Some good news on the climate/energy front — potentially, anyway — and an interesting analysis of how technology and science have the ability to puncture political puffery by busting through it like the Kool-Aid pitcher-dude crashing through a wall.
Tesla is building a 100 MW/129 MWh battery system to pair with a wind farm in South Australia. It’s billed as the largest in the world. They can store energy for when there are spikes in demand, as has been done in other, smaller projects. From what I’m reading, the costs of storing energy from solar and wind for times when the wind ain’t blowing and the sun ain’t shining have made those sources less than competitive, but plunging prices for batteries are helping to rectify that.
Repeated blackouts in SA since September have sparked a political brawl over energy policy, with the federal government blaming the failures on the use of renewable technologies. After the most recent blackout in early February the Australian Energy Market Operator said there were many factors behind it, including higher demand than anticipated.
Grid-scale battery storage could help to even out price spikes, prevent blackouts and improve reliability across the network.
The knock on renewable energy sources is that they’re not consistent enough to meet our energy needs. But the Green Institute’s Tim Hollo says these battery projects spell doom for fossil fuel backers:
For months now, Malcolm Turnbull, Josh Frydenberg, various fossil fuel energy executives and media commentators like Paul Kelly have been rabbiting on about the “energy trilemma”. It’s their contention that energy policy must deal with cost, reliability and emissions, and that it is impossible to achieve all three at the same time. Conveniently, they choose to put emissions at the bottom of this list and bury it under a pile of coal, which they claim is cheap and reliable.
This is not true. Not even close to it. It doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
This awakens my imagination. Being able to store energy, affordably, from the sun and the wind. No need to burn anything or dam any waterway. Every roof in America, in the world, covered with solar tiles. That’s a lot of re-roofing (jobs!). That’s a lot of clean(er) air. That’s a lot of First World access to reliable electricity in places that haven’t known that luxury.
It’s also a lot of disruption. I don’t know how many people are employed in existing power plants and companies, but it will upend careers and livelihoods and corporations. Even so, it’s coming, and it can’t get here fast enough.