California secretly struggles with renewables

[rangerrebew]

California secretly struggles with renewables
January 19, 2021
By David Wojick
Originally posted on Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)

Nationwide we are spending untold billions of dollars on huge batteries, trying to keep the erratic nature of renewables from crashing the electric power system

California has hooked up a grid battery system that is almost ten times bigger than the previous world record holder, but when it comes to making renewables reliable it is so small it might as well not exist.

The new battery array is rated at a storage capacity of 1,200 megawatt hours (MWh); easily eclipsing the record holding 129 MWh Australian system built by Tesla a few years ago. However, California peaks at a whopping 42,000 MW. If that happened on a hot, low wind night this supposedly big battery would keep the lights on for just 1.7 minutes (that’s 103 seconds). This is truly a trivial amount of storage.

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/california-secretly-struggles-with-renewables

[thackney]

The new battery array is rated at a storage capacity of 1,200 megawatt hours (MWh); easily eclipsing the record holding 129 MWh Australian system built by Tesla a few years ago. However, California peaks at a whopping 42,000 MW. If that happened on a hot, low wind night this supposedly big battery would keep the lights on for just 1.7 minutes (that’s 103 seconds). This is truly a trivial amount of storage.

A really dumb comparison.  A grid battery system is not designed to replace all the power from all the power plants at the same time.

It is like comparing your car engine to supply the power needs for every car on the highway at the same time.