A great follow project for California’s train to nowhere that is twice over budget and no track yet.
MIT Technology Review: The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid
The Clean Air Task Force recently found that reaching the 80 percent mark for renewables in California would mean massive amounts of surplus generation during the summer months, requiring 9.6 million megawatt-hours of energy storage. Achieving 100 percent would require 36.3 million. The state currently has 150,000 megawatt-hours of energy storage in total, mainly pumped hydroelectric storage with a small share of batteries.
Building the level of renewable generation and storage necessary to reach the state’s goals would drive up costs exponentially, from $49 per megawatt-hour of generation at 50 percent to $1,612 at 100 percent. And that’s assuming lithium-ion batteries will cost roughly a third what they do now. Similarly, a study earlier this year in Energy & Environmental Science found that meeting 80 percent of US electricity demand with wind and solar would require either a nationwide high-speed transmission system, which can balance renewable generation over hundreds of miles, or 12 hours of electricity storage for the whole system. At current prices, a battery storage system of that size would cost more than $2.5 trillion. “The system becomes completely dominated by the cost of storage,” says Steve Brick, a senior advisor for the Clean Air Task Force. “You have to pause and ask yourself: Is there any way the public would stand for that?”
MIT Technology Review: The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid
The Clean Air Task Force recently found that reaching the 80 percent mark for renewables in California would mean massive amounts of surplus generation during the summer months, requiring 9.6 million megawatt-hours of energy storage. Achieving 100 percent would require 36.3 million. The state currently has 150,000 megawatt-hours of energy storage in total, mainly pumped hydroelectric storage with a small share of batteries.
Building the level of renewable generation and storage necessary to reach the state’s goals would drive up costs exponentially, from $49 per megawatt-hour of generation at 50 percent to $1,612 at 100 percent. And that’s assuming lithium-ion batteries will cost roughly a third what they do now. Similarly, a study earlier this year in Energy & Environmental Science found that meeting 80 percent of US electricity demand with wind and solar would require either a nationwide high-speed transmission system, which can balance renewable generation over hundreds of miles, or 12 hours of electricity storage for the whole system. At current prices, a battery storage system of that size would cost more than $2.5 trillion. “The system becomes completely dominated by the cost of storage,” says Steve Brick, a senior advisor for the Clean Air Task Force. “You have to pause and ask yourself: Is there any way the public would stand for that?”