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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

#51

Post by tialaramex »

7734128 wrote: post #36

Why are green articles always written so poorly? 12 GW of power is great however. Most nuclear reactors are about a gigawatt, but most nuclear power plants have multiple reactors. 3-6 GW per plant is perhaps a more likely measure.

California's demand commonly goes from 18GW to 30GW in the same day.

Lets take your smallest "Nuclear plant" idea, if California owns 6 of those they run all the time but it needs 12GW extra at peak, where does that come from? If California owns 10 of those they run intermittently, you're still paying to have ten but not getting almost twice the benefit so your prices soar.

So the way you'd presumably fix it would be to... build loads of storage and own say 9 of these 3GW nuclear plants, drawing from batteries at peak then refilling them overnight. But wait, that's already what California did that you're unhappy about - so what gives?

Then we notice that in reality although you think "most nuclear power plants" would produce 3-6GW in fact California doesn't own ten, or eight, or six, but one such plant and it produces... drum roll... 2.2GW nameplate.

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

#52

Post by sampo »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #44
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).

Good point, and good financial strategy. But the morning discharge seems to be about 5%–7% of the evening discharge, so I assume the batteries near empty.

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

#53

Post by rented_mule »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #13
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.

> The batteries are [used] during the peak period, which is in the evening, typically around seven o’clock, producing as much as 40 percent of the peak capacity requirements. In most countries the peak period is a 4-5 hour window.

Yep. PG&E is the electric company for most of Northern California. Their "time of use" plans typically specify 4 PM to 9 PM as the peak period.

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

#54

Post by tialaramex »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24
aquir wrote: post #11

We need something like this in the UK given the constant abundance of renewable energy.

UK is up there in the world rankings for batteries. I think they have slightly more grid batteries installed than California. UK have more people, but less money and less electricity used so I'd say they're doing better than California on battery deployment.

I do not think so. There is BESS here and it's hard to be sure from the available data but it sure looks like less than 10GWh of BESS, maybe much less. There is now more BESS here than pumped storage, which was installed as a Black Start† rather than specifically storage but it's just not very much compared to California from what I can see. So maybe I'm wrong about how much capacity it is, because the Pumped Storage is like 20GWh top to bottom.

† Most modern power stations perversely need electricity in order to start them, so if your whole grid goes offline you're fucked, you go dark and your civilisation is now on a clock - a Black Start facility is a station which can go from black (no electricity) to running. In the case of Britain's pumped storage that's because "all" we need to do is allow the water to run through the generator. Once one or two Black Start sites are up you can use that power to start the other generators and restore supply to residents, and things get back to normal in a few hours.

[Edited to say that since we know there's about 20GWh of PSH the larger BESS can't be as small as I thought unless it's run a lot harder...]

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

#55

Post by jojobas »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #35
energy123 wrote: post #25

A graph is easier. Here's California: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2026-05-15 Here's Texas: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2026-05-15

This series of graphs shows grid batteries quickly displacing peaker gas plants in Queensland over 24 months / two years. This isn't the most advanced grid in the country, but it's just good business to displace the most expensive and dirtiest gas plants even if you still use gas for other tasks on the grid. https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/open-...

The only problem with that is that coal plants are increasingly priced out at midday and no alternative exists for overnight.

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

#56

Post by tristanj »

energy123 wrote: post #25

A graph is easier. Here's California: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2026-05-15 Here's Texas: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2026-05-15

The most interesting insight from this chart is that Texas actually produces more solar electricity than California.

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

#57

Post by sampo »

tialaramex wrote: post #51
7734128 wrote: post #36

Why are green articles always written so poorly? 12 GW of power is great however. Most nuclear reactors are about a gigawatt, but most nuclear power plants have multiple reactors. 3-6 GW per plant is perhaps a more likely measure.

California's demand commonly goes from 18GW to 30GW in the same day. Lets take your smallest "Nuclear plant" idea, if California owns 6 of those they run all the time but it needs 12GW extra at peak, where does that come from? If California owns 10 of those they run intermittently, you're still paying to have ten but not getting almost twice the benefit so your prices soar. So the way you'd presumably fix it would be…

> California's demand commonly goes from 18GW to 30GW in the same day.

That extreme intra-day variation is also partially caused by California's cheap solar power: Cheaper prices draw demand to those hours.

In other locations, (some) people (partially) adjust their consumption patters to follow the cheap wind energy hours, and this leads to different consumption patters. Less intra-day variation but but inter-day variation.

If California's prices were wind-dominated (typically a little more wind at nightime), or nuclear or burning dominated (stable), it would not cause such large variation in the intra-day consumption pattern.

This electricity price figure is readable, but 10 years old, so today the variation in California must be larger than it shows:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32172

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

#58

Post by ZeroGravitas »

tialaramex wrote: post #54
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is up there in the world rankings for batteries. I think they have slightly more grid batteries installed than California. UK have more people, but less money and less electricity used so I'd say they're doing better than California on battery deployment.

I do not think so. There is BESS here and it's hard to be sure from the available data but it sure looks like less than 10GWh of BESS, maybe much less. There is now more BESS here than pumped storage, which was installed as a Black Start† rather than specifically storage but it's just not very much compared to California from what I can see. So maybe I'm wrong about how much capacity it is, because the Pumped Storage…

It hard to get exact numbers because the rollout is fast in both places but it looks like they have strikingly similar targets for 2030 and 2040 in terms of GW but California both started earlier so is still ahead in GW deployed and their regulations mean that 4 hour is more common so they're actually about 2x on storage duration in California.

Both doing well, but UK would need much more of a handicap for GDP than I thought to claim a win. Solar and batteries do generally pair better than wind.

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

#59

Post by greenavocado »

While we're sleeping splitting hairs about whether it's possible to pull 12 megawatts from a D cell battery for 2 attoseconds I'll throw my hat in the ring and claim that nuclear pellets are batteries if we redefine what a battery means (just like that other recent article about heritability was redefined)

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

#60

Post by maxldn »

jojobas wrote: post #55
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This series of graphs shows grid batteries quickly displacing peaker gas plants in Queensland over 24 months / two years. This isn't the most advanced grid in the country, but it's just good business to displace the most expensive and dirtiest gas plants even if you still use gas for other tasks on the grid. https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/open-...

The only problem with that is that coal plants are increasingly priced out at midday and no alternative exists for overnight.

I feel like batteries, while they won’t work for weeks, exist overnight as well.
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