How Texas became the hottest grid battery market in the country

Canary Media ^ | 05/13/2024 | Julian Spector

[TexasKamaAina]

States like California, New York, and Massachusetts have passed climate policies specifically intended to jump-start this battery industry. But this year, for the first time ever, the fastest-growing energy storage market appears to be Texas, a free-market-affirming red state that officially cares little about solving climate change. Nonetheless, the state’s low-regulation, business-friendly landscape has created ideal conditions to build batteries quickly and at scale, just like it previously incubated thriving wind and solar markets.

[Tell It Right]

“Grid” and “battery” don’t belong in the same sentence.

[xoxox]

Maybe because, unlike MA and NY, TX actually gets meaningful amounts of sunshine to potentially convert to solar and store in a battery.

[DannyTN]

Freezing is a great motivator.

[DesertRhino]

After they killed Reddy Kilowatt and brought in ERCOT and green, The Texas grid became much less reliable. People are just taking care of yourself.

[Magic Fingers]

“...solving climate change”

There’s nothing to be - or that can be - “solved”.

[steve86]

“Maybe because, unlike MA and NY, TX actually gets meaningful amounts of sunshine to potentially convert to solar and store in a battery.”

Gas, coal, nuclear, hydro power if you wanted to -— can all be stored in grid batteries.

Amount of sunshine really isn’t relevant.

[stanne]

How is this for climate change:
South Texas is 8 degrees -eight-with precipitation. Ice. We native New Yorkers don’t try to drive in ice nor venture out in it with Texans who think they can. No one can. We don’t attempt to walk to the neighbor’s in the rain

Three days of it. The electricity goes out. That’s 8 degrees inside the house for three days

I don’t know what to say in addition to that

Except that the Texas authorities- the people in government- blames it on having switched to depending to a great extent on wind powered electricity generation

[cymbeline]

The article talks about gigawatts. Energy storage is measured in gigawatt-hours or the equivalent. In other words, how long can a “4.5 gigawatt battery” supply 4.5 gigawatts.

I don’t dispute the usefulness of their giant batteries but there has to be more to the story.

I also wonder what would happen if one of these giant batteries is hit with a large weapon. Quite an explosion/fire I imagine.

[Red Badger]

So is fire. Richard Pryor said so...............

[grobdriver]

People are just taking care of yourself.

This.

Although those people must have deeper pockets than me, or cannot run an ROI spreadsheet.

Cost to install a hybrid battery backup solar system on our 2,000 sq.ft. barndo was $50K three years ago. To hell with that.

We now have a propane whole-house standby generator.

[Organic Panic]

Nice and cool down there in the summer to keep these massive batteries cool, right?

[Eva]

The largest solar farm in Texas was built by ARCO in about 1989, and closed four years later, because they said that solar still needed a back up source that would be available whenever solar wasn’t and there were too many reasons why wind wasn’t an adequate back up. BP acquired ARCO Solar when they bought ARCO. BP reurbished the solar farms.

[ptsal]

Bkmk

[NY.SS-Bar9]

“Grid” and “battery” don’t belong in the same sentence.

They are building a battery energy storage system (BESS) five miles from my house. It supposedly will charge off-peak and supply electricity during peak hours. Of course, NY would not need these if they didn't shut down Indian Point and turn off the Natural gas.

[abigkahuna]

There are c omnpanies, like Tesla that make whole house battery packs that are of course re-chargeable through either solar panels or house electric. One or two of those can power a house for a week left uncharged.

For certain applications this makes sense. More rural locations with land for panels to keep the battery packs recharged could be a good choice for some.

This is a bottom up approach that consumers like—the cost benefit. For some, it doesn’t work—for others it does.

[Tell It Right]

They are building a battery energy storage system (BESS) five miles from my house. It supposedly will charge off-peak and supply electricity during peak hours. Of course, NY would not need these if they didn't shut down Indian Point and turn off the Natural gas.

I have huge problems with this, even though I personally have home solar and batteries (in Alabama, not NY).

1) One problem is, whatever the bureaucrats control they mess up. If you want to get into why my solar works pretty good (80% of our power is provided from homemade solar, with only 20% coming from the grid), and grid solar and wind work so poorly, it's because I have a vested interest in making sure mine works both effectively and efficiently.

2) The 2nd problem is that lithium battery storage returns at best 90% of what you put into it. In other words, there's loss of energy to store it and use it later. For example, my LifePo4 lithium-ion batteries took in a total of 12,066.7 kWh, and I got out of them 10,880.5 kWh. That means that 10% was loss on average through the process of storing power while I had excess, the batteries holding the power for a few hours, then discharging the power from my batteries when my home needed it and there wasn't enough solar (i.e. at night, but sometimes part of the next day during rain).

3) Item #2 above assumes no DC to AC conversion or back. Looking at the telemetry I get from my EV's OBD2 port, when charging at 9.4kW from AC at home, only 8.4kW DC is going into the battery to charge it. A loss of 11%. So will these batteries be charged with excess AC power, which means converting that to DC to store the power, then converting back to AC to distribute the power on the grid? The AC to DC conversion loss, then combined with loss while charging and discharging the batteries, combined with loss to convert back to AC might add up to 30% or more loss.

Just so the Dims can feel good about saving us from the Modern Warm Period.

[Tell It Right]

There are c omnpanies, like Tesla that make whole house battery packs that are of course re-chargeable through either solar panels or house electric. One or two of those can power a house for a week left uncharged.

Not my house. My battery stack (not expensive Tesla) holds a large 92kWh capacity (which is very large for residential). Since I drain them at most 70%, call it 63kWh of useable storage. Yesterday alone my home used 66.6kWh. The day before that 67.9kWh. Etc. Obviously the battery stack can't be charged once and hold enough power for a week of my home's needs. (In my case it's an all-electric home and my wife and I drive our EV about 1,300 miles per month. So we need lots of power on a normal day.)

To your point, I haven't had to pull from the grid since April 12 (of the 66.8kWh my home used that day, 12.8kWh had to be pulled from the grid). But that's because I had lots of solar come in during the past 30 days (more than we needed).

[LastDayz]

Man..... I miss the old days when N. Tesla was utilizing energy from the atmosphere. Oh wait....

[brookwood]

” companies, like Tesla that make whole house battery packs...”
Tesla Powerwall
https://www.solar.com/learn/tesla-powerwall/
14 kilowatt hours for $20,000. It provides 14kw FOR ONE HOUR if fully charged.

Generac 15kw generator provides 15kw for as long as it has fuel. If it runs on a natural gas line (e.g. at my house) it provides 15kw FOREVER.

https://www.generac.com/all-products/generators/home-backup-generators/ecogen/15kw-7034-wifi-enabled
And it costs $5,000 not $20,000.
But if Democrats want to freeze in the dark, that works for me, it prevents them from having time and energy to harvest ballots at nursing homes and perform at drag queen story hours in front of children.