Texas’ battery storage: a boom and bust market? | FT Energy Source

[@Craig_Broadbent]

Economics beating politics. Green beating black in TEXAS.

[@WigglyCoop007]

No. Black is still more profitable. Energy demand is just so high Black can’t entirely cover it leading to room for green to take some market share. Also just b/c Texas doesn’t have policies disincentivizing fossil fuels, the US does. Not saying black is better only that it is still winning.

[@Nainara32]

Texas kilowatt hours prices are slightly lower than the national average. However, Texas has had some pretty high profile statewide grid outages in the last few years. I wouldn't hold it up as the posterchild of policy success, especially compared to the likes of Washington state.

[@FlameofDemocracy]

Batteries can always be moved, or recycled. In any case, store surplus energy, and use it when there are peaks, or as assurance.

[@glennnielsen8054]

Texas radiates freedom.

[@freeheeler09]

Batteries, as they continue to grow less expensive, are going to disrupt the current electric utility monopoly and petroleum cartel models for power generation and distribution. For most Americans, it is cheaper, averaged over a time period of greater than 10 years, to power our homes and cars with solar and batteries than with traditional fossil fuels.

[@defertyx]

Until we run out of the precious resources needed to make the batteries.

[@ashleigh3021]

@@defertyxBut we aren’t going to run out of oil or gas? Lol.

[@ImpossibleSolution-k6w]

@@defertyx batteries and solar can and are recycled very successfully. We just need to make sure that they do this with all batteries and solar panels and that nothing gets wasted in land fill.

[@Suburp212]

Just boom, never bust. These storages will save the US from outages.

[@tlw314159]

Seems like a boom with definitely no bust. Demand continues to outstrip supply. Buy materials from suppliers that are outside the chinese market like with novonix or even one day with Talga. These producers will reduce the reliance on one country to produce all battery materials.

[@qlmbusinessnews]

Absolutely agree! Texas is truly at the forefront of battery storage innovation! The combination of fluctuating power supply and a supportive market environment makes it a unique case to watch. 💡🌟 It'll be interesting to see if this boom sustains itself or leads to a bust. Let's keep an eye on these developments! 🚀

[@lokesh303101]

It's a Blessing and Boom for Humanity.

[@urbanstrencan]

Awesome project

[@Nicholas-f5]

I worked on the EV chargers shown in Austin

[@JagdeepSandhuSJC]

Musk loves batteries and Texas. What can go wrong?

[@Nicholas-f5]

Elon himself

[@nicholaslogan7232]

$450k Returns the Lord is my saviour in times of my need!!!

[@bernardallen9058]

wow this awesome 👏 I'm 37 and have been looking for ways to be successful, please how??

[@nicholaslogan7232]

It's Ms. Susan Jane Christy doing, she's changed my life.

[@AndreWilliams131]

After I raised up to 325k trading with her I bought a new House and a car here in the states 🇺🇸🇺🇸 also paid for my son's surgery (Oscar). Glory to God.shalom.

[@janetfreeman2300]

Absolutely! I've heard stories of people who started with little to no knowledge but made it out victoriously thanks to Ms. Susan Jane Christy.

[@Andrewp226]

Can't imagine earning $85,000 biweekly, God bless Ms. Susan Jane Christy, God bless America 🇺🇸♥️

[@Fabian-bx5pm]

This is the way! Renewables have won! Oil drilling & usage is too expensive and unsafe!

[@Alexiscool782]

If California changed CEQA, they’d be able to beat Texas on this and housing

[@jaadotech]

Good to see Rainman got a job at a battery storage facility 👍

[@TheMighty_T]

Sodium based over lithium for static battery storage = much reduced fire risk. I would hope Tesla is looking at this, especially after BYD has released cars with this tech.

[@udishomer5852]

There is little to none fire risk at these large battery storage systems which are located in the middle of nowhere.

[@ashleigh3021]

No reason to, fire risk is extremely low

[@gus473]

With a big battery and solar, why put my rural home on "a grid" at all? Getting difficult to see much advantage to it. Particularly with the energy auction pricing model! (⁠/⁠¯⁠◡⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠◡⁠)⁠/⁠¯⁠ ⁠~⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

[@prashanttayshetye8469]

THIS SOUNDS LIKW A DISASTER

[@tonysu8860]

The US badly needs to invest in an upgraded grid and more broadly energy storage, including but not specifically batteries. And, there should probably be a ban or at least limitations on using lithium batteries except where this no other choice where lithium is probably superior to other formulations.

[@charleswillcock3235]

Why ban lithium batteries?

[@beyondfossil]

Grid-scale storage is accelerating and leading us towards dispatchable "firm renewables" which will be checkmate for all other utility-scale energy source on Earth.

[@Ray_of_Light62]

There will never be a thing like too many batteries on the power grid. The energy density is low, and their cost is high...

[@jimurrata6785]

And yet investors are tripping over each other to deploy more. If they didn't think this was something they wanted to have a leading position in, or the ROI was not there, there wouldn't be any capital available.

[@cg986]

"Never"

[@ashleigh3021]

Not sure about that, the cost has come down by 100% or so in a decade

[@samuelwilliams7331]

Cost is dropping and there i plenty of space in West Texas. I remember a decade ago when people said wind and solar was too expensive and now its the cheapest energy source in the state.

[@cg986]

@@samuelwilliams7331 Yeah. It's hilarious.

[@barbarar1169]

One question. How much energy is used to cool/maintain those “off-line” storage units while awaiting the need for their deployment?

[@LoganKaser]

By definition, less cost of energy then they are able to get from selling the energy later, otherwise they would lose money. Lithium-ion is very round-trip efficient compared to other forms of storage like pumped hydro, but the efficiency doesn't even matter that much if you have a big glut of excess cheap solar during the day and strong demand in the evening to fill, which is the case here.

[@barbarar1169]

@ Thank you.

[@udishomer5852]

The fact that they are very profitable means the energy for cooling them is minuscule compared to their output. Most of the cost is actually the initial setup - buying and installing the battery systems.

[@MainMan7012]

One of these systems, powering 20,000 homes for an unknown period of time and at an unknown cost, doesn’t seem to contribute more than a drop in the vast energy demand bucket.

[@lylestavast7652]

except it's NOT a 1:1 map there. Those batteries might be adding back onto the grid in volume during an outage, but other times they're selling their power for power regulation puposes (keeping voltage/hz rates stable) as well as bidding for volume sales onto the market. Multi-purpose, flexible and milliseconds available vs spin up times in longer periods up to minutes for some of the other generation types.

[@Paul-e9x4h]

Multipel kapasitas daya pada lini produksi baterai ini saja oplah produksinya sangat luar biasa banyaknya

[@RaveFathercom]

Build Nuclear.

[@udishomer5852]

Since its much more expensive to produce energy from nuclear plants, its not likely to happen.

[@beyondfossil]

Commercial nuclear: way too expensive, too slow to build (a decade or more) along with a long list of other problems with it. The next 10- to 20-years will be critical to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, but it takes 10- to 20-years to build a single utility-scale nuclear power plant! Nuclear won't even put a dent in the large amount of energy needed to really displace fossil fuels. There is only one energy source that can, and about 10,000 times over at least. Ironically, it's the same energy source that originally created fossil fuels in the first place.

[@Nicholas-f5]

way more expensive

[@Frederic383]

Not a single word about batteries and lithium needs. Battery have a short life about 1000cycle. And after? Not to mention the lining of lithium

[@fs3859]

Grid scale batteries have a lifetime of 10 to 20 years. Afterwards, most of the materials (>90%) can be recycled. If we take the negative scenario (10 years lifetime and 90% recycling), we need thechnological progress to enable us to use the recycled materials 10% more efficiently every 10 years in order to get the same battery capacity for eternity(!) without any additional mining requirements. Currently, technological progress is much faster than that. There won't be a shortage of litihium. Lithium prices are lower today than they were 5 years ago. Also, if there ever was a shortage, sodium ion batteries would fill in the gap.

[@RiRian-cw7pr]

Sodium battery more lasting

[@northernouthouse]

The pace of innovation in batteries is accelerating. Catl, a leader in the industry, just came out with an EV battery rated for 1 million miles and a 15 year warranty. Most ice vehicles don't reach 1 million miles. Similar advancement are being made on grid tied batteries as it is the new frontier.

[@cg986]

And here again we have a self declared expert. "Battery have short life"... Ok buddy. Drive an electric car and a fossil fuel car with 2000 moving parts. Let's see which will break down first.

[@ashleigh3021]

Because it’s irrelevant and a solved issue.

[@inigoromon1937]

Why do they create an environmental disaster with each battery storage? Why no trees, no plants? And then they put refrigeration.