peaker

A big year for battery storage

January 29, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A decade ago, the ability of utilities to store large amounts of electricity in batteries was basically nonexistent. In the past several years, growth in battery storage systems has exploded. As of the end of November, the US had about 24 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity in place. This is 71% more than just a year ago. Nearly half of the battery storage in the US is located in California. Texas, Arizona, and Nevada are also leaders in deploying battery storage.

Battery storage allows solar and wind generating plants to keep operating when there is reduced demand for their output and have the electricity that they produce be available later when demand rises. Storing this excess electricity essentially extends the hours of the day when clean energy can be used.

Equally important, the existence of battery storage reduces the need for peaker plants, the fossil-fueled power plants that only turn on at times of peak demand, such as during hot afternoons.

There are 1,000 peaker plants in the US and they are generally heavily polluting, inefficient, and expensive to operate. Some 63 million people live within a three-mile radius of one of them and are exposed to harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. Peaker plants also release more greenhouse gases than other power plants do for every unit of electricity they generate.

Many battery storage facilities are co-located with, or otherwise support, solar energy plants. The amount of solar energy in the US is growing rapidly and surpassed the 100-gigawatt mark in 2024. As solar power continues to expand, so will battery energy storage.

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Battery projects soared again in 2024

Photo, posted August 3, 2024, courtesy of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A solar peaker plant

January 1, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Peaker plants are power plants that the grid makes use of during times of particularly high electricity demand. The power they supply is typically high in cost and usually high in greenhouse gas emissions. When operating the electricity grid, power sources are generally called upon in order of marginal cost. Only when demand is very high do grid operators make use of the highest-cost assets that tend to be fossil-fueled power plants that can start and ramp up quickly.

For years, there has been the idea that solar-powered peaker plants could eventually replace the polluting fossil-fueled ones. Recently, the renewable energy developer, owner, and operator Arevon Energy began commercial operations of the Vikings Solar-plus-Storage Project in Imperial County, California. It is the first utility-scale solar peaker plant in the United States.

The plant utilizes a 157-megawatt solar array combined with 150 MW and 600 MWh of battery energy storage. It can shift low-cost daytime solar energy to higher-cost peak demand periods. The result is a lowered cost of electricity for nearly one million customers of San Diego Community Power.

The project contradicts the often-held notion that renewable energy is inherently unreliable. It can provide carbon-free electricity at specific times of critical need. Typical hybrid solar + storage plants provide electricity during daylight hours and store only excess generation in their battery systems. The Vikings project is specifically designed to shift the entirety of its generation from solar hours to the peak demand period.

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Arevon fires up the first solar + storage peaker plant in the U.S.

Photo, posted October 15, 2024, courtesy of Jay Inslee via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Largest Battery Storage Substation

March 10, 2017 By EarthWise

At the end of last year, Southern California Edison turned on the largest lithium-ion battery storage facility in the world in Ontario, California. It is a substation with 80 megawatt-hours of capacity, enough energy to power 2,500 households or charge 1,000 Tesla cars a day.