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California breaks 1 GW energy storage milestone
- ThePadawan 5y agoTake a shot every time the article uses "GW" and "MWh/GWh" apparently interchangeably for "energy" or "power", also seemingly at random.
- firebaze 5y ago"My car runs 100 miles!" instead of "My car runs 100 miles per gallon!", and almost anyone would notice something is amiss. I don't get the difference to mixing "Watts" with "Watts/hour".
- pranavjoneja 5y agoEnergy is not Watts per hour (Watts/hour), it's Watts times hours (Watt-hours). Sorry for pedantry, but the units are the topic of discussion here.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vizzier 5y agoAnd in turn, watts are joules per second. Resolve Hours to 3600 seconds means 1 Wh = 3600 Joules. Which is the unit we should be using.
- HPsquared 5y agoThat's got me trying to visualise "mile-gallons", and failing because its dimensions would be "length^4".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- firebaze 5y agoI did not imply that at all.
- long_time_gone 5y agoNot knowing the difference in miles and miles/gallon will get you stranded in your car pretty quickly. Now knowing the difference between watts and watts/hour will have almost no appreciable effect on your life. You flip a switch, the light turns on, and you get an invoice a month later.
- tohmasu 5y agoSure, but people writing articles on the subject should know better than to mix units like this.
- renewiltord 5y agoActually, I thought it was very easy to understand. For instance, > Fortunately, 2,000 MW of energy storage capacity is coming online by August 1, per the California Public Utility Commission. Much of this capacity will have four hours of battery energy sitting behind it, nearly 8,000 MWh in total. That's 2 GW of power delivery backed by 8 GWh of storage.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago> 2,000 MW of energy storage capacity I think this is where the confusion starts: if someone talks about "energy storage capacity", my first association is the amount of energy that can be stored, not the rate at which that energy can be discharged from the storage (i.e. power).
- samatman 5y agoIt is a bit confusing, but it isn't wrong, there are just two capacities in question. We could call them power capacity and energy capacity. This system can deliver 2000MW for four hours, or 1000MW for eight hours, but can't deliver 4000MW for two hours, because that exceeds the power capacity.
- philipkglass 5y agoEnergy storage projects are typically described in terms of maximum power (megawatts) and hours of supply at peak power. Multiplying hours and megawatts gives megawatt hours, a unit of energy. Gigawatts and gigawatt hours are just different magnitude units for the same power and energy values, like meters and millimeters. Most electrical grids experience peak demand in the early evening when people come home from work, turn on lights, cook dinner, etc. This peak period is usually on the order of 4 hours. This early evening period is also when solar output drops toward zero. Energy storage projects in CA are currently generally provisioned for 2-4 hours of storage to ensure a good match to this daily evening demand peak and dropping solar output. Storage is still expensive so it doesn't make financial sense to add capacity that isn't going to be used most days. Some of these projects publish detailed information about power and energy. Others just publicize power, but given what is known about the California market their energy capacity can still be estimated to a reasonable degree.
- danans 5y ago> Gigawatts and gigawatt hours are just different magnitude units for the same quantities, like meters and millimeters. I liken it more to distance vs speed. Power, like speed, is a rate, in particular the instantaneous rate at which energy is transferred. Expressed using the same scheme we use for speed (distance per time : power per time), power is watt-hours per hour (or 0.0036 megajoules per hour). I'm guessing we express power differently because James Watt codified the standard unit for power and the standard for electrical energy came from the time-integral of his definition of power.
- philipkglass 5y agoI meant the "giga" units relative to their "mega" counterparts. Same physical quantities but multiplied by 1000.
- danans 5y agoHmm, in that case your comparison should be from MW to GW, not GW to GWh, right?
- kumarski 5y ago$FCG & $TELL - I've bought heavily levered. Gonna be a gnarly market.
- jonas21 5y agoThis is only counting batteries. California has an additional 4 GW of pumped storage capacity.
- ttul 5y agoDid you mean GWh?
- jonas21 5y agoNo, GW -- as in the pumped storage facilities can deliver 4 GW of power continuously. The amount of energy that can be stored in California's pumped storage projects is enormous, measured in hundreds, if not thousands, of GWh, but that's mostly irrelevant to this discussion.
- kjeetgill 5y ago> but that's mostly irrelevant to this discussion. Is it irrelevant? As another thread mentioned, how long you can provide that power for that for and how fast you can replenish capacity seems relevant for its usefulness buffering solar for after hours. I'm pretty unread on the energy storage situation so your insight or any good resources are very welcome!
- jfengel 5y agoCalifornia uses something on the order of 1 GWh/day. If they have the ability to store up hundreds of GWh in a reservoir, then the exact amount becomes largely irrelevant. They have enough, and the limiting factor is power rather than energy.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoCalifornia is at the caost, so why not just add what amounts to reservoir dams of the coast? Why batteries?
- potiuper 5y agoMaybe a few decades ago, but dams have more problems than batteries, especially along near the ring of fire/faults. Hard enough to ensure proper maintenance is done in serene Michigan.
- nomoreplease 5y agoOff-topic but reflecting on the PV in the domain name: What kind of home PV solar panels should a person ask a contractor for? How do you know they're giving you quality rated panels?
- octopaulus 5y agoReputable cells from a factory that laminates them well
- jedberg 5y agoAs a Californian who has been watching the CalISO web page since the 90s, what I find most interesting is that the peak usage and total generation now is pretty much the same as it was in the 90s (~50MW). Based on the energy mix, it looks like lost coal capacity has been replaced with solar and other green energy, and demand has gone down relative to population because of efficiency initiatives and rooftop solar for the largest home consumers (rich people). I'll bet demand falls even faster as home energy storage gets cheaper and more prevalent.
- vondur 5y agoCalifornia still imports a large amount of power from other states (primarily Arizona and Utah, with some hydro from Oregon). So we essentially outsourced a lot of our power production to other states.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoArizona, Nevada, and Utah have quite a bit of area for solar PV. It’s fine for California to import from there as long as they use their leverage to force a move away from coal now, and natural gas later. Clean hydro from the PNW is no different than PJM and NYISO grids importing clean nuclear and hydro from Ontario, Canada (which they do).
- dogsgobork 5y agoDrawing solar from states to the east would only make the duck curve worse though, right? Power production would taper off even earlier than the peak demand.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoYou can charge your residential or utility battery storage from the imported hydro or solar depending on spot prices, no need to consume immediately at that time. Transmission is crucial for flexibility in balancing generation and consumption, as well as optimizing storage utilization. You can also assume there will be times you’ll throw away (curtail) clean energy as it’s cheaper than it would’ve been to store and then deliver it, but you still need that capacity available at other times (seasonal variability).
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agoI got my "hybrid" inverter today. My panel size is 330w x 16. So 5.2kWh. Grid tied system. 1 year. Average production 28 kWh on a good day with no grid power cuts. Well the new hybrid inverter from phocus is supposed to use the generation when grid outside is down internally at home and that opens up a lot of possibilities. Been thinking about using solar water heating to reduce electricity consumption but that is a big project. Batteries are still expensive in india. Lithium ion is prohibitively expensive than lead acid. Agreed it pays in time of life but still. Edit: anyone know if I can incorporate phocus inverter into home assistant ? It has ble so some sort ?
- HPsquared 5y agoI wonder if anyone has invented a "storage heat pump" for air conditioning purposes.
- toomuchtodo 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storage_air_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storage_air_conditioning
- han_solo 5y agoMolten Salt / steam turbine energy storage is 33 times cheaper, safer, and offers a much longer deep cycling lifespan than lithium ion solutions.. i dont understand. we using lithium ion for grid.
- joelbondurant 5y agoNuclear bombs should fix California.
- dekhn 5y agoIf the state reaches the point where we all have electric cars that are recharged overnight by our houses from solar-collected, battery-stored technology, I'd be pretty happy.