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Do you know why California is using batteries instead of cheaper nuclear? Is it just for cynical political reasons?
by hntrader 6y ago
Do you know why California is using batteries instead of cheaper nuclear? Is it just for cynical political reasons?
- fallingknife 6y agoNo one is using batteries at a large scale at this point.
- hntrader 6y agoUser "jeffbee" said that California has 250MW of battery facilities right now
- fallingknife 6y agoI assume that's 250MWh, and California consumes 260 TWh per year, so that's 30s of power consumption.
- jeffbee 6y agoNo, it's 250MW of peak power. I'm not sure what the total energy storage capacity is for California, but the typical project has 4 hours of capacity. For an example please see this PG&E project which is coming online in Summer 2021. These installations have 700MW of power capacity and each has a 4-hour discharge time. https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/adviceletter/ELEC_5826-E.pdf https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/adviceletter/ELEC_582...
- fallingknife 6y agoYou're right about the numbers, but still this is tiny at the scale of the grid. 2.8GWh is still only around 5 mins of consumption. You would probably need a few days of storage to run a 100% wind/solar grid, so that's about 1000x more.