Battery storage has grown rapidly in California. On some days, batteries provide as much electricity to the Californian grid as natural gas plants do. (A rare example of infrastructure getting built fast in California?)
From January 1st 2025 until yesterday, battery storage provided an average of 31.2 Gwh of electricity per day to the CAISO grid, or roughly 6%
i used to be positively surprised a decade ago when reading that some country has run on 6% solar on average for a year, now its 6% on battery storage alone
in a decade, China and some EU countries will likely be there as well
battery storage alone will never get us to 100% renewables on yearly basis ,but its impact is gigantic on a daily basis, allowing operators to shut down completely fossil fuel plants for some periods, as storage can kick in within seconds if wind and solar generation suddenly drops
before batteries, every utility used to run at least some gas storage or hydro as back load, to be able to control small fluctuations in solar or wind power during the day
cactus_toothbrush on
It’s amazing how quickly batteries have been built and deployed and how well they have worked. The rate of installation is growing in California and a lot of nations and will enable very high renewable generation percentages.
Fundamentally the large deployment of batteries demonstrate renewables can provide power on a 24 hour cycle. Long duration storage using renewables hasn’t been solved yet, but that’s the last remaining challenge to be solved.
3 Comments
source: [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/california-has-got-really-good-at-building-giant-batteries](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/california-has-got-really-good-at-building-giant-batteries)
there is a scientist who tracks the development of wind, water, solar and storage in California daily and year to date
his graphs blow my mind all the time
[https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lq3lomvaw22k](https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lq3lomvaw22k)
From January 1st 2025 until yesterday, battery storage provided an average of 31.2 Gwh of electricity per day to the CAISO grid, or roughly 6%
i used to be positively surprised a decade ago when reading that some country has run on 6% solar on average for a year, now its 6% on battery storage alone
in a decade, China and some EU countries will likely be there as well
battery storage alone will never get us to 100% renewables on yearly basis ,but its impact is gigantic on a daily basis, allowing operators to shut down completely fossil fuel plants for some periods, as storage can kick in within seconds if wind and solar generation suddenly drops
before batteries, every utility used to run at least some gas storage or hydro as back load, to be able to control small fluctuations in solar or wind power during the day
It’s amazing how quickly batteries have been built and deployed and how well they have worked. The rate of installation is growing in California and a lot of nations and will enable very high renewable generation percentages.
Fundamentally the large deployment of batteries demonstrate renewables can provide power on a 24 hour cycle. Long duration storage using renewables hasn’t been solved yet, but that’s the last remaining challenge to be solved.