Comment by Someone
8 hours ago
For comparison, US grid capacity is about 1250 GW, average usage 500 GW.
So, this adds over two minutes of average usage.
https://seia.org/research-resources/energy-storage-market-ou... says total storage now is about 200 GWh, or about 25 minutes of average demand.
So if ALL power generation of the US would stop right now, EVERYTHING would still have power for 25 minutes. (ignoring all safeties tripping, and perfect load balancing)
That sounds so impressive.
No. Because neither storage nor generation is evenly spread. In some places you would have nothing, in some you could have potentially hours.
In practical terms, you would most probably get nothing, because situation like this would lead to complete grid breakdown and interruption of service.
Technical detail question: if all of those batteries were on connecting allowing feeding back to the grid, would they be able to synchronise the frequency/phase? What's the threshold/requirement for that to happen?
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Considering the accelerating rate of installation and the ever decreasing costs of manufacturing, both problems should be alleviated in 10 years. Instead of 25 minutes, most likely 4-6 hours. Instead of extremely uneven distribution, likely all the major population centers will have at least some non zero coverage.
It's not public.
Only if that battery was connected to 500GW of inverter capacity (and the grid was a spherical chicken -- enough intertia-replacement devices to keep timing working, enough capacity to link supply with demand etc)
inertia-replacement is what batteries do best, so in this kind scenario that's probably the least of the problems.
That means a huge ability to absorb production or consumption peaks!
Compared to what is this a good measure?
"How much is needed during a no sun and no wind period" could be reasonable comparison.
Any amount is good if it reduces costs to the consumer and reduces the usage of fossil fuels.
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