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There are no large scale storage batteries. The only large storage systems are hydro storage and even those don’t have enough capacity to store energy for more
by cbmuser 6y ago
There are no large scale storage batteries.
The only large storage systems are hydro storage and even those don’t have enough capacity to store energy for more than a few hours.
In Germany, all hydro storage plants combined can supply Germany with electricity for one hour at night before they’re empty (40 GWh).
- epistasis 6y agoWill be large scale batteries very soon, as the grid storage market is growing at an exponential pace. As battery prices fall, entirely new markets open up. Right now batteries beat the cost of natural gas peaker plants. In Arizona, where solar is so cheap, batteries are becoming economical for correcting the duck curve in the evening. Germany has plenty of wind overnight. It's not like an entire country's grid will ever be powered by a single source of energy, so I'm not sure what the point of comparing hydro capacity to total energy consumption is.
- girvo 6y ago> There are no large scale storage batteries. South Australia would like to have a word with you.
- tialaramex 6y ago194MWh would be a lot for you but it's not enough for this context. Suppose it's dark for just 10 hours. 194MWh over ten hours is 19.4MW which is enough to power a small town. The primary purpose of that Tesla battery is to manage short-term discrepancies, it can do 200MW power output for ten minutes without problems and that's enough time for relatively slow standby systems to spin up. To give a comparison hydro storage systems of 10GWh (almost two orders of magnitude more) are totally a thing. Why didn't Australia buy one of those? Well the problem is geography, the hydro storage needs a mountain because what it's really storing is gravitational potential energy, and er, that bit of Australia is a bit flat.