Squist
Guest
I picked these up from a news digest and thought some (many) might be interested as we head into high-demand and approach fire season.
All pretty forward-thinking, but when you think back to how fast the world changed from the advent of the Internet and related tech, massive energy technologies too will soon be a vital part of our energy resource mix.
________________
Bloomberg - To Avoid Blackouts, California’s Installing More Big Batteries Than All of China
By David R. Baker – April 1
With summer’s heat approaching, California’s plan for avoiding a repeat of last year’s blackouts hinges on a humble savior – the battery.
Giant versions of the same technology that powers smart phones and cars are being plugged into the state’s electrical grid at breakneck speed, with California set to add more battery capacity this year than all of China, according to BloombergNEF.
It will be the biggest test yet of whether batteries are reliable enough to sustain a grid largely powered by renewables. Last year, when the worst heat wave in a generation taxed California’s power system and plunged millions into darkness in the first rolling blackouts since the Enron crisis, many blamed the state’s aggressive clean-energy push and its reliance on solar power. Should a heat wave strike again this summer, it will be up to batteries save the day.
Their success or failure may even have implications for President Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to achieve a carbon-free electricity system by 2035 – which would require massive battery deployment and the expansion of renewable energy systems across the nation.
``This is going to be the preview summer for batteries in California, and we want to make sure this initial chapter is as successful as possible,’’ said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid across most of the state.
By this August, the state will have 1,700 megawatts of new battery capacity -- enough to power 1.3 million homes and, in theory, avert a grid emergency on the scale of last year’s.
California's Battery Buildout
The state plans to install 1.7 gigawatts of battery storage in 2021
It won’t be easy. The state’s plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 may require installing 48.8 gigawatts of energy storage, according to a report by three state agencies -- more than five times the output of all the grid-scale batteries currently operating worldwide. Other countries are also doubling down on batteries, with China on track to increase capacity to 222 gigawatts by the middle of the century from 1.4 gigawatts in 2019. Australia has a pipeline of grid-scale battery projects totaling more than 11 gigawatts, according to BNEF.
But batteries do have two major limitations – time and cost. Most of the battery packs now available are designed to run for just four hours at a stretch. While that makes them a good fit for California, where electricity supplies can be strained in early summer evenings after solar power shuts down, batteries would not have prevented the multi-day outage that paralyzed Texas in February. A battery can only operate for so long before it needs to recharge.
``If batteries last four hours, then that's not really going to do the job,'' said Kit Konolige, senior analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. ``It's still somewhat unproven, using batteries for a large portion of capacity.''
Utility-scale batteries are also more expensive than “peaker” gas plants, commonly used as back-up generation when demand is high. Following last year’s blackouts, critics lambasted the state for retiring so much inexpensive, gas-fired power under its environmental regulations. Including construction and financing, batteries cost about $125 a megawatt-hour versus $109 for gas, according to BloombergNEF data.
Still, California sees batteries as a way to replace those peaker plants. Not only are they a lot faster to permit and build, batteries can generate income by letting owners arbitrage power prices, charging when electricity is cheap and discharging when it’s expensive. They also offer other grid services like stabilizing voltage throughout the day.
``A peaker runs for a few hours in the evening hours, and then it shuts off, and that’s all it can do,’’ said Kiran Kumaraswamy, vice president of market applications at Fluence, an energy storage joint venture of Siemens and AES Corp. ``You’ve got to be able to provide that peak capacity but also optimize around how much money you can make at other times.’’
Battery Race
While more battery projects are coming online as the price of lithium-ion cells drops, the rollout has not always been smooth. Sporadic fires have struck grid-scale batteries, particularly in South Korea, one of the first countries to invest heavily in energy storage. But those incidents have become rare as electric utilities and power companies gain experience with the technology.
``There’s been enough deployment around the world and operating history that utilities seem to be comfortable with it,’’ said energy consultant Mike Florio, a former member of the California Public Utilities Commission. ``It seems like the performance has been as expected, if not better.’’
But will batteries prevent blackouts? So far, they’ve been credited with helping prevent outages elsewhere, most notably in Australia where Tesla and France's Neoen SA have built a 150-megawatt lithium-ion installation. That bodes well for California, where the buildout in combination with other measures should give the state enough of a cushion to prevent blackouts this summer, according to Konolige.
Just in case, the state has also delayed the planned closure of some gas plants and beefed up “demand response’’ programs that cut power when needed to some customers in exchange for a lower rate or other compensation. Public officials -- including Governor Gavin Newsom, facing a likely recall election -- have a powerful incentive not to get caught short two years in a row.
``It would be an ugly situation to run into something similar to last summer,'' Konolige said. “To me, that's a strong indicator that it's unlikely to happen this year.''
ET Telecom - Apple to build battery-based solar energy storage project in California
By Reuters – April 1
Apple Inc said on Wednesday that it will build a battery-based renewable energy storage facility in Central California near a solar energy installation that already provides energy for all of its facilities in the state.
Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day. It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters.
The site sends 130-megawatts of electricity directly to Apple's California facilities during daylight hours but does not provide power during dark hours. Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, told Reuters in an interview the company intends to develop what it believes will be one of the largest battery-based storage systems in the United States.
"The challenge with clean energy - solar and wind - is that it's by definition intermittent," Jackson told Reuters. "If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It's something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies."
News portal Verge reported, citing Monterey County's planning chief, that Apple will receive the battery packs for this facility from electric-car maker Tesla Inc.
Its setup will consist of 85 Tesla lithium-ion "megapacks," the report added. Monterey County officials, Apple and Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests outside regular business hours.
Jackson said Apple plans to share its findings from building the project with other companies, but said it was too early to say precisely how it would do so. Apple has other projects where it has shared environmental technology developments, including an aluminum smelting joint venture in Canada and an Apple recycling technology lab in Texas.
Apple on Wednesday also said that 110 of its suppliers are now moving to using clean energy for the work they do for Apple, with about 8 gigawatts of clean energy production planned as a result, or what Apple said was the equivalent of removing 3.4 million cars from the road. The figure is an increase from last year when Apple said 70 of its suppliers had made the transition to clean energy for Apple work when it set a goal to eliminate carbon emissions from its supply chain by 2030.
Los Angeles Times - Editorial: California needs offshore wind farms too
By LA Times Editorial Board – March 31
The Biden administration this week announced plans to speed up development of offshore wind farms to create 30 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 — enough to power more than 10 million homes — while investing $230 million in related port improvements and making $3 billion in loans available to the offshore wind-power industry.
It’s an ambitious plan which the administration framed partly as a means to create 44,000 renewable energy jobs. Yet the more important impact would be to help speed up our conversion from fossil fuels to renewables. To that end, good. But do more, faster.
It is inarguable that our generations-long reliance on burning fossil fuels for energy has pushed global temperatures up, with increasingly dangerous climate changes — more powerful storms, deeper droughts, stranger and more severe weather patterns steered by shifting jet streams and higher sea levels caused by melting glaciers.
The longer it takes the world to shift away from burning fossil fuels, the worse the changes in climate and the ensuing impacts, including species extinctions, disrupted food chains and political instability of governments struggling to deal with economies that are evolving and populations that are migrating to more hospitable environs.
Three years ago Congress considered the SECURE American Energy Act, a Republican proposal aimed at expanding our reliance on fossil fuels while accelerating the sale of leases for wind farms off the California coast. We argued against that measure as a wish list for the oil industry (it died in the House) and because the provision about quick leases was a thinly veiled attempt to troll a Democratic state, not a carefully vetted and environmentally sound plan.
But Californians, already accustomed to the scattered oil rigs off the coast, must prepare themselves for the eventuality of offshore wind farms, even if some people might balk at the sight of giant, slowly spinning windmills rising from the sea. Like the rest of the country, we must intensify our efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, which experts say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
Biden’s initial focus is on sites off the East Coast, from Virginia to Massachusetts. The latter would be near the nation’s sole working oceanic wind farm, off the coast of Rhode Island, which generates 30 megawatts of power. The president’s plan also designates the New York Bight — between Long Island and New Jersey — as an offshore wind zone.
For its part, the California Energy Commission recognizes the potential for obtaining significant amounts of renewable energy from wind farms off our coast while still being mindful of environmental impacts (migratory birds and windmills tend to be a fraught mix) and shared use concerns (shipping lanes and commercial fishing, for example). With the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, it has been assessing wind power potential up and down the coast and has focused on three areas off Humboldt, Diablo Canyon and Morro Bay, though it has run into trouble on the last two over Defense Department concerns about potential interference with its activities.
In a perfect and nonwarming world, it would be nice to not have windmills rising above the desert or out of the sea, but it is clear that they are a necessary part of our future energy mix if we are to get out of this environmental jam we’ve created for ourselves.
There is no pure solution to addressing climate change, but the end line is inarguable: We must rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That may require some concessions when it comes to siting wind turbines, arrays of solar panels and other necessary elements of a green energy grid. That’s not to grant carte blanche to plunk them down anywhere, damn the environmental consequences. Nevertheless, we need to move in this direction, and fast, a reality acknowledged and advocated for by environmental groups.
Also, about 40% of the U.S. population lives near the coasts. Installing offshore wind farms would generate renewable power near many of the people who would consume it. Note too that the U.S. lags Europe and China in building such renewable sites. England alone already has 10 gigawatts coming from offshore wind farms, with 30 gigawatts more planned by 2030.
The vast majority of Californians recognize the threat of global warming — tens of thousands of people have already suffered the effects of staggeringly powerful wildfires feeding on dried-out terrain. We all must do more, faster to counter the effects of lifetimes of fossil fuel consumption. This will be expensive, and not all the steps will be popular, but we must proceed with haste along the clearest paths we are presented. And offshore wind power generation, done in ways that mitigate the environmental impact, is one of them.
- Bloomberg - To Avoid Blackouts, California’s Installing More Big Batteries Than All of China
- ET Telecom - Apple to build battery-based solar energy storage project in California
- Los Angeles Times - Editorial: California needs offshore wind farms too
All pretty forward-thinking, but when you think back to how fast the world changed from the advent of the Internet and related tech, massive energy technologies too will soon be a vital part of our energy resource mix.
________________
Bloomberg - To Avoid Blackouts, California’s Installing More Big Batteries Than All of China
By David R. Baker – April 1
With summer’s heat approaching, California’s plan for avoiding a repeat of last year’s blackouts hinges on a humble savior – the battery.
Giant versions of the same technology that powers smart phones and cars are being plugged into the state’s electrical grid at breakneck speed, with California set to add more battery capacity this year than all of China, according to BloombergNEF.
It will be the biggest test yet of whether batteries are reliable enough to sustain a grid largely powered by renewables. Last year, when the worst heat wave in a generation taxed California’s power system and plunged millions into darkness in the first rolling blackouts since the Enron crisis, many blamed the state’s aggressive clean-energy push and its reliance on solar power. Should a heat wave strike again this summer, it will be up to batteries save the day.
Their success or failure may even have implications for President Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to achieve a carbon-free electricity system by 2035 – which would require massive battery deployment and the expansion of renewable energy systems across the nation.
``This is going to be the preview summer for batteries in California, and we want to make sure this initial chapter is as successful as possible,’’ said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid across most of the state.
By this August, the state will have 1,700 megawatts of new battery capacity -- enough to power 1.3 million homes and, in theory, avert a grid emergency on the scale of last year’s.
California's Battery Buildout
The state plans to install 1.7 gigawatts of battery storage in 2021
It won’t be easy. The state’s plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 may require installing 48.8 gigawatts of energy storage, according to a report by three state agencies -- more than five times the output of all the grid-scale batteries currently operating worldwide. Other countries are also doubling down on batteries, with China on track to increase capacity to 222 gigawatts by the middle of the century from 1.4 gigawatts in 2019. Australia has a pipeline of grid-scale battery projects totaling more than 11 gigawatts, according to BNEF.
But batteries do have two major limitations – time and cost. Most of the battery packs now available are designed to run for just four hours at a stretch. While that makes them a good fit for California, where electricity supplies can be strained in early summer evenings after solar power shuts down, batteries would not have prevented the multi-day outage that paralyzed Texas in February. A battery can only operate for so long before it needs to recharge.
``If batteries last four hours, then that's not really going to do the job,'' said Kit Konolige, senior analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. ``It's still somewhat unproven, using batteries for a large portion of capacity.''
Utility-scale batteries are also more expensive than “peaker” gas plants, commonly used as back-up generation when demand is high. Following last year’s blackouts, critics lambasted the state for retiring so much inexpensive, gas-fired power under its environmental regulations. Including construction and financing, batteries cost about $125 a megawatt-hour versus $109 for gas, according to BloombergNEF data.
Still, California sees batteries as a way to replace those peaker plants. Not only are they a lot faster to permit and build, batteries can generate income by letting owners arbitrage power prices, charging when electricity is cheap and discharging when it’s expensive. They also offer other grid services like stabilizing voltage throughout the day.
``A peaker runs for a few hours in the evening hours, and then it shuts off, and that’s all it can do,’’ said Kiran Kumaraswamy, vice president of market applications at Fluence, an energy storage joint venture of Siemens and AES Corp. ``You’ve got to be able to provide that peak capacity but also optimize around how much money you can make at other times.’’
Battery Race
While more battery projects are coming online as the price of lithium-ion cells drops, the rollout has not always been smooth. Sporadic fires have struck grid-scale batteries, particularly in South Korea, one of the first countries to invest heavily in energy storage. But those incidents have become rare as electric utilities and power companies gain experience with the technology.
``There’s been enough deployment around the world and operating history that utilities seem to be comfortable with it,’’ said energy consultant Mike Florio, a former member of the California Public Utilities Commission. ``It seems like the performance has been as expected, if not better.’’
But will batteries prevent blackouts? So far, they’ve been credited with helping prevent outages elsewhere, most notably in Australia where Tesla and France's Neoen SA have built a 150-megawatt lithium-ion installation. That bodes well for California, where the buildout in combination with other measures should give the state enough of a cushion to prevent blackouts this summer, according to Konolige.
Just in case, the state has also delayed the planned closure of some gas plants and beefed up “demand response’’ programs that cut power when needed to some customers in exchange for a lower rate or other compensation. Public officials -- including Governor Gavin Newsom, facing a likely recall election -- have a powerful incentive not to get caught short two years in a row.
``It would be an ugly situation to run into something similar to last summer,'' Konolige said. “To me, that's a strong indicator that it's unlikely to happen this year.''
ET Telecom - Apple to build battery-based solar energy storage project in California
By Reuters – April 1
Apple Inc said on Wednesday that it will build a battery-based renewable energy storage facility in Central California near a solar energy installation that already provides energy for all of its facilities in the state.
Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day. It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters.
The site sends 130-megawatts of electricity directly to Apple's California facilities during daylight hours but does not provide power during dark hours. Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, told Reuters in an interview the company intends to develop what it believes will be one of the largest battery-based storage systems in the United States.
"The challenge with clean energy - solar and wind - is that it's by definition intermittent," Jackson told Reuters. "If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It's something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies."
News portal Verge reported, citing Monterey County's planning chief, that Apple will receive the battery packs for this facility from electric-car maker Tesla Inc.
Its setup will consist of 85 Tesla lithium-ion "megapacks," the report added. Monterey County officials, Apple and Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests outside regular business hours.
Jackson said Apple plans to share its findings from building the project with other companies, but said it was too early to say precisely how it would do so. Apple has other projects where it has shared environmental technology developments, including an aluminum smelting joint venture in Canada and an Apple recycling technology lab in Texas.
Apple on Wednesday also said that 110 of its suppliers are now moving to using clean energy for the work they do for Apple, with about 8 gigawatts of clean energy production planned as a result, or what Apple said was the equivalent of removing 3.4 million cars from the road. The figure is an increase from last year when Apple said 70 of its suppliers had made the transition to clean energy for Apple work when it set a goal to eliminate carbon emissions from its supply chain by 2030.
Los Angeles Times - Editorial: California needs offshore wind farms too
By LA Times Editorial Board – March 31
The Biden administration this week announced plans to speed up development of offshore wind farms to create 30 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 — enough to power more than 10 million homes — while investing $230 million in related port improvements and making $3 billion in loans available to the offshore wind-power industry.
It’s an ambitious plan which the administration framed partly as a means to create 44,000 renewable energy jobs. Yet the more important impact would be to help speed up our conversion from fossil fuels to renewables. To that end, good. But do more, faster.
It is inarguable that our generations-long reliance on burning fossil fuels for energy has pushed global temperatures up, with increasingly dangerous climate changes — more powerful storms, deeper droughts, stranger and more severe weather patterns steered by shifting jet streams and higher sea levels caused by melting glaciers.
The longer it takes the world to shift away from burning fossil fuels, the worse the changes in climate and the ensuing impacts, including species extinctions, disrupted food chains and political instability of governments struggling to deal with economies that are evolving and populations that are migrating to more hospitable environs.
Three years ago Congress considered the SECURE American Energy Act, a Republican proposal aimed at expanding our reliance on fossil fuels while accelerating the sale of leases for wind farms off the California coast. We argued against that measure as a wish list for the oil industry (it died in the House) and because the provision about quick leases was a thinly veiled attempt to troll a Democratic state, not a carefully vetted and environmentally sound plan.
But Californians, already accustomed to the scattered oil rigs off the coast, must prepare themselves for the eventuality of offshore wind farms, even if some people might balk at the sight of giant, slowly spinning windmills rising from the sea. Like the rest of the country, we must intensify our efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, which experts say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
Biden’s initial focus is on sites off the East Coast, from Virginia to Massachusetts. The latter would be near the nation’s sole working oceanic wind farm, off the coast of Rhode Island, which generates 30 megawatts of power. The president’s plan also designates the New York Bight — between Long Island and New Jersey — as an offshore wind zone.
For its part, the California Energy Commission recognizes the potential for obtaining significant amounts of renewable energy from wind farms off our coast while still being mindful of environmental impacts (migratory birds and windmills tend to be a fraught mix) and shared use concerns (shipping lanes and commercial fishing, for example). With the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, it has been assessing wind power potential up and down the coast and has focused on three areas off Humboldt, Diablo Canyon and Morro Bay, though it has run into trouble on the last two over Defense Department concerns about potential interference with its activities.
In a perfect and nonwarming world, it would be nice to not have windmills rising above the desert or out of the sea, but it is clear that they are a necessary part of our future energy mix if we are to get out of this environmental jam we’ve created for ourselves.
There is no pure solution to addressing climate change, but the end line is inarguable: We must rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That may require some concessions when it comes to siting wind turbines, arrays of solar panels and other necessary elements of a green energy grid. That’s not to grant carte blanche to plunk them down anywhere, damn the environmental consequences. Nevertheless, we need to move in this direction, and fast, a reality acknowledged and advocated for by environmental groups.
Also, about 40% of the U.S. population lives near the coasts. Installing offshore wind farms would generate renewable power near many of the people who would consume it. Note too that the U.S. lags Europe and China in building such renewable sites. England alone already has 10 gigawatts coming from offshore wind farms, with 30 gigawatts more planned by 2030.
The vast majority of Californians recognize the threat of global warming — tens of thousands of people have already suffered the effects of staggeringly powerful wildfires feeding on dried-out terrain. We all must do more, faster to counter the effects of lifetimes of fossil fuel consumption. This will be expensive, and not all the steps will be popular, but we must proceed with haste along the clearest paths we are presented. And offshore wind power generation, done in ways that mitigate the environmental impact, is one of them.