I feel like it's at least mildly weird to actually _colocate_ these. Like, it makes sense that they would be _close_, but probably not right beside each other.
If demand is low, charge batteries. If demand is high, drain batteries. If demand is higher than batteries can sustain, run gas. If there's a subsidy for putting battery electric power on the grid, when batteries are low and demand is also low, run gas to charge batteries locally and then supply that to the grid later to get the subsidy.
Only the last part requires colocation, but it's probably easier to get one power plant parcel zoned and one power plant hooked up to the grid, and having both energy storage and a gas peaker together might bring it up the connection prioritization list because it addresses multiple problems for grid operation.
The grid is built to have a peaker plant there, and it’s operated by a company that bids for generation at this location and has experience in it.
I think it more than makes sense.
Given the length of the interconnect queue these days, I'm assuming a lot of industrial/large power draw systems will start to just colocate with enough pv+wind+storage to have a local grid with a very small if any connection to the exterior grid.
Obviously it's a cost, but it's one less action item on the set up process and one less possible area for delay, there will be cases where the cost pencils out.