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Welcome to a late summer evening in California where we have hit net demand. (The point at which the loss of renewables i.e. solar from the setting of the sun near the highest demand of the day hits the peak for non-renewables demand.)
Even in this peak with almost no solar left almost 50% of supply is carbon free, and of those sources the largest percentage at 15% of all grid demand is coming from a one source:
Batteries.
On this day grid scale batteries (i.e. not including those reducing demand at individual meters) peaked at supplying 6.7GW of power back into the grid.
One year ago: 2.8 GW
Two years ago: 1.7 GW
Three years ago: 0.6 GW
A year before that grid scale battery contribution was not tracked as part of grid energy supply data.
We live in interesting times. Our energy grid is changing very quickly.
(For those doing the math our current doubling rate on average is under 12 months.)
Looks like California grid managers are aiming to settle this old debate.
@djcapelis My powerwalls supply the California grid starting at 5pm (when the rate increases) and keep going past when the sun goes down. It will be interesting to see how big the Tesla Virtual Power Plant has got next time it’s needed…
@djcapelis Do you know about this site? https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso It shows a real-time graph of energy sources of California, batteries included.
@b800 yep, but I prefer CAISO’s app and site which provide more data and histories.