3 ms·
I don't think that's necessarily the case for sufficiently large installations unless the cells are really slow. For any grid-scale battery you're going to hav
by mdorazio 6y ago
I don't think that's necessarily the case for sufficiently large installations unless the cells are really slow. For any grid-scale battery you're going to have many thousands of individual cells linked together. Even if each cell is individually only capable of relatively small charge/discharge rates, it shouldn't matter at the scale of the whole installation for normal supply/demand scenarios. I would only expect brown-out situations if something bad happens to the grid (like PG&E decides to shut down power distribution elsewhere because of fire risk...)
- tgb 6y agoI think there will always be a trade-off where charge/discharge rates need to be comparable to the durations of peaks and troughs in supply/demand or else capacity must be over-provisioned. If peaks/troughs last N hours and you have K times the minimum capacity needed, then each cell needs to charge/discharge in N/K hours.
- Scoundreller 6y agoIf you’re a public utility, sure. But a faster recharge lets you do more of your buying the absolute trough. And faster discharge lets you capture more of any spike (but that’s less valuable methinks). Kinda like being able to charge your Tesla with a bigger circuit at home so you don’t have to charge as much during peak hours.
- toast0 6y agoI think there's some applications for high discharge cells. The local car ferry is electrifying, and they're planning on charging at every docking. On my side, our grid power is somewhat fragile, and they're adding redundant wiring between substations (it will be a loop instead of a tree), and a battery bank at the substation nearest the ferry dock, to ease the peak demand.