When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.
California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
81–90 of 363 posts
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#82When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.
I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated.
Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#83Does it make the electricity price go down or up? It seems to me that the electricity price never goes down.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#84When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.
I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.
Later, they say “lithium ion batteries only have 4 to 6 hours of capacity”, which again, what? But maybe that implies that the actual capacity rating is their “capacity” x 4-6.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Flow batteries aren't any good for seasonal shifting; the capex per kWh-capacity is much too high. Granted, ordinary batteries aren't good for that either.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#86When they say their battery storage capacity is 15,000 MW, do they mean MWh? Because watts are time-independent, or rather, they're like speed to Joule's (watt-hour's) distance.
I struggle to understand why journalists consistently failed to use Wh as a unit of power. People generally can understand it because it is how they are billed and how appliances are rated. Even on HN people will defend not using Wh because there is some grid or city in the USA that bills differently.
Uh... "Wh" is not a unit of power. Watts are units of power. Watt-hours measure energy. Probably journalists are getting this wrong for the same reason you are.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#87Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla Megapack 2 XL units (LFP chemistry) manufactured at Tesla’s Lathrop, CA “Megafactory.”
> Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla Megapack 2 XL units It's a story about California's battery storage. Tesla hasn't built all of that capacity. For a Tesla (or other battery producer) press release? Sure. For an article about the general phenomenon? Irrelevant to the point that if it were included I'd be suspicious of the article being a plant.
By my estimate (GPT5) Tesla has up to 17% of all front and behind the meter battery storage in CA, and is also the vendor growing the fastest in CA. The California battery storage story is also a Tesla story, but based on the positive tone of the article, it clearly made more sense to leave Tesla out of it.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why is PG&E so poorly run? I don't live there, just follow the news and their name comes up constantly in negative press.
It’s a public company, not run directly by the government. It has a monopoly dictated by the CA government.
They have no interest in doing good service but instead in making money. They don’t have to really answer to anyone. Supposedly the CA government could implement things to improve the lives of Californians that would influence how PG&E operates but CA politicians are bought off by this corporation. So, there we have it
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#89The 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…
Good luck building nuclear in non-generational timescales and at reasonable prices.
The future is solar simply because these electricity catchers from the sky fusion are mass producible goods that you can just keep pumping and pointing it to the sky in matter of days at dirt cheap prices.
Re: California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
#90Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla Megapack 2 XL units (LFP chemistry) manufactured at Tesla’s Lathrop, CA “Megafactory.”
> Interesting how they never mention that these are Tesla Megapack 2 XL units It's a story about California's battery storage. Tesla hasn't built all of that capacity. For a Tesla (or other battery producer) press release? Sure. For an article about the general phenomenon? Irrelevant to the point that if it were included I'd be suspicious of the article being a plant.
If you google any article about eland it literally says they use tesla batteries that were built here in the US
i think tesla has built MOST of the capacity