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California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

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Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#41

Post by dragontamer »

internet_points wrote: post #18
dragontamer wrote: post #9

Weird units. Batteries are normally talked about in terms of energy storage, not power. IE: Batteries overall have 0 power. Everything they make had to come from somewhere else. Actually, because of losses in the 20%ish range, it's probably more accurate to say that California's Battery Array is __COSTING__ 2 nuclear power plants worth of power in electrical waste. ---------- Talk about GW-hrs of storage. You know, t…

They use power units to make it comparable with the non-storage sources, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48157824

Yes. People misuse units to compare apples with bananas.

Bad comparisons are bad.

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#42

Post by dragontamer »

asplake wrote: post #17
dragontamer wrote: post #9

Weird units. Batteries are normally talked about in terms of energy storage, not power. IE: Batteries overall have 0 power. Everything they make had to come from somewhere else. Actually, because of losses in the 20%ish range, it's probably more accurate to say that California's Battery Array is __COSTING__ 2 nuclear power plants worth of power in electrical waste. ---------- Talk about GW-hrs of storage. You know, t…

In practice, it can be very relevant. With my own household solar/battery system, I am sometimes frustrated more by limits on how much current I can draw, not by capacity. I could add more batteries, but it seems that the inverter is the limiting factor. And 12MW of inverter is impressive, no?

No?

Natural Gas would crush these numbers at far less $$ invested.

All of this crap is apples vs bananas. It's all fake made up metrics

Strangely enough: natural gas is probably the better comparison because at least natural gas is a peaker / grid stabilization technology.

Batteries are energy storage while nuclear I base load. It's the most nonsensical comparison I can possibly think of.

-------

Energy storage should be compared vs energy storage. How is a battery vs compressed air? How is Li-ion vs Lead Acid? How is Pumped Hydro vs Li Ion?

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#43

Post by Symbiote »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #14
louwrentius wrote: post #6

Just for a moment, try to imagine how much wind, solar and battery storage can be bought with the money required to build just one regular nuclear power plant (gigawatt output). The real thing delaying the energy transition is politics, we have the technology. And on a really small scale, here in NL we can build our own home battery storage systems with cheap 15kWh or 32kWh battery kits from China. Combine that with…

> Just for a moment, try to imagine how much wind, solar and battery storage can be bought with the money required to build just one regular nuclear power plant (gigawatt output). Assuming the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world, assuming the solar is free and you are only paying for the batteries, assuming costs in line with the cheapest grid-scale battery storage in the world, about 6.5h worth of that n…

Hinkley Point C in the UK is costing £48bn at current prices, providing 3GW.

Building 3GW * 2 hours of battery storage at current prices is £1.75bn, so for the same money we get about 48 hours of storage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

https://www.lzyess.com/news/1571.html

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#44

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sampo wrote: post #40

> California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants From this graph we see that in the evening when solar power goes out, for next 3 hours (7 pm to 10 pm) California's battery array is as powerful as 12 nuclear reactors. Then the batteries are drained empty, and the rest of the night California survives by importing electricity from other states. And partially by running hydro power only during the…

The net storage graph clearly shows they aren't drained empty after 3 hours. They keep their remaining charge for the more expensive morning peak rather than compete with cheap imports overnight (there's a graph showing the cost over the time range too).

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#45

Post by nkmnz »

dheera wrote: post #7
dn3500 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California imports a third of its electricity, and that's expensive. It gets almost another third from natural gas. They've been changing rapidly from fossil fuels and nuclear to renewables and that's pretty capital intensive. And there have been some huge costs associated with the wildfires. There's a bit more technical info on California battery storage here: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/04/11/california-battery-d…

The problem with renewables I have is that "what's good for the earth" and capitalism simply don't mix. Solar was fundamentally supposed to be almost-free electricity. You put a bunch of panels up and free energy from the nearest star. The stark reality though is that the people and institutions in control of solar equipment (this includes manufacturers, tariffs, etc.) reprice their stuff to match the price of the di…

Let me translate that four people who don’t speak “capitalism BAD”: Why don’t other people work for free for me? Why don’t Chinese and African miners work for free so I can get free minerals from the earth? Why don’t workers in refineries work for free so that I can get free metals and free silicon of highest purity? Why don’t all the companies that produce solar cells from raw materials, construct modules from the cells, install the modules on roofs, do the electrical wiring, stabilize the grid, provide electrical storage… WHY DON’T THEY WORK FOR FREE EVEN THOUGH I’VE CRITICISED CAPITALISM?

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#46

Post by throwaway2037 »

internet_points wrote: post #12
throwaway2037 wrote: post #8

> For the first time, California discharged just over 12,000 megawatts, equivalent to 12 large nuclear plants, of energy from its battery arrays. That’s enough to meet over 40 percent of the state’s energy demand. For how long? 100 millis, 1 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day? There is a HUGE difference. This stuff reads like PR.

Two to four hours per day. Source: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... under Additional Information about the Data: > The use of the terms megawatts and kilowatts as descriptive of battery energy storage is to effectively convey the instantaneous power contribution of battery storage as comparable to the power produced by grid-level generators. We recognize that energy capacity in the cont…

Hat tip. This is a perfect follow-up. This confirms to me: Yes, it is a major achievement. Batteries with capacity of 24-48 MW-hours is HUGE! Probably none of this infra existed 25 years ago. I wonder: What is/was the total cost (in 2026 dollars) to build this battery infra?

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#47

Post by throwaway2037 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #46
internet_points wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two to four hours per day. Source: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... under Additional Information about the Data: > The use of the terms megawatts and kilowatts as descriptive of battery energy storage is to effectively convey the instantaneous power contribution of battery storage as comparable to the power produced by grid-level generators. We recognize that energy capacity in the cont…

Hat tip. This is a perfect follow-up. This confirms to me: Yes, it is a major achievement. Batteries with capacity of 24-48 MW-hours is HUGE! Probably none of this infra existed 25 years ago. I wonder: What is/was the total cost (in 2026 dollars) to build this battery infra?

Joke follow-up: According to a few sources a standard D battery holds about 24 watt-hours of energy. Thus, a single battery can supply the energy of 12 nuclear power plants for about 2 nanoseconds. Awesome! (I hope that my math is correct here.)

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#48

Post by ZeroGravitas »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #46
internet_points wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two to four hours per day. Source: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... under Additional Information about the Data: > The use of the terms megawatts and kilowatts as descriptive of battery energy storage is to effectively convey the instantaneous power contribution of battery storage as comparable to the power produced by grid-level generators. We recognize that energy capacity in the cont…

Hat tip. This is a perfect follow-up. This confirms to me: Yes, it is a major achievement. Batteries with capacity of 24-48 MW-hours is HUGE! Probably none of this infra existed 25 years ago. I wonder: What is/was the total cost (in 2026 dollars) to build this battery infra?

This rollout occured in the last 10 years.

Some legislation in 2010 set small targets for 2020 and it grew rapidly from there.

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#49

Post by stavros »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #47
throwaway2037 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hat tip. This is a perfect follow-up. This confirms to me: Yes, it is a major achievement. Batteries with capacity of 24-48 MW-hours is HUGE! Probably none of this infra existed 25 years ago. I wonder: What is/was the total cost (in 2026 dollars) to build this battery infra?

Joke follow-up: According to a few sources a standard D battery holds about 24 watt-hours of energy. Thus, a single battery can supply the energy of 12 nuclear power plants for about 2 nanoseconds. Awesome! (I hope that my math is correct here.)

It's not, one battery won't output 12GW no matter for how brief a period you want it. This is the achievement here, that the battery can supply that much current for a time.

Re: California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants

#50

Post by adrian_b »

dragontamer wrote: post #9

Weird units. Batteries are normally talked about in terms of energy storage, not power. IE: Batteries overall have 0 power. Everything they make had to come from somewhere else. Actually, because of losses in the 20%ish range, it's probably more accurate to say that California's Battery Array is __COSTING__ 2 nuclear power plants worth of power in electrical waste. ---------- Talk about GW-hrs of storage. You know, t…

Batteries must always be talked about while mentioning both the stored energy and the maximum power.

These 2 battery parameters depend on different constructive details of the batteries. The stored energy depends on the volume of the electrodes (or of electrolyte in flow batteries), while the maximum power depends on the area of the electrodes.

All combinations are possible, e.g. batteries with high maximum power and low stored energy or with low maximum power and high stored energy or with both high maximum power and high stored energy.

For specific kinds of batteries, it may be easier to build them for high stored energy than for high power, or vice-versa.

Because for any kind of energy storage device both these parameters matter, the animals, like humans, have not much less than a dozen of combinations of energy storage and energy conversion methods, each of them providing different capabilities for the maximum power and for the total stored energy, so that they are chosen for use based on the duration and the intensity of the required effort.

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