The Beauty of Batteries
9 days ago
- #grid-reliability
- #batteries
- #energy-storage
- Batteries provide a solution to the structural inefficiencies in electricity grids by allowing for energy storage, which was previously impossible.
- Electricity grids require exact supply-demand matching with no inventory buffers, leading to high costs and inefficiencies.
- Traditional power plants are inflexible and require significant overbuilding to cover peak demands and rare events.
- Batteries can respond in milliseconds, stabilize frequency, reduce peak demand, and replace multiple types of traditional infrastructure.
- Decarbonization and the rise of renewables add complexity and volatility to the grid, increasing the need for flexible solutions like batteries.
- Pumped-storage hydropower is the dominant form of utility-scale energy storage but is geographically limited.
- Batteries reduce the need for overbuilding power plants and transmission lines, lowering overall system costs.
- Batteries can arbitrage both time and location-based price differences, making them economically more valuable than often estimated.
- Regulatory and market design issues hinder the widespread deployment of grid-scale batteries.
- Real-time and location-based pricing can enhance grid efficiency and better integrate batteries.
- Texas serves as a successful example of using location-based real-time pricing and battery integration to improve grid reliability and reduce costs.