Author Topic: Tesla Gives the California Power Grid a Battery Boost  (Read 1048 times)

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Offline thackney

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Tesla Gives the California Power Grid a Battery Boost
« on: January 30, 2017, 06:23:36 pm »
Tesla Gives the California Power Grid a Battery Boost
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/business/energy-environment/battery-storage-tesla-california.html

ust off a freeway in Southern California, 396 refrigerator-size stacks of Tesla batteries, encased in white metal, have been hastily erected with a new mission: to suck up electricity from the grid during the day and feed it back into the system as needed, especially in the evening.

The installation, capable of powering roughly 15,000 homes over four hours, is part of an emergency response to projected energy shortages stemming from a huge leak at a natural gas storage facility.

The project, which officially comes online on Monday, is an important and surprising demonstration of how utilities can use enormous collections of batteries in place of conventional power plants.

It is also an indication of how rapidly Tesla is moving to transform itself from a luxury electric carmaker into a multifaceted clean energy company....

California is on track to have an overabundance of energy during the day when its many solar panels are producing energy, but that supply drops sharply as the sun sets, precisely when demand rises as residents come home to use appliances and, increasingly, charge their cars....

The utility’s need for storage was amplified after the sudden closing of the San Onofre nuclear plant in 2013. To fill that gap — and fulfill a state mandate to add storage to its energy portfolio — the utility awarded several contracts for battery storage.

When the scale of the 2015 leak at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in the San Fernando Valley became clear, the commission moved to streamline the process for storage projects. That led to the Tesla project at the Mira Loma substation, as well as a power purchase agreement for electricity from a similar battery project that AltaGas had installed at a natural gas generator it owns in Pomona....

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