Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid | Science | AAAS
This month, officials in Los Angeles, CA, are expected to approve a big solar farm and battery installation in Kern County, with electricity at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour and batteries at 1.3 cents per kWh. The solar farm will have 400 megawatts of solar panel, making 876,000 MWh of electricity per year, or an average output of 100 megawatts. Its batteries will have a capacity of 800 MWh.
Kern County is at the south end of the Central Valley, some 100 mi / 160 km north of LA.
"Goodnight #naturalgas, goodnight #coal, goodnight #nuclear," Mark Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, tweeted after news of the deal surfaced late last month. "Because of growing economies of scale, prices for renewables and batteries keep coming down," adds Jacobson, who has advised countries around the world on how to shift to 100% renewable electricity. As if on cue, last week a major U.S. coal company—West Virginia–based Revelation Energy LLC—filed for bankruptcy, the second in as many weeks.
The United States is headed for a battery breakthrough – pv magazine USA
A new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy projects installed battery storage capacity to reach 2.5 GW by 2023. Florida and New York are set to pave the way, as massive projects in each of those states will account for nearly half of the coming capacity.
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However, this list will likely look very different already by the time 2023 rolls around. Of the 1,623 MW expected to come on-line by the end of 2023, 725 of those MW will come courtesy of two projects, projects contained in states not currently in the top-10.
The first of these is Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) battery system under construction in its Manatee Solar Energy Center in Parrish, Florida. The battery is set to clock in at an unbelievable 409 MW, which will make it the largest solar-powered battery system in the world.
In that project’s shadow, but capable of casting a massive shadow of its own comes the Helix Ravenswood facility, planned to be located in Queens, New York. Almost more impressive than the project’s anticipated 316 MW of capacity is the idea of having a storage project of such magnitude located within New York City.
If nothing else, such battery installations will make natural-gas peakers unnecessary.
Not unless they get about 10,000x cheaper and 100x bigger they fucking won't.
Fart-arsing around with billion dollar megawatts is all well and good, but the world needs cheap, dispatchible, and reliable terawatts.
This cannot be achieved with such low energy density power sources as wind and solar; Even if we were to tolerate having every hill and valley choked with industrial wind turbines and solar farms.
It's time to get serious, and get some nuclear power installed. Wasting money on this futile attempt to make low density energy power modern technological societies is worse than useless.
It's a great excuse to burn lots of gas while the planet dies. But it's not a solution to anything.
Germany has put in VAST effort and money; and has totally failed to reduce her carbon emissions. Despite loads of wind turbines and solar cells blighting their countryside.
How much more time and money must we waste? They've had thirty plus years, and have spent enough money to have built twice the nuclear capacity they would need to completely decarbonise their electricity system. And they have sweet fuck all to show for it.
Except thousands of breathless articles telling us all how effective it all is, and how any day now it will start to bring actual emissions down.
California is no better. They bang on about so many great successes that it seems inconceivable that they still emit carbon dioxide - and yet their emissions have barely changed.
Facts talk, bullshit walks.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?lang=en
Show me the emissions reductions. Show me the nation that consistently has emissions from electricity generation below 100gCO
2e/kWh, without depending on nuclear or hydropower. You can't - because despite three decades of massive effort, there isn't one.
France and Sweden achieved that target in less than a decade each - without even trying to reduce CO
2 at all - it just happened, as an unintended consequence of their decision to build nuclear power plants.
Renewables (other than Hydro and Nuclear) just can't do it. If they could, they would have by now.
They are a waste of time we don't have, and of money we could use to do something useful.