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Notes -
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-will-add-more-grid-batteries-than-any-other-state-in-2024
Texas will end 2024 with 12 GW of battery storage- I guess pumped water isn’t a factor due to geography or technical barriers. I’m not sure if this is an expansive definition of battery or if this is literally just a bunch of lithium-ions.
My rule of thumb is that anybody who solely uses the unit of power for battery storage like "12 GW" is a moron and should not be part of the discussion at all. Peak output of storage is not the hard problem, the overall capacity is.
I had to look into several sources to check what we are talking about. Here is Bellefield solar + storage that claims to have battery storage of 1 GW output for whole 4 hours for overall capacity of 4 GWh. California consumes 259 TWh of electricity per year, Texas uses 365 TWh. Even if the output of this battery was infinite, it could power California or Texas for around 8-10 minutes. You would literally need thousand of such storage sites to cover potential output loss for one week.
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