Bernd
Fighting algorithmic racism like John Henry
teutonic 1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
That battery figure is for storage watt-hrs, and can't be compared to generation capacity in watts.
California's "250 MW Gateway Energy Storage System" has exactly 250MWh of capacity, so can operate for... Exactly one hour. Compare that to a gas peaker that can produce that output indefinitely. This can be useful for frequency and voltage regulation, and help with daily wind intermittency and the solar duck curve, but it's not any kind of solution to seasonal intermittency.
That's what I was talking about before with using nameplate and lcoe figures to avoid thinking about actual operation issues.
Notice that almost all the gas shutdowns are long-delayed decommissioning in California. The north-midwest is rapidly expanding gas generation.
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Notes -
DO you have a citation for peaker plant expansion? What I read indicates that used to be the case. More recently and likely a long term trend, batteries are winning the race for rapid on rapid off energy that peaker plants used to dominate. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new-battery-capacity-than-natural-gas-generation-in-2023/
That battery figure is for storage watt-hrs, and can't be compared to generation capacity in watts.
California's "250 MW Gateway Energy Storage System" has exactly 250MWh of capacity, so can operate for... Exactly one hour. Compare that to a gas peaker that can produce that output indefinitely. This can be useful for frequency and voltage regulation, and help with daily wind intermittency and the solar duck curve, but it's not any kind of solution to seasonal intermittency.
That's what I was talking about before with using nameplate and lcoe figures to avoid thinking about actual operation issues.
Notice that almost all the gas shutdowns are long-delayed decommissioning in California. The north-midwest is rapidly expanding gas generation.
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