California's Great Battery Revolution Allows Closure of Peaker Gas Plants and move to 100% Wind, Solar, Water | Informed Comment |

The renewables revolution around the world has depended primarily on wind, hydro, and solar. A fourth factor is now swiftly emerging as essential, that is, mega-battery storage. Batteries store energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, to release it when those sources decline.

California has so much solar energy that it faces a difficulty in the late afternoon when commuters get home from work and turn up the air conditioning and start cooking supper. At precisely this moment, the sun begins going down and solar arrays provide less energy.

In August 2020, this mismatch caused brownouts or rotating power outages. Ordinarily the late afternoon decline of solar and spike in usage was covered by peaker gas plants, but a heatwave that year overwhelmed this system . The peaker gas plant is not an ideal solution, since firing up these plants emits a great deal of carbon dioxide and other noxious chemicals that are bad for people's health.

So it is good news that AES Corp. just closed down its Redondo Beach Generating Station, which could put out 1.3 gigawatts of power. Demand for its power had been weak in recent years, except that it was used as a peaker plant when solar sources declined.

So what can replace these dangerous peaker gas plants that threaten the planet with greenhouse gases?

Batteries? Batteries.

And boy does California now have batteries.

The office of Governor Gavin Newsom this fall pointed out, "California has increased battery storage by 757% in only four years, and now has enough to power 6.6 million homes for up to four hours."

California Energy Storage System Survey