respond fast enough to cover the time between a generator going offline, and the backup ones starting up.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#73

Post by kylehotchkiss »

qaq wrote: post #36

CA has strange pockets of pretty well setup infra. Like Carlsbad has a desalination plant, and a modern standby ng power plant

I wish we’d put some desal plants in the north of the state and start feeding into the CA aqueduct and unlocking more Central Valley farmland

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#74

Post by nandomrumber »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
hagbard_c wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That information does not fit the narrative so it is left unsaid.

> That information does not fit the narrative so it is left unsaid This is a good opportunity to calibrate your sense of truth. The LA Times is owned by this South African-born immigrant [1]. (Himself the the son of "Chinese immigrant parents who fled China during the Japanese occupation.") He is, like Elon, pro-Trump (after, like Musk, supporting Democrats when they were in power) [2]. And he, like Elon, has censore…

It does mention another battery manufacturer, Spark. Where do they fit in to the narrative?

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#75

Post by potato3732842 »

bradlys wrote: post #37
Lammy wrote: post #27

I don't really care if the power stays on for five-nines as long as I'm still paying 61¢/kW-h for it :/ https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...

Criminally overpriced. We're not getting shit for it either. God forbid you live in any of the more woody parts of California either. You'll have to have your own battery or generator anyway. As someone who plans to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains long term, I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything.

>I will be going completely off grid as PG&E will just cut power forever rather than fix anything.

Depending on where you live you, your neighbors and/or your predecessors likely a) voted for people who wrote laws to make that illegal b) sneered at anyone who wouldn't want to be on the grid.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#76

Post by olejorgenb »

alecco wrote: post #71
cbmuser wrote: post #63

The electricity mix in France is still way cleaner than in California: - France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/5y/yearly - California: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/5y/year... And their kWh costs less than 20 Cents in the standard plan: - https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of... They even offer flex prices going down as low as 12,32 Cents/kWh. Nuclear power…

Nothing to be proud of. Dangerous ancient reactors owned by an almost bankrupt company about to be nationalized. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/03/the-long...

https://archive.ph/RQxKM

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#77

Post by tooltalk »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #7
standardUser wrote: post #4

This is the way. It's become standard practice in China, which now leads to the world with half of all battery installations.

China is a mixed bad, they also lead the world in new coal power plants. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

China is adding new coal capacity roughly equal to America's entire coal capacity by the end of next year, or 180GW. These new installations don't replace old coal plants -- in H1 2025, China decomissioned only about 1GW.

China is also increasing their coal footprint outside China despite their pledge not to[1].

1. China Helped Indonesia Build One of the World’s Biggest, Youngest Coal Fleets. It’s Still Growing, Nicholas Kusnetz, data analysis by Peter Aldhous, Inside Climate News, Oct 19, 2025

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#78

Post by jaggederest »

pfdietz wrote: post #30
jaggederest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we're probably going to see flow batteries take over in fixed position arrays which will mitigate the risk of fire pretty substantially, being low density and liquid. It's challenging though not impossible to light salt water on fire.

I thought the prospects for flow batteries were becoming fairly dire due to the decline in cost of Li-ion cells. LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion technologies, I think.

I suspect for extremely large batteries or seasonal shifting (summer->winter) flow batteries will still have a place, but I could be wrong.

Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind

#79

Post by potato3732842 »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #19
zanon234 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Texas will stay ahead for the foreseeable future. California keeps shooting itself in the foot with regulatory hurdles and permit issues.

Texas also has higher energy demands (residential AC + industry + bitcoin friendly). Seems intuitive that they would have more to gain from larger battery infrastructure.

CA also shoots itself in the foot by having all its wealth and population in mild areas so those places run the show and nobody takes it seriously until it's a hot-summer, everyone cranks the AC, the grid keels over and then "how could this have happened". It's literally the stick in spokes meme. Sure there's some guy in the desert who's been screaming about how this stuff matters, but nobody listens to him because they were calling him a dumb yokel the other 364 days of the year.
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