This month, daily peaks of 2,000 megawatts have become ordinary, but the state’s batteries hit 2,000 megawatts for the first time just two months ago, on May 22, right around the time Moss Landing was working again after months of repairs and troubleshooting. (For perspective, 2,000 megawatts is about the capacity of a large coal, gas or nuclear power plant, so we’re still talking about a small share of the electricity supply.)
It was only a year ago that the state’s battery systems collectively hit their first peak of 1,000 megawatts, according to figures from the California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that runs the grid covering most of the state.
“We’re relying on these batteries to basically store the excess energy from solar in the middle of the day, and then discharge later in the day when the solar is dropping off,” he said.
But batteries still have a long way to go to make a serious dent in the demand for gas. When battery use was peaking on July 9, natural gas power plants were providing more than 13,000 megawatts to the grid.
Jaak
Read the whole article to understand the benefits of electrical storage.
says the plant is rated at 750MW/3,000MWh so there must have been an upgrade since the proposed upgrade in January 2022 (when this was written)
That is a 750MW rating with a capacity of 3000 MWh which would mean 750MW for 4 hours.
i.e collect solar from ~8am to 4 or 5pm, then discharge for ~4 hours.
Or, more likely, charge from ~8am to 3pm and ramp up the discharge from 3-5pm, then full discharge for a couple of hours, then ramp down the discharge
www.montereyherald.com/2022/09/20/caltrans-highway-1-tempora…
Officials closed Highway 1 in both directions in Moss Landing early Tuesday morning after a fire was detected at the PG&E Elkhorn Battery Storage facility…The North County Fire Department and Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued a shelter-in-place advisory Tuesday morning…
“It was well involved when we arrived,” he said by phone Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve done a lot of training with both PG&E and Vistra, the two companies that have these battery storage facilities here — training before they even built the plant — so we were familiar with the procedures on what to do. When one of these battery packs are actually actively burning, we don’t do direct fire attack on it … we don’t try to put the fire itself out. We basically protect the exposures around it, protect the other battery packs.”…
The PG&E Elkhorn Battery Storage facility became fully operational in April. It was designed and it is maintained by both PG&E and Tesla, and is owned and operated by PG&E. It can store and dispatch as much as 730 megawatt-hours of energy to the California power grid at a maximum rate of 182.5 megawatts for up to four hours during periods of high demand.