Source: RWE connects its first utility-scale battery storage project to the California grid
Preface. In 2024 if all of the BESS battery storage time were added up, they could store 8 of the 8,760 hours of annual electricity generated in the USA. Only 5% of their energy is used to actually store energy, the rest is arbitrage to quickly balance fluctuations caused by wind and solar living and dying. Yet we need from one (720 hours) or three or more months of energy storage (2160) of 4200 TWh annual electricity to cope for the seasonality of wind and solar in a 100% renewable grid. But it isn’t simply a matter of building more energy storage batteries, because the technology they rest upon is shaky and unstable and complex.
Most states are too flat to develop pumped hydro storage, the only commercial option today. PHS is also very expensive and can cost billions of dollars in the few places where one might even be put since the best spots were built decades ago. One of the few ways to balance wind and solar without using natural gas are batteries. Other posts explain why these won’t scale up, but that’s just the beginning of their problems as you’ll see in the two articles below.
This paragraph especially struck me: Cell imbalances can occur because battery energy storage systems comprise of hundreds of thousands of individual battery cells, and while these cells are part of the same system, they vary in quality and aging. The weakest cell among them dictates the performance. Thus, when the BESS is charged, not every cell will charge to the same targeted value (e.g., 100% SoC). At the same time, when discharged, not every cell will be discharged to the same planned value (e.g., 0% SoC).
Preface. My greatest fear is nuclear war over the remaining resources on earth, since that has the potential of driving us extinct. I don’t believe there are enough fossil fuels left to do that via climate change because world conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, the master resource that makes all others possible — coal and natural gas too (though for sure hundreds if not thousands of years of crazy weather and vastly reduced carrying capacity, perhaps enough to make agriculture difficult for a long time). But with the end of oil and endless growth capitalism depends on, the world will return resource wars, the time immemorial way to keep growing and gain wealth. Russia’s attack on Ukraine is all about resources, check this encyclopedia entry out, Ukraine has incredible fertile soil, minerals, and more (
