just like cost effective and environmentally advantageous grid scale batteries at the scales required to smooth day and week scale intermittency
http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-facts...
* In 2020, the U.S. had over 23.2 GW of capacity in energy storage compared to 1,100 GW of total installed generation capacity.
* Globally, installed energy storage capacity totaled 173.6 GW.
* 1,355 energy storage projects were operational globally in 2020, with 11 projects under construction. 40% of operational projects are located in the U.S.
* California leads the U.S. in energy storage with 215 operational projects (4.2 GW), followed by Hawaii, New York, and Texas.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/broad-reach-pow...
"Two of the planned 10 MW batteries are up and running already, with a total of 10 expected online by year's end, Vavrik said. That means that BRP and Key Capture are running neck and neck for operational capacity in Texas. The title of biggest battery operator in the state could change hands repeatedly based on the order in which those companies' projects wrap up.
The broader story is that multiple experienced energy investors are converging on Texas simultaneously. The interconnection queue contains more than two dozen batteries that are each larger than 100 megawatts; some go up to 300, 400, even 500 megawatts."
Again, you either think climate change is an existential problem in which case relying on magic pixiedust in the future is an absurd, or you don't. There's no two ways about it.
Spanning a continent only helps wind power and not solar power.
Even if you entirely ignore that hydro component and only look at the 3 GWh number, that’s still only ~3.6 orders of magnitude less than what we’d need for a whole day with no power generation whatsoever.
Their numbers are talking about enough storage to maintain current usage for half a year.
To your second comment: spanning a continent does actually help with solar, since the sun is up at different times on the two coasts - that buys you several extra hours of power each day. Also obstructive weather patterns tend to not reach that far.
2. Relying on such a tightly coupled national grid as required to deploy that storage is a recipe for disaster in the event of any war or unconventional conflict. A few shut down transmission lines or stations could cripple entire national economy.
3. Overbuilding completely ignores the very real human and environmental costs of doing so. Rare earths are not very green, forced labor as used by much of the solar industry not very humane. You are condemning millions today to hypothetical harm to thousands tomorrow. It's insanity.
But almost all (~95%) of the installed grid storage capacity is in hydroelectric storage. The above commenter is posting in terms of battery storage in the 100MWh range. We would indeed need 6 orders of magnitude larger than this even to just have 1 day's worth of storage. Hundred megawatt hours vs a dozen Terawatt hours.
Also, the amount of storage could be substantially more than a day in a predominantly wind + solar grid. Part of variability is mostly daily, with the sun going up and down. But both solar and wind are also affected by weather. That requires much more substantial amounts of storage to get the grid through consistent days of reduced production. Estimates to provide a 100% carbon-free grid with renewables go as high as 3 weeks [1]
It says that 3 weeks of power storage would be required in total absence of a serious overhaul in transmission capabilities. I had assumed that was a clear, if unspoken, assumption when I was discussion continent scale entities.
Also, the poster you originally responded to was discussing the literal dozens of installations that singlehandedly meet the 100 MWh mark. HN guidelines require that I assume this was a simple failure of reading comprehension.
Where on earth is six orders of magnitude coming from? You’re off by a factor of a hundred.
The point is that dozens of 100MWh stations is basically nothing. You'd need millions of these sites to make renewables a feasible primary source of energy. Our current technology is not sufficient to make energy storage available to make grid storage viable.
Yes a dozen 100GWh facilities is 1.2 GWh, and that's an order of magnitude less in difference, I don't doubt your ability to multiple by factors of ten.
Hydroelectric is geographically limited, you can just build dams where people need additional power.
That leaves nuclear. And since nuclear costs just as much to run 100% of the time as it does to run part of the time it makes no sense to use it as a peaker. Just run it 24/7, and install less intermittent sources.
The single salt formation near Delta Utah could store enough hydrogen to supply the entire US electricity demand for 30 hours.