3 ms·

At worst wind provided only 2% of its capacity, 40GWh would be gone in minutes, please count on TWh.

• epistasis 6y ago
  It was just an offhand number, there's already 17GW of storage in ERCOT's interconnection queue for the next few years, which is 40GWh - 70GWh. By 2035, the soonest we could expect to see a new nuclear reactor powering on, we will have many multiples of 70GWh. Not sure if TWh will every be needed for a grid that only peaks at 80GW. The cheapest solution will be a tradeoff between excess renewables capacity and storage, it will be interesting to see what the market picks for Texas.
  • snowwindwaves 6y ago
    70 GWh of battery storage would have kept the lights on for an extra 2 hours during this event - assuming the batteries themselves aren't affected by temperature. While battery storage might be nice to increase the capacity factor of a solar or wind farm it isn't going to make a difference in an event like this where a weather system moves in for a week.
    • epistasis 6y ago
      The current grid took a looot longer than 2-4 years to build, and that 17GW/50GWh is just 2-4 years of replacement equipment at the very beginning of a transition. So I'm not sure why this amount of batteries needs to power the entire grid, or how that's a helpful or even interesting comparison.