It might come as a surprise to you that batteries attached to the grid today do not reduce carbon emissions -- in fact, they usually do the opposite! Jacob Mansfield & Emma Konet of the startup Tierra Climate are trying to change that by compensating battery operators for emission reductions. I discuss it with them.
David, This behavior is atypical of grid-scale battery storage, and this happens because battery storage projects in Texas mainly participate in Grid Reserves or Ancillary Services. Almost none of the Texas batteries perform renewable energy shifting, which has a high net emissions reduction impact.
We own and operate over 3,300 MW of batteries in US (~30% of all US grid scale storage), with only 30 MW in Texas. I would love to talk to you about the emissions footprint of non-Texas battery storage projects and present an alternate view.
Hey there, you're at NextEra, yeah? I support some of your installations built with Tesla products. And I agree, this piece can't possibly be correct about the large fleet of systems that are in the mold of Australia's Hornsdale system, which was cited favorably in David's old Vox article. A _huge_ amount of storage is getting deployed to enhance renewable installations. And even if you look at Tesla's residential PowerWall product, it is basically no longer sold except in conjunction with solar, and the default use of the product if the customer doesn't actively choose to change it is a blend of self-consumption -- storing up solar energy during the day and then discharging it in the evening to avoid drawing dirty energy from the grid -- with a reserve level for backup.
But with the solar and wind growth curves in California and even Texas, don't we expect curtailment pretty quickly? And if so then that would be the most economical time to recharge, right? It just seems like even without offset type mechanisms that storage creates a market for that curtailed energy and thus shifts those times from losses for the producers to just lower margin sales.
I just say all that because the complexity and unclear impact of these markets (outside of RECs) so far. I get nervous about building more layers onto an already complex area that we need to build quickly.
I was thinking alone these lines too. Marginal emissions at any given time and place seem kind of limiting and backward-looking, though they satisfy a desire to measure and quantify. Those who measure and model and take their results with a grain of salt say "precision w/o accuracy." More wind, and especially more PV, enable more batteries, and more batteries enable more wind and PV.
As an electrified HVAC guy in a place with moderate wind and solar generation, so little or no curtailment, I hear an argument against adding these loads... "Look, you are just causing the marginal fossil powerplant to ramp up." I think of it as training/enabling the grid to add more clean power, particularly if the equipment is controlled to follow wind and solar availability as much as feasible.
RE: Distribution Grid Solar +Storage, from Canary Media:
“ (There’s a) new proposed payment structure for community solar called the Net Value Billing Tariff (NVBT), which the coalition says is crucial to revamping California’s moribund community solar market and would make community solar in the state both economical and effective. A structure for community solar payments was ordered up by AB 2316, a state law passed last year. Now, as the state comes up on a September 26, 2023 deadline to apply for its share of $7 billion in federal community solar grants, the coalition is pressing the CPUC to lock in the NVBT program — and not allow it to be derailed by arguments from utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.”
That report blames solar users under NEM 2.0 for poor people having to pay more. That presupposes that there are no other ways to pay the utility companies other than through electricity users or that high usage users couldn't pay more to offset revenue lost from solar customers. It's lazy.
When someone wants solar on their roof, they can buy the installation by making payments over a 20 yr period and most of the payments come from the energy that the pv panels produce. Hence, the solar installation costs virtually nothing.
David, This behavior is atypical of grid-scale battery storage, and this happens because battery storage projects in Texas mainly participate in Grid Reserves or Ancillary Services. Almost none of the Texas batteries perform renewable energy shifting, which has a high net emissions reduction impact.
We own and operate over 3,300 MW of batteries in US (~30% of all US grid scale storage), with only 30 MW in Texas. I would love to talk to you about the emissions footprint of non-Texas battery storage projects and present an alternate view.
Hey there, you're at NextEra, yeah? I support some of your installations built with Tesla products. And I agree, this piece can't possibly be correct about the large fleet of systems that are in the mold of Australia's Hornsdale system, which was cited favorably in David's old Vox article. A _huge_ amount of storage is getting deployed to enhance renewable installations. And even if you look at Tesla's residential PowerWall product, it is basically no longer sold except in conjunction with solar, and the default use of the product if the customer doesn't actively choose to change it is a blend of self-consumption -- storing up solar energy during the day and then discharging it in the evening to avoid drawing dirty energy from the grid -- with a reserve level for backup.
But with the solar and wind growth curves in California and even Texas, don't we expect curtailment pretty quickly? And if so then that would be the most economical time to recharge, right? It just seems like even without offset type mechanisms that storage creates a market for that curtailed energy and thus shifts those times from losses for the producers to just lower margin sales.
I just say all that because the complexity and unclear impact of these markets (outside of RECs) so far. I get nervous about building more layers onto an already complex area that we need to build quickly.
I was thinking alone these lines too. Marginal emissions at any given time and place seem kind of limiting and backward-looking, though they satisfy a desire to measure and quantify. Those who measure and model and take their results with a grain of salt say "precision w/o accuracy." More wind, and especially more PV, enable more batteries, and more batteries enable more wind and PV.
As an electrified HVAC guy in a place with moderate wind and solar generation, so little or no curtailment, I hear an argument against adding these loads... "Look, you are just causing the marginal fossil powerplant to ramp up." I think of it as training/enabling the grid to add more clean power, particularly if the equipment is controlled to follow wind and solar availability as much as feasible.
RE: Distribution Grid Solar +Storage, from Canary Media:
“ (There’s a) new proposed payment structure for community solar called the Net Value Billing Tariff (NVBT), which the coalition says is crucial to revamping California’s moribund community solar market and would make community solar in the state both economical and effective. A structure for community solar payments was ordered up by AB 2316, a state law passed last year. Now, as the state comes up on a September 26, 2023 deadline to apply for its share of $7 billion in federal community solar grants, the coalition is pressing the CPUC to lock in the NVBT program — and not allow it to be derailed by arguments from utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.”
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energy-division/documents/net-energy-metering-nem/nemrevisit/net-billing-tariff-fact-sheet.pdf
That report blames solar users under NEM 2.0 for poor people having to pay more. That presupposes that there are no other ways to pay the utility companies other than through electricity users or that high usage users couldn't pay more to offset revenue lost from solar customers. It's lazy.
Also why not subsidize solar installations for poor people so they can benefit from solar too
When someone wants solar on their roof, they can buy the installation by making payments over a 20 yr period and most of the payments come from the energy that the pv panels produce. Hence, the solar installation costs virtually nothing.