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Comment by terse_malvolio | Hacker News Reader

This is only a problem because we haven't figured out a good way to store electrical energy.

We have great ways of storing electricity, it's just that they're only getting built right now, and they're getting cheaper so fast that waiting a few years will get you a 30%+ discount off the price.

There are currently 17GW of batteries in the ERCOT interconnection queue for the coming years, for a grid that's only ~80GW. The ERCOT of 2025 will be massively different from the ERCOT of 2021, and it's going to mean a lot less gas, a lot more storage, and a lot more solar.

GW is a unit of power, it’s not a unit that energy storage capacity can be measured in.

Yes of course, that's trivial. Grid connections are measured in power, not in energy units.

Not for batteries since a battery that can deliver 17 GW for an hour is much smaller than one that can deliver 17 GW for a week. Usually grid connections are measured in power since you could use it at 100% indefinitely - not so with a battery , so hours matter.

Regardless, the interconnection absolutely does not care about the MWh of the battery. It has no concern, no care, no need to know. So when talking about interconnection queues, only the GW are reported.

As far as 17GW of battery, the only technology shipping at that scale is lithium ion, and all lithium ion grid batteries are designed for 30 minutes to 4 hours of duration at maximum discharge.

The idea of a week long battery is not a realistic one at this stage. With Texas' excellent solar resources, it may never need long-duration storage, whenever/if that tech gets developed.

So bringing up battery storage on an article about a blackout caused by a multi day storm might lead some people to believe that batteries would make a difference in this situation, when they wouldn't, regardless of the GW.

I was responding to this comment:

> we haven't figured out a good way to store electrical energy.

Before batteries solve all the problems in the grid, they get installed in smaller amounts. We are in the "smaller" amounts, even though small isn't that small actually. And even 17GW with 2 hours duration can help massively with congestion on transmission lines.

That's not really true. The grid has worked just fine for decades. We also do have "good" means of storing electrical energy, they're not as economical as just running at sufficient capacity and managing the grid properly.

Texas had blackouts due to extreme cold as recently as 2011. The findings from the investigation after that event were ignored and we are now seeing a repeat of it exactly 10 years later. It has not worked "just fine" for decades.

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