California Replaces Gas Plant with Giant, Billion-Dollar Grid Battery (canarymedia.com) 169
Meanwhile, in Southern California, nonprofit news site Canary Media reports that an old gas combustion plant is being replaced by a "power bank" named Nova.
It's expected to store "more electricity than all but one battery plant currently operating in the U.S." The billion-dollar project, with 680 megawatts and 2,720 megawatt-hours, will help California shift its nation-leading solar generation into the critical evening and nighttime hours, bolstering the grid against the heat waves that have pushed it to the brink multiple times in recent years... The town of Menifee gets to move on from the power plant exhaust that used to join the smog flowing from Los Angeles... And the grid gets a bunch more clean capacity that can, ideally, displace fossil fuels...
Moreover, [the power bank] represents Calpine's grand arrival in the energy storage market, after years operating one of the biggest independent gas power plant fleets in the country alongside Vistra and NRG... Federal analysts predict 2024 will be the biggest-ever year for grid battery installations across the U.S., and they highlighted Calpine's project as one of the single largest projects. The 620 megawatts the company plans to energize this year represent more than 4% of the industry's total expected new additions.
Many of these new grid batteries will be built in California, which needs all the dispatchable power it can get to meet demand when its massive solar fleet stops producing, and to keep pace with the electrification of vehicles and buildings. The Menifee Power Bank, and the other gigawatts worth of storage expected to come online in the state this year, will deliver much-needed reinforcement.
The company says it's planning "a portfolio" of 2,000 megawatts of California battery capacity.
But even this 680-megawatt project consists of 1,096 total battery containers holding 26,304 battery modules (or a total of 3 million cells), "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD, according to Robert Stuart, an electrical project manager with Calpine. That's enough electricity to supply 680,000 homes for four hours before it runs out." What's remarkable is just how quickly the project came together. Construction began last August, and is expected to hit 510 megawatts of fully operational capacity over the course of this summer, even as installation continues on other parts of the plant. Erecting a conventional gas plant of comparable scale would have taken three or four years of construction labor, due to the complexity of the systems and the many different trades required for it, Stuart told Canary Media... That speed and flexibility makes batteries a crucial solution as utilities across the nation grapple with a spike in expected electricity demand unlike anything seen in the last few decades.
The article notes a 2013 Caifornia policy mandating battery storage for its utility companies, which "kicked off a decade-long project to will an energy storage market into existence through methodical policies and regulations, and the knock-on effects of building the nation's foremost solar fleet." Those energy storage policies succeeded in jumpstarting the modern grid battery market: California leads the nation with more than 7 gigawatts of batteries installed as of last year (though Texas is poised to overtake California in battery installations this year, on the back of no particular policy effort but a general openness to building energy projects)... California's interlocking climate regulations effectively rule out new gas construction. The state's energy roadmap instead calls for massive expansion of battery capacity to shift the ample amounts of solar generation into the evening peaks.
"These trends, along with the falling price of batteries and maturing business model for storage, nudged Calpine to get into the battery business, too."
It's expected to store "more electricity than all but one battery plant currently operating in the U.S." The billion-dollar project, with 680 megawatts and 2,720 megawatt-hours, will help California shift its nation-leading solar generation into the critical evening and nighttime hours, bolstering the grid against the heat waves that have pushed it to the brink multiple times in recent years... The town of Menifee gets to move on from the power plant exhaust that used to join the smog flowing from Los Angeles... And the grid gets a bunch more clean capacity that can, ideally, displace fossil fuels...
Moreover, [the power bank] represents Calpine's grand arrival in the energy storage market, after years operating one of the biggest independent gas power plant fleets in the country alongside Vistra and NRG... Federal analysts predict 2024 will be the biggest-ever year for grid battery installations across the U.S., and they highlighted Calpine's project as one of the single largest projects. The 620 megawatts the company plans to energize this year represent more than 4% of the industry's total expected new additions.
Many of these new grid batteries will be built in California, which needs all the dispatchable power it can get to meet demand when its massive solar fleet stops producing, and to keep pace with the electrification of vehicles and buildings. The Menifee Power Bank, and the other gigawatts worth of storage expected to come online in the state this year, will deliver much-needed reinforcement.
The company says it's planning "a portfolio" of 2,000 megawatts of California battery capacity.
But even this 680-megawatt project consists of 1,096 total battery containers holding 26,304 battery modules (or a total of 3 million cells), "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD, according to Robert Stuart, an electrical project manager with Calpine. That's enough electricity to supply 680,000 homes for four hours before it runs out." What's remarkable is just how quickly the project came together. Construction began last August, and is expected to hit 510 megawatts of fully operational capacity over the course of this summer, even as installation continues on other parts of the plant. Erecting a conventional gas plant of comparable scale would have taken three or four years of construction labor, due to the complexity of the systems and the many different trades required for it, Stuart told Canary Media... That speed and flexibility makes batteries a crucial solution as utilities across the nation grapple with a spike in expected electricity demand unlike anything seen in the last few decades.
The article notes a 2013 Caifornia policy mandating battery storage for its utility companies, which "kicked off a decade-long project to will an energy storage market into existence through methodical policies and regulations, and the knock-on effects of building the nation's foremost solar fleet." Those energy storage policies succeeded in jumpstarting the modern grid battery market: California leads the nation with more than 7 gigawatts of batteries installed as of last year (though Texas is poised to overtake California in battery installations this year, on the back of no particular policy effort but a general openness to building energy projects)... California's interlocking climate regulations effectively rule out new gas construction. The state's energy roadmap instead calls for massive expansion of battery capacity to shift the ample amounts of solar generation into the evening peaks.
"These trends, along with the falling price of batteries and maturing business model for storage, nudged Calpine to get into the battery business, too."
OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OK (Score:4, Informative)
Your data or math is broken. According to this https://www.iea.org/data-and-s... [iea.org] LiIon alone was about 1.5TWh in 2022 (it is more now). This plant here has 2.7GWh, putting it around the 0,2% mark.
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So you are saying these factories run at 2.3% capacity? That is not plausible at all. If that were true, most of them would just get closed and capacity would _not_ get expanded.
Cite your sources, they seem to be bogus.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:OK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OK (Score:4, Informative)
For reference, this battery is equal in size to 7% of all the batteries made worldwide in a single year.
Not sure what you mean by 'size', but automotive lithium ion batteries in 2022 were 70.6GWh in the United States alone. The 620MW that will be operational this year of this plant is less than 1 percent of the US car batteries per year. The total future ambition size is 2GWh which would put it at about 3% of the US yearly car total.
That's just automative and the US. The total global 2023 lithium ion shipments were 1200 GWh. To hit 7% of that it would have to be a 87GWh plant, but for now it's just a 0.6GWh plant so well off from that.
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it's just a 0.6GWh plant
No, it's a 2.7GWh plant. Its peak output is 680MW. The rest of your point is fine, though.
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
Power usage has a daily pattern something like this:
https://db-excel.com/wp-conten... [db-excel.com]
The battery lets you take some usage from a period of low usage ( like approximately 5am on that image ) to charge up your battery array and then discharge it back into the grid at the highest usage point ( like 6pm on that image ).
A whole lot of engineering is worrying about the worst case of your metrics, so taking some usage from your best case and using it to make your worst case better is a great improvement.
Re: OK (Score:2)
Re: OK (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that Cali wants to increase their energy needs by 10x to cover all their future electric cars.
That number seems way too high to me. As of the end of 2022, California had just 28.2 million cars and light trucks burning gasoline (and 1.1 million BEV/PHEV/FCVs, with about 764k of those being full BEVs).
To move everyone to electric, then, means moving 28.2 million cars into that BEV column, plus 300k PHEVs. All told, that's about 28.5 million. On average, Californians drive 12,524 miles per year. So that's 356,934,000,000 electric miles. At an average of 3 miles per kWh, that's 118,978,000,000 kWh per year, or 118,978 GWh per year.
California currently uses about 287,220 GWh annually. That means if you ignore time of day concerns, if California moves every car and light truck to be fully electric, it would increase California's power consumption by only about 42%, not 900% as you're implying. Your numbers are off by more than a factor of 20.
California increases its energy output by a couple of percent every year, so even if they do nothing more than they're already doing (and assuming all other consumption miraculously remains flat), California could theoretically meet those capacity needs within two decades, which is long before the last gasoline-powered car goes away.
But given that California's daytime energy usage already peaks at almost half again more than its nighttime use, that means you could probably electrify close to half of those cars right now, without adding any more capacity, assuming you can get people to charge during the troughs or otherwise smooth out the power consumption over the course of the day.
Taking capacity offline seems shortsighted.
On this, we agree.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Your 42% number is still too high. It doesn't account for the reduction in electricity required to refine all the gasoline for all those vehicles. Plus 3mpkWh is a very low figure, eg:
- Model Y - 3.3 to 3.8
- Model 3 - 4 to 5
- Kona - 4.8
- Niro - 4.4
I know there's Hummers and Cybertrucks etc, but an average of 3 seems too conservative
2. This capacity was taken offline back in 2019. We need to retire carbon intensive capacity fast, and we need to expand less carbon intensive capacity even faster. New capaci
Re: OK (Score:2)
Re: OK (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC the 10x number comes from the idea that everyone will be charging their EVs at roughly the same time. The charging for those electric miles isn't going to be perfectly spaced to ensure an even distribution of charging, at the very least you charge your vehicles in a lump to drain down over a longer haul so the strain on the grid is more than a 42% increase. Usually the way people plan for this is to say that by the time it becomes a problem it'll be a smart grid and the cars and the grid will negotiate to ensure there isn't a 10x demand at peak. And then people argue about how they want their stuff charged when they plug it in and not when "The Man" says they can and the conversation degenerates from there.
So that was a long winded way of me saying "dunno."
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People already time their electric use to benefit the grid, either because they're on variable rate plans or because the electric company pays them to. Traditionally with electric heaters, where instead of using random cycle times the grid tells them to turn on before reaching min temp or off partway to max temp. Idiots learn about this and say "Oh no I don't want to do the thing I'm not doing and don't have to do! My cycle times must be random!"
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IIRC the 10x number comes from the idea that everyone will be charging their EVs at roughly the same time.
The average California commute is about 29 minutes. If we assume an average commute speed of... say 45 MPH, that's probably in the neighborhood of 22 miles, or 5.5 kWh. If we assume that everyone installs a L2 charger capable of 30A output (7.2 kW), this means the average car will charge for less than one hour per day. So yes, if you incredibly stupidly charge them all for exactly the same 46 minutes, then 10x could be about right.
However, that's just not realistic. These vehicles are already generally
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People with home chargers aren't gonna want to pay the markup of charging in public unless they absolutely have to. The only time I use a public L2 charger is if it is the only parking space available.
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People with home chargers aren't gonna want to pay the markup of charging in public unless they absolutely have to. The only time I use a public L2 charger is if it is the only parking space available.
True, but not everybody has home charging available, either because they don't have a dedicated parking spot (apartments) or because they don't have adequate service amperage to their home (many mobile homes, many homes built before 1970 or so, etc.). In the short term, that's likely to be a pretty large percentage of EV buyers in major cities.
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You are also making the assumption that trough hours are not used for plant maintenance etc. Which they probably are. Ie keep a couple plants at day-time output while you offline one at night to inspect/repair/etc.
The more you push to round the clock full output operation of fewer generating plants the less flexibility and resilience you are going to have.
Re: OK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
The net load curve is more interesting, i.e. the demand on the grid: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
As you can see, it drops to zero during the March to May period, due to the massive amounts of solar power installed. They picked that period because it's not peak summer sunshine, by the way.
The issue for energy producers is that during the day demand for their product falls to zero, and then goes back up again in the evening. If their production facilities aren't flexible enough to ramp down every day, they either need a contract that pays them to produce energy nobody wants, or they need to look at storing it.
From the consumer's perspective, storage is attractive because it prevents the price of energy rising when special peaker plants come online every single day.
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I'm curious....if in the plans, they plan to keep gas or other fossil fuel electricity generating plants operational and maybe even on standby while the solar, wind and battery systems start to take over....sort of as a failsafe backup?
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There will likely to be fossil fuel generation, even if it is rarely used, for some decades. A few days a year maybe, with carbon capture. Another option is biomass, but it only makes sense in certain locations.
It depends on the country, how well connected it is, what natural resources it has for things like storage etc.
For California specifically, they could probably get away from fossil fuels entirely because they have lots of offshore wind. There is a huge export market. The main issue seems to be the wa
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The issue raised was that electric storage does not by itself generate power, so you need both electricity generation as well as storage. If there are shortages during the day caused by high power usage by people/businesses, then replacing a GENERATOR with storage will be a bad thing.
Backwards. If there are shortages during the day, then replacing a GENERATOR with storage will work fine. You no longer need to size generators for peaking peak power, you can size them for average power-- much less.
If there are shortages averaged over 24 hours, then replacing a generator with storage won't work.
Re:OK (Score:4, Informative)
UID 15!!!
Wow.
Re:OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, I didn't. I'll be charitable and say perhaps you misunderstand the situation. You can replace peak time generation capacity with a battery charged up with quiet time capacity.
I'd love it if I could do the same thing with internet capacity that we provision in my day job.
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
Demand for power goes from a baseload low at 3:30 AM to a peak at 6:30 PM that is 60% higher.
If your power is 100% gas, you need to size it for 160% of baseload.
But if you have a battery bank, you can size it for about 125% of the baseload. Then use the surplus power to charge the batteries at night, and use the batteries to boost peak supply to 160% at 6:30 PM.
The battery banks obviously don't generate energy. They are used to match supply to demand.
Battery banks are especially useful with intermittent renewables. Solar power is only available during the day, and the sun is low during the 6:30 PM peak.
Re: (Score:3)
Natural gas is cheaper than coal for generating electricity. EXCEPT for peaking plants, which these batteries are replacing. Where gas is anywhere from 50% to 100% more expensive than coal because they don't run at a consistent load. And while this type of gas plant is very fast at adjusting output, it's still not as fast as batteries.
Re: OK (Score:3)
It's right there in the title. A gas plant has been built in 2008 but was uneconomic to run, so they didn't run it. It has been torn down and replaced by the battery system. That's the sense in which the gas plant was replaced by the battery plant. Presumably it was handy to have all the grid connectivity already in place.
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Gas plants exist to meet rapidly changing load demands - they aren't even cheap or efficient to operate compared to coal - at least for peaking plants. Coal and nuclear are too slow to adjust up or down. Batteries are way better suited for this and can react even faster.
BYD? (Score:2)
Interesting that this project was awarded to BYD. Does anyone know if Tesla bid on the project and if so why BYD won?
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that Tesla buys batteries from BYD (as well as making their own) may offer a clue.
So how is it charged ? Solar ? (Score:2)
A billion dollars.. (Score:2)
Think of how many people could have been fed clothed and sheltered for that.
Think of how significant the 'inflation' is as the costs are passed on to rate payers, which impacts both housholds and producers.
All to replace a gas generated we already had.
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Why would an energy company spend their money feeding people?
The peaking plant it replaced was too expensive to even turn it on. Natural gas can be cheaper than coal, but only for base load generation. Peaking power is way more expensive.
Cheaper batteries for this use case? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Redox flow batteries. They're getting close if not already surpassing Lithium for cost. But they are a lot bigger and take longer to build. I think the up-front cost is higher, but they last longer. Long enough that it makes sense to build a Lithium one first to buy you the time to build the other.
Villian Story (Score:2)
Do people still remember this was the plot the villian in Batman Returns was going to perpetrate on Gotham?
Flywheel storage (Score:5, Interesting)
What I wonder is why flywheel storage isn't a popular alternative to batteries for fixed installations. Creating heavy flywheels isn't hard, nor does it require the kinds of toxic materials used in batteries. Tungsten carbide with a steel casing anyone? Mount them on good bearings and you should get >90% efficiency from them, and I'd guess the energy density should be higher as well. I'd have to do some calculations to see if units small enough for home installation would have enough capacity to be useful for a reasonable length of time, but large-scale industrial/commercial installations should be.
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Interesting. Looks like it is used to a very small extent in California, and has been for decades. I'll guess it's less than 90% efficient, but I really have no idea.
Gives an idea of the size of the task (Score:2)
This gives an idea of the size of the task. The policy for net zero is to run on wind and solar. Since there are calms and nights, the question is how much storage you need to get through them.
California demand is 25-30 GW. This installation will supply 0.68 GW for four hours. Assume that is allowing for the fact that you cannot totally discharge to flat.
Typically wind has periods of calm when generation falls to about 5% of faceplate, for several days. To be able to move to wind and solar, you'd need
Re: (Score:2)
Also, read the Manhattan Contrarian on the New York plans.
https://www.manhattancontraria... [manhattancontrarian.com]
Very similar to the UK case. Anyone trying to convert to wind and solar to get to net zero is going to run into the same problem.
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You absolutely do not need to build storage capacity to supply 20GW for several days. That would assume calm conditions, including offshore, with no sun, for several days across all California. When was the last time that happened? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question, it's a direct question to you: when did the whole of California last experience multiple consecutive days of no sun and no win including offshore (and many nights of no wind too)?
Batman II (Score:2)
Reduces curtailment of wind/solar generation (Score:2)
Responsive energy storage on the grid can also provide ancillary services to keep the grid stable - particularly frequency sup
Guessing more billions will be needed (Score:2)
Idiots. (Score:2)
But even this 680-megawatt project consists of 1,096 total battery containers holding 26,304 battery modules (or a total of 3 million cells), "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD, according to Robert Stuart, an electrical project manager with Calpine. That's enough electricity to supply 680,000 homes for four hours before it runs out."
Hopefully, no federal $ is going into this. Or perhaps federals SHOULD produce some $, but require that all of the cells be made in america, with american, if not western elements.
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:4, Informative)
That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to replace a gas plant they would otherwise have to build. Maybe read the title of the story next time?
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:5, Informative)
More specifically, it will help cover peaks and short term spikes in demand. It's not a whole-state UPS.
California has reached the point where demand from traditional generation drops to zero during the day, due to the amount of solar installed. It goes back up as the light fades and people come home from work, so there is a period in the early evening when fossil fuels have to ramp up to meet demand. This battery directly replaces those fossil fuels.
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Funny how those opposed never seem to know the facts of the matter and like use some form of the inane "if it does not fix everything, it is useless" pseudo-argument.
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> "if it does not fix everything, it is useless"
It's almost a slashdot tradition, or perhaps culture to rubbish anything that isn't absolutely perfect (whilst doing absolutely nothing to attempt any better/different).
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I think it is just a manipulation technique aimed at people that are not too bright. In any case, very dishonest. But there are enough people that do not care about honesty, as long as they are "winning".
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Indeed. Funny how those opposed never seem to know the facts of the matter and like use some form of the inane "if it does not fix everything, it is useless" pseudo-argument.
Nirvana fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:4, Informative)
The battery has nothing to do with "replacing the gas plant" does it? It's on the same SITE, but the gas plant was already closed down because the operator can't make money at it. They chose that site because it already has the necessary zoning and infrastructure (power distribution) in place, and it's location is good for their purpose.
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:5, Funny)
This is not the only battery bank being built.
There was an announcement on Slashdot just two days ago of an identical battery bank being built in the same location.
Calpines California Battery Plant [slashdot.org]
Re:number of households for pespective (Score:4, Funny)
You may have been a tad too subtle there...
2 batteries (Score:3)
Wow, so theywill put 2 batteries ? Cool
Re: (Score:3)
This made me snort out loud thank you.
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A grid tied battery cannot typically "bridge short interruptions in a region"
That would mean islanding, and often this is not a use case.
Also, those interruption have a root cause (broken transmisson lines for example), and cannot be overcome by a battery.
Re: (Score:2)
Islanding at the household level. There are proposed ideas for establishing communication between household battery banks and grid operators. Power companies could offer incentives to have a household switch to battery temporarily to reduce base load. Since it's cheaper than peaking power, they can kick back some of those savings to participating homeowners to make it work.
Re:And in five years they have to do it again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Current batteries are pretty good. Future batteries will be even better and old batteries will be recycled into new ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
California politicians opted to offshore jobs ... (Score:3)
Current batteries are pretty good.
The current batteries are from China. All the pollution involved in the acquisition of raw materials and manufacturing are offshored.
California opted for lower prices and greenwashing rather than environmentally sound raw materials acquisition and manufacturing, and rather than employing US workers. Maybe even California workers?
California politicians are bought and paid for by China.
Re:And in five years they have to do it again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what the battery life of this thing is going to be in actual service.
Battery life for grid storage is good. They are in a temperature controlled environment and kept within charging specs.
Phone batteries die because people charge them to 100%, leave them on the seat of their car parked in the sun, and then drain them to 0%.
Also, the lifetime is calculated differently for grid storage. For a vehicle, the battery is based on retaining 80% of its range. But 80% or even 60% is acceptable for grid storage. So, old batteries can be kept in service much longer.
Re: And in five years they have to do it again? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
leave them on the seat of their car parked in the sun
I'm not sure what "people" you know, but I have never met a living breathing human that has left their phone on the seat of their parked car in the sun. Well, not quite, I have met a few people, and they universally get to about 6.37meters from their car, slap all their pockets including shirt pockets even when not wearing a shirt, go pale as the blood drains from their face in a moment of truly horrific panic, before shouting "MY PHONE!" and running back like a crack addict to save their precious.
Humans do
Nearly zero degradation (Score:2)
>> Service life is a big issue with electric car batteries; this will be an even bigger issue.
Hmm, nope.
Only the Nissan leaf has big degradation. Any serious designed car has nearly zero.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. This is a much smaller issue with stationary batteries. In cars, weight matters a lot and batteries get phased out as relatively high remaining capacities because the weight to capacity ratio makes continued use uneconomic. The point where that happens is much, much lower with stationary batteries as weight is basically irrelevant.
Re:Sounds Great (Score:4, Insightful)
The plant was shut off back in 2019, five years ago, for being uneconomic. It was already shut off well before Calpine decided to build the battery bank.
So this wasn't a choice between a ive CCGT plant and batteries; it was a choice between a dead CCGT plant and batteries.
The CCGT jobs were long gone.
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They were fired long before the battery plant was pitched and built. The gas plant was closed by the owners because it was uneconomical. The two projects have nothing in common but location and infrastructure. The battery plant was not what killed the gas plant.
Re:Sounds Great (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently Tesla buys batteries from the same Chinese company (BYD).
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Apparently Tesla buys batteries from the same Chinese company (BYD).
Where? No seriously geography is key. Tesla buys batteries from the place that it makes most sense for Tesla to buy batteries. In some cases that's from BYD. In other cases that's companies like Northvolt or Panasonic. And in some cases they make their own at one of the several "Gigafactories" they have for this purpose.
That said the BYD batteries are specifically sourced for cold-environment vehicles and the Model Y. Doesn't really fit the description of a climate controlled installation in California.
Re:Sounds Great (Score:5, Interesting)
BYD and CATL supply Tesla with LFP batteries, which significantly out-perform Tesla's other supplier, Panasonic. They last 2-4 times longer, are cobalt free, and are safer. The only down side is that they are less energy dense, but for cars it's a worthwhile trade-off.
China has a near monopoly on LFP batteries at the moment.
Re: That headline doesn't make sense (Score:2)
A gas plant has been built in 2008. It was uneconomic to run, so they didn't run it, and tore it down, and replaced it with this battery plant. That's the sense in which the gas plant was replaced by the battery plant. I think it's clear and straightforward, and also very well explained in the article. Presumably the battery plant benefits from the existing grid interconnects.
Re:That headline doesn't make sense (Score:4, Informative)
You cannot replace a power plant, which is something producing electricity
Of course you can. A peaking gas power plant is nothing more than an installation that converts chemical energy in the form of gas (which needs to be sourced from elsewhere) into electricity. A battery pack is nothing more than an installation that converts chemical energy in the form of charged electrolyte (which needs to be charged from electricity stored elsewhere) into electricity.
Not all "power plants" exist to create electricity. Some exist to offset wasting electricity, and they can be replaced with batteries.
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They didn't. The gas plant closed because it couldn't make money. The battery plant chose the location because the infrastructure was there. One had nothing to do with the other.
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You cannot replace a power plant, which is something producing electricity, with a battery, which is something that stores electricity.
You have to spend energy to process combustibles into a useful form. Guess what happens if you put the energy into a battery instead, at a much higher efficiency?
The lifetime of a Li-ion battery is good. (Score:2)
You have no idea how wrong your suppositions are.
Hint : Nope.
Re:The lifetime of a Li-ion battery : 8 years (Score:4, Informative)
That’s not true even for EVs, which is a very demanding application, much more than this. EV battery warranties are for replacement if state of health at 8 years is below 80%. That implies manufacturers expect batteries to last considerably longer, which is unsurprising, given they can do 1000 charge-discharge cycles before hitting 80%. And it’s not like they’re useless at 80%. They’re at 80%.
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Not all lithium batteries have 1,000 charge cycles. Perhaps many/most of the cells put into vehicles have 1,000 cycles in them, but I have a number of cells that are rated at only 500 charge cycles.
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CATL announced a new electric vehicle battery pack with a 1.5 million kilometre, 15 year warranty. Think they were discussing roughly 2,000 charge cycles before one would start to notice any significant degradation.
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Sure, but there's a limit to how much nuance I can fit in while ensuring the sentence is vaguely coherent. Plus, there's upside as well as downside variance, especially when you consider new chemistries are arriving fast.
Re:The lifetime of a Li-ion battery : 8 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is great, except... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US was in a position to dominate global production of batteries and solar cells, but lobbying from the fossil fuel sector effectively took the top manufacturing economy on the planet out of those races. Predictably, China moved in and ate America's lunch. So yes, "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD".
Really.
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FAKE NEWS.
If fossil fuel lobbying was so effective they would have also been able to lobby against carbon reduction policies in general and take the whole 'electrification' issue off the table. If the USA as matter of policy did not subsidize electric autos or require higher mpg standards or otherwise seek to as matter of regulation limit co2 outputs most of this technology would not exist because the presumption would be there would not be a big market for it.
The reason China ate or lunch is because cheape
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FAKE NEWS.
If fossil fuel lobbying was so effective they would have also been able to lobby against carbon reduction policies in general
They did. The US has no carbon reduction policies that have any actual mandates to reduce carbon.
and take the whole 'electrification' issue off the table.
It's popular to hate on Elon Musk these days, but the origin of auto electrification is pretty much entirely due to one company: Tesla. Up until the Tesla roadster debuted, real-world electric cars were little more than fancy golf carts. The ones that tried to be more got killed (there's an amusing documentary Who Killed the Electric Car" [watchdocumentaries.com] about that history.
Not Fossil Industry, its Political Greenwashing (Score:2)
The US was in a position to dominate global production of batteries and solar cells, but lobbying from the fossil fuel sector effectively took the top manufacturing economy on the planet out of those races. Predictably, China moved in and ate America's lunch. So yes, "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD". Really.
No its not the Fossil Industry, , its exporting the pollution related to mining raw materials in the US, its exporting the pollution related to battery manufacturing in the US. its Political Greenwashing, plain and simple. It's the export of pollution overseas as we have been doing for decades. EV and Batteries have not changed this long running practice of the US.
That and many of our politicians bought and paid for by China.
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I have to chuckle when people like you are all of a sudden concerned about the upstream costs of batteries and solar panels, but never once in all the decades fossil fuel and nuclear energy have been in play did you give one single, lonely f^ck about the (far worse) upstream costs of those forms of energy. Even more than simple pollution, how many American soldiers have bled and died in the service of fossil fuel interests in the Middle East? Do you have even the vaguest clue about the effects of uranium
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I have to chuckle when people like you ...
You mean people who want our infrastructure built from US made parts? People who want our infrastructure built from responsibly sourced and manufactured components? People who don't want to fund the military expansion and modernization of Communist China?
You know, the sort of things politicians promise in campaign speeches but act to the opposite?
So you are adding ignorance to your hypocrisy. We emitted more radiation into the environment with our continued use of coal than US reactors ever released. Man
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This is a great comment! I hope people read it. The fossil fuel defense ...
What fossil fuel defense, no one is saying we should continue the use of fossil fuels? The actual issue is the many decades old policy of politicians outsourcing pollution rather use ethical sources, or make china accountable so they start to operate more ethically. With a side issue of supporting domestic industries and workers? I though we wanted the US to make batteries. Guess not, that's just for political speeches.
I think electric cars are not going to very successful, you have the righties that don't like them because they can't stand any change, and you have lefties that realize the infrastructure is just terrible at best.
You are quite ignorant here too. What the "righties" want are people to be able to choose
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"all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD" ... really?
I came to say the same thing, so I have no idea why you were modded down. Given the state of US - China relations, questioning whether there might be some 'accidentally-on-purpose' deficiency in something that stores that much energy isn't racism or trolling. It's a legitimate concern.
Re:So, less energy production then? (Score:4, Informative)
They took "production offline" because the gas plant lost money. The battery plant is going into that same location because the infrastructure is already in place. This is all purely a business deal, no politics needed.
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They took the production offline five years ago because it was losing money. Two years after that, they looked at this defunct plant that was costing them money and realised they could re-use the site and make money instead.
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Comparing establishing a battery with building a gas plant is just wrong. One is an energy producing facility, the other is not.
No, the thing you think is an energy producing facility is an energy converting facility. If you invent an energy producing facility, you may collect your Nobel at the door. Or more likely, collect a surprise suicide from the existing energy collection and conversion industry.
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Where, exactly, is the power going to come from to charge this? The power from solar is already being used as it's produced. Classic California.
So, make more solar power. Right now, adding more solar helps some, but doesn't solve the electrical peak problem, since the electrical peak is now late afternoon/early evening.
But, solar power is cheap during peak solar hours. So, if you generate the energy during peak solar hours, and use it during peak usage hours, it's a big win.
But, you didn't need me to explain that. If you have even a slight familiarity with utility-scale electrical power, you already knew that.
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Where, exactly, is the power going to come from to charge this? The power from solar is already being used as it's produced. Classic California.
No, really, it's not. The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) curtails wind and solar generation at times because we're producing *more* power than we need - if we can store it, we don't need to reduce the renewable generation - we just shift it to when we need it.