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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

#151

Post by benzible »

I'm hungry for good news about technical solutions working - especially right now when Trump just killed the US's largest solar project (6.2 GW in Nevada), ended USDA solar support for farms, and posted "We will not approve...Solar". So I wanted to check if California's battery story holds up.

The data is actually encouraging. Peak demand hit 48,323 MW in 2024 - higher than the 2020 blackout year's 47,121 MW [1]. Weather was severe: 2023 broke 358 California temperature records, 2024 saw valleys top 110°F during multiple heat waves [2][3]. Battery discharge reached 5-7 GW during Sept 2024 peaks, offsetting ~16% of demand [4]. That's real.

Fair caveat: 2020 had compounding failures (imports fell 3,000 MW short, gas plants failed, planning issues [5]), and recent years benefited from better coordination and wet winters. But batteries were clearly the biggest new factor - going from 500 MW in 2020 to 15,700 MW today is massive buildout, and it performed when tested.

Nice to see an existence proof that we can make progress on adapting to climate change's second-order effects, maybe even progress on root causes - through technology, at scale, in the United States of 2025.

[1] https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

[2] https://news.caloes.ca.gov/extreme-heat-breaking-records-at-...

[3] https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-forecasts/california-...

[4] https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-beats-the-heat/

[5] https://calmatters.org/environment/2020/08/california-2020-r...

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

#152

Post by bmicraft »

nharada wrote: post #108
dwood_dev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Sodium Ion may be the future of grid batteries, it's not the present. As long as LFP is cheaper, there is no reason to go with Sodium. This calculus will probably change in 3-5 years, but today Sodium is more expensive and therefore has little demand without some form of discount or subsidy. The switch will be rapid once the economics make sense, but they don't yet.

CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh. If that ends up even partway true it'll completely change the economics of power storage.

That's plain wrong, they have not announced that price target anywhere. There is speculation that it could be there target internally for the long term, but there is basically zero chance they'll start at that price and no guarantees they'll ever reach it.

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

#153

Post by zdragnar »

foobarian wrote: post #147
sgustard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has them both beat. Hydro rules! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CA-QC/5y/yearly (To be transparent, there's controversy around calling hydroelectric renewable.)

Hydro does rule. Top 8 power stations are hydro right now. And the top power station has been a hydro for over a hundred years now. Very cool! Three Gorges has capacity of 22.5 GW.

I really hope nothing bad happens at the three gorges dam. There's nearly half a billion people that would have to be evacuated, and tens of millions who likely wouldn't be able to evacuate in time due to proximity.

I'd rather live near a modern nuclear plant myself.

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

#154

Post by chihuahua »

Manuel_D wrote: post #124

One of my biggest pet peeves is when outlets talk about energy storage exclusively in terms of output and neglect to mention capacity. Does 15.7 gigawatts of storage mean 15.7 GWh? Capacity is as important, if not more important, than output.

Based on the following sentences from the article, it's probably 4 to 6 times more than 15.7 GWh (60 to 90 GWh, apparently):

"Battery energy storage is not without challenges, however. Lithium-ion batteries — the most common type used for energy storage — typically have about four to six hours of capacity. It’s enough to support the grid during peak hours as the sun sets, but can still leave some gaps to be filled by natural gas."

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

#155

Post by jeffbee »

rconti wrote: post #149
jeffbee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statewide grid demand is somewhat declining because distributed small-scale solar is massive. It now has an aggregate capacity of 20GW. This is usually ignored by people who are only looking at ERCOT v. CAISO grid statistics. Texas basically doesn't have any small-scale solar.

Are you saying Texas doesn't have much rooftop solar? That's surprising. I suppose largely due to low electricity costs making the investment not worth it? (And, I suspect, secondarily, utilities not really incentivizing it)

And the hail, I suppose.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #29
WillPostForFood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

And smashing everything in Nuclear, whilst America turns to fossil fuels. Much as I am against autocracy and oppression, china is doing very well at improving their energy sector.

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by hammock »

labrador wrote: post #12

I remember the bad old days of rolling black outs when Enron was doing energy arbitrage with Calfifornia's electricity. A more recent negative event was the battery fire at Moss Landing on the Monterrey Bay near where I live. If we use Sodium-ion batteries in the future we won't have that risk. "On January 16, 2025, the Moss Landing 300 battery energy storage system at the Moss Landing Vistra power plant (Monterey Co…

People don’t talk enough about the risk of fire. The crazy thing is when a battery installation catches fire they don’t actually fight the fire. They just have to let it burn out. The resulting environmental damage is terrible.

This happened recently in the Central Valley. I can’t remember the name of the battery site but it was a huge one, and literally right next door to one of the largest Driscolls strawberry farms, on which black lithium smoke settled all over , over the course of several days/weeks in the middle of the summer.

Edit: maybe we are talking about the same fire? https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1880277672393412848

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

#160

Post by tooltalk »

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.

>> LFP promises better fire behavior than older Li-ion technologies, I think.

LFP's thermal runaway threshold is higher than other lithium ion battery types, but once TR starts, LFP generates more hydrogen gas that can explode if not air-vented out fast enough.

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