California embarked on a nation-leading effort about a decade ago: It would effectively stop building new fossil-fueled plants, and instead construct massive batteries to provide on-demand power. The state had already pushed the limits of solar generation, but that wasn’t going to be enough to keep the grid running.
It took a while, but now the years of policy support and utility pilots have culminated in a truly massive fleet of grid batteries. This year, California reached a whopping 11.2 gigawatts of installed battery capacity. That means grid batteries alone can supply about one-fifth of the CAISO system’s peak demand.
This change is altering grid operations on just about any given day, but it became especially evident in the shoulder month of April, when evening battery dispatch spiked relative to previous years, as visualized by energy data firm Grid Status.
That evening battery discharge coincided with a marked decline in fossil gas dispatch to keep the lights on after sunset.
(Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images)
The year has ended, but the energy transition keeps chugging along.
In 2024, clean energy deployments reached new heights in the U.S., with Texas and California proving that huge amounts of solar and batteries can drastically reduce grid problems in the face of extreme weather and soaring electricity demand.
But the energy system is wildly complex, and describing it with words can only do so much. It helps to see the energy system visualized graphically, to catch the inflection points when all the fields of solar panels and boxes of batteries start fundamentally changing the way the broader system operates.
Here are five charts that capture how clean energy transformed the U.S. grid this year — plus one showcasing an epochal shift across the pond.
U.S. wind and solar beat coal generation
Wind and solar notched a major win this year, generating more electricity in the U.S. than the resource formerly known as King Coal.
A Flourish chartStacking these two forms of energy against one may seem a bit lopsided. But while nuclear and hydropower have been churning out carbon-free electricity for decades, solar and wind represent the new guard, coming out of nowhere two decades ago to make a real mark on the energy mix. And unlike nuclear and hydropower, wind and solar are actually getting built at considerable scale now and will continue to be into the future.
Fossil gas is also exerting a stronger grip on the U.S. grid as coal shrinks, growing its market share in parallel with the rise of wind and solar.
And while coal is waning in the U.S., it’s not elsewhere. Worldwide coal demand will set a new record this year, and is likely to remain at that peak through 2027, per a new International Energy Agency report. That makes it all the more urgent for the U.S. to show that a modern economy can survive and thrive without coal and all its air and climate pollution.
California batteries squeeze gas out of peak hours
California embarked on a nation-leading effort about a decade ago: It would effectively stop building new fossil-fueled plants, and instead construct massive batteries to provide on-demand power. The state had already pushed the limits of solar generation, but that wasn’t going to be enough to keep the grid running.
It took a while, but now the years of policy support and utility pilots have culminated in a truly massive fleet of grid batteries. This year, California reached a whopping 11.2 gigawatts of installed battery capacity. That means grid batteries alone can supply about one-fifth of the CAISO system’s peak demand.
This change is altering grid operations on just about any given day, but it became especially evident in the shoulder month of April, when evening battery dispatch spiked relative to previous years, as visualized by energy data firm Grid Status.
That evening battery discharge coincided with a marked decline in fossil gas dispatch to keep the lights on after sunset.
In short, California’s 30 million souls and an economy equivalent to the fifth-largest GDP in the world are all getting cleaner, more reliable power thanks to an influx of batteries that materialized remarkably quickly given the utility sector’s usual slow pace of change. California is paving the way to a future when gas isn’t so necessary at nighttime after all.