Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

zolairenergy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

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

#61

Post by pibaker »

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…

If all you have is a lawnmower engine, it doesn't matter how much gas you have. You won't be going very fast.

Same deal with energy storage. Yes energy capacity matters. But if you can’t put stored energy into the grid fast enough you get a brown or black out right away.

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

#62

Post by lr1970 »

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.

> > For the first time, California discharged just over 12,000 megawatts, equivalent to 12 large nuclear plants, of energy from its battery arrays.

Clueless journalist conflates power (megawatts) with energy. They need physics 101. For electrical energy common unit is megawattHour (megawatt drawn for entire hour). A smaller unit would be megaJoule (megawatt drawn for 1 second).

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

#63

Post by fmajid »

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.

Coal plants were mostly displaced by natural gas, but several states still rely on them for base load.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54919

Independently of its horrendous impact on the environment, more people die from coal mining accidents every year than in the entire history of nuclear power (yes, including Chernobyl).

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

#64

Post by dragontamer »

pibaker wrote: post #61
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…

If all you have is a lawnmower engine, it doesn't matter how much gas you have. You won't be going very fast. Same deal with energy storage. Yes energy capacity matters. But if you can’t put stored energy into the grid fast enough you get a brown or black out right away.

Except we have flywheels to solve the power problem (single digit minutes of storage, extremely high power).

The reason why batteries are being talked at all is because we are missing the energy storage problem (hours, or even days. Some people want seasonal storage but that's impossible with our current levels of tech).

The so called lawnmower engine that stores energy slowly in the summer but delivers it slowly in Winter would be more useful than you might think. Especially because we have solutions for every other tier (capacitors/supercaps for seconds of storage, flywheels for small minutes of storage, batteries for large minutes of storage, pumped hydro / compressed air energy storage for hours of storage).

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

tristanj wrote: post #56
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.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by therealpygon »

stavros wrote: post #49
throwaway2037 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Battery array, not battery. The achievement is not that it came from “a battery”, it’s that amount of power — 40% of their state power — came “from batteries” for a period of time. An array is a collection of batteries just like putting three D batteries in a flashlight forms a battery array.

The facetious remarks that the same could be said of a D battery are absolutely on the mark…for the point of being a joke about the headline…

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

#67

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

sampo wrote: post #52
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is a direct correlation with the electricity price. As the evening peak is saturated the morning peak will follow. Followed by the night.

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

#68

Post by rainsford »

tristanj wrote: post #38
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.

I agree, this article is horrifically misleading. An array of batteries discharging 12,000 megawatts for ... 5 minutes? 1 hour? 1 day? is not comparable to a nuclear power plant generating 1,000 megawatts continuously 24/7 for months without refueling. Also batteries are storage. They do not generate electricity. They store excess energy produced elsewhere, by actual electrical generation facilities, then release it…

> You can't compare batteries to actual power plants.

Sure you can. It makes as much sense as comparing EVs to gasoline powered cars. Which is to say that it's perfectly fine if the question you're trying to answer is whether one can replace the other, which is in fact the question here. As long as the lights come on when it's dark out and your car goes when you hit the accelerator, does it really matter to you as a user whether the power to do those things was created right that second or created hours ago and stored until you needed it? An EV doesn't produce its own energy either, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether it can replace your gas powered car and that's why people directly compare them.

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

#69

Post by rickydroll »

fmajid wrote: post #63
jojobas wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Coal plants were mostly displaced by natural gas, but several states still rely on them for base load. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54919 Independently of its horrendous impact on the environment, more people die from coal mining accidents every year than in the entire history of nuclear power (yes, including Chernobyl).

Not to mention that the waste product from coal-burning power is radioactive. https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/21557305

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

#70

Post by remarkEon »

londons_explore wrote: post #5
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…

It appears expensive electricity is mostly a policy decision. Schemes to support low carbon energy, strict emissions controls etc. Let everyone do what they were doing in 1980, and prices would be rock bottom by now.

Yeah I don’t understand why the first priority of any policy maker isn’t to make the cost of electricity as low as possible. We certainly have the technology to do this.
Post reply on HN