California's Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants
SAN FRANCISCO—As families settled into their evening routines in late March, cooking dinner on electric stoves and flipping on their TV for the newest binge watch, the state’s energy grid was working hard.
For the first time, California discharged just over 12,000 megawatts, equivalent to 12 large nuclear plants, of energy from its battery arrays. That’s enough to meet over 40 percent of the state’s energy demand.
California’s grid is in a continued state of transition. While more than more than 60 percent of the state’s electricity generation came from carbon-free sources last year, momentum toward bridging the last gap is fraught, as President Trump takes aim at offshore wind, orders oil pipelines to reopen and retires renewable energy tax credits.
Ed Smeloff, an energy consultant with GridLab and expert in transmission planning in California, closely follows grid statistics week by week. Inside Climate News talked with Smeloff to discuss if California’s energy transition can weather the storm. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CLAIRE BARBER: Can you give me a lay of the land of how California’s renewable energy market has been performing recently? What are the changes?
ED SMELOFF: The most remarkable change in the California energy market has been the very rapid addition of grid-connected batteries and the use of those batteries to provide peak demand capacity. California is transitioning fairly quickly from using primarily natural gas resources to now using batteries. The batteries are [used] during the peak period, which is in the evening, typically around seven o’clock, producing as much as 40 percent of the peak capacity requirements. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement in a short period of time.