It would cost an estimated $3.6 BILLION worth of batteries to back up a 100MW (smallish) wind farm so that it could supply a single day’s worth of power.
Energy storage
Battery trickery by U.S. utilities
The use of big batteries to partially offset the intermittency of renewables is growing rapidly. Unfortunately some utilities have adopted a deceptive practice with the public, making these battery packs seem much more important then they are. It is all part of hyping the utility’s supposed greenness, which helps their stock price but not their customers.
Utility Battery Storage: Just Seconds to Disaster
For utilities selling battery storage as some sort of panacea for the unreliability of wind and solar, check out this sobering fact from climate alarmist Ken Caldiera. We always like it when the other side makes our point for us.
Source: Twitter
Fraud: Arizona Public Service announces one of largest battery storage projects in US
Grid-scale electricity storage can’t save renewables
A new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation: “You need storage to deal with lulls in wind generation that can last for several days, so the amount required would be impracticably large. And because this would only be required intermittently, its capital cost could probably never be recovered… Wind and solar power are not available on demand and there are no technologies to make them so. Refusing to face these inconvenient facts poses a serious threat to our energy security.”
Source: TheGWPF.org
Batteries not included in renewable fantasy plans
“So for 100% national renewables we might need over one million MW of batteries with 120 million MWh of generating capacity.”
Continue reading Batteries not included in renewable fantasy plans
The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid
“But there’s a problem with this rosy scenario. These batteries are far too expensive and don’t last nearly long enough, limiting the role they can play on the grid, experts say. If we plan to rely on them for massive amounts of storage as more renewables come online… we could be headed down a dangerously unaffordable path.”
Busted: Residential battery storage systems are expensive junk
According to a new study, if you use residential batteries to reduce electricity costs, you increase CO2 emissions. If you use them to reduce emissions, the batteries operate like a carbon tax costing $180 to $5,160 per metric ton for the small percentage (2.2 – 6.4%) of emissions avoided. So energy storage technology doesn’t even work on a small scale in homes — yet US electric utilities are announcing coal shutdowns in hopes that battery technology will somehow and someday be able to economically store wind and solar power on utility-scale.
Continue reading Busted: Residential battery storage systems are expensive junk