Last week, millions of Californians lost power rolling blackouts in response to a penalties of heat wave. As much as conservatives love to cry about how this shows that renewable energy is not reliable, that is just not true.
But it is true that in the transition away from fossil-based energy, batteries can play an important role, and save all that rebuilt energy for when needed. That can help us get rid of fossil fuels for good. California is about to see exactly what that future looks like at this crucial time by bringing the world’s largest battery project online.
The Gateway Energy Storage project in San Diego County, implemented by the company LS Power Development, will store 250 megawatts to the state as enough for power roughly 47,500 houses. Previously, Australia’s largest battery was the 150 megawatts Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, which runs on Tesla batteries.
‘The deployment of the largest battery in the world in California is another step forward, no [only] for the state to achieve its goal of 100% clean, sustainable energy for the electrical energy sector, but also as an example of how quickly clean peak power can be installed, ”wrote Mark Jacobson, director of the Stanford University Atmospheric and Energy Program, in an email.
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So far, only 230 megawatts of the project’s battery cells are in operation, but the entire project is set to be fully commissioned by the end of April next year. In the future, the company said the project will store even more energy. By next summer, it aims to provide 750 megawatts of energy storage, and eventually and the storage could eventually reach 1 gigawatt.
Battery storage can handle whatever power is available and will be very useful for renewable energy. By smoothing the supply of durability so that they can meet the peak demand when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing, batteries can help move gas plants needed to quickly meet the high demand for electricity .
“Batteries are being replaced mainstream for natural gas peaks,” Jacobson said. “Batteries are much better than natural gas because they discharge electricity faster, they do not pollute the air, they do not require continuous invasive mining for gas, and they do not release greenhouse gases during use.”
This new battery marks an enormous leap in energy storage for the state, which had some 500 megawatts of battery storage at the end of last year. However, officials say even more will be needed. California Network Page estimates that the state will eventually have to bring in as much as 12 gigawatt of battery storage to meet energy demand in its transition to renewable energy, in large part because wind power and solar radiation are variable – they only produce power when conditions are right. The same is true for the rest of the world, and we are only at the beginning of the process of building storage. As a whole, 4.6 gigawatt of energy storage is expected to be built worldwide by 2020.
Ketan Joshi, an independent energy analyst and science writer, said batteries are good at providing short-term services, such as rapid injections of power to remove blackouts at spikes in demand, but they alone are not a silver bullet for energy silence.
“Batteries … not good if they are treated as the only option for integration of sustainable renewable energy,” he wrote in an email. This is because they are even cheaper to build, while becoming cheaper. Plus, making them requires tons and tons of energy, as well as materials that can come from doubt sources.
When batteries are brought online, Joshi also said he would like to see them owned by local communities, rather than by large companies.
“This would enable increased storage capacity, but deploy in a way that increases citizen participation in climate action, increases the physical diversity of activation locations, so that it is more resilient to disasters (such as fires!) And increases efficiency for citizens, which is good because everyone is suffering and needs help, by 2020, and this could be a good way to help in that, ‘he said.
Still, Jacobson said, this new project could play a major role in the future of sustainable energy in California.
“Batteries, along with other clean storage options, will help move the world away from fossil fuels,” he said.
Updated: 8/21/2020, 3:50 pm ET: This post has been updated with additional comments from Joshi.
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