I once had a sweet, brown pit bull mix named Thembi, who had impressive musculature and a magnificent nose. Often on our walks, I would feel the leash go taut and know she’d sniffed out something tantalizing, likely a squirrel or a rabbit. She would snuffle excitedly, muzzle to the ground, tracing her quarry’s skittish […]
10MWh of energy is 36 seconds worth of output from a smallish 1GW power plant. Battery storage is a huge way off viable for anything other than smoothing out daily cycles of wind and solar.
A 1GW plant takes up 832 acres, which would be 12 hours of power with 10MW of storage per 0.7 acres, or 120 hours with a high density 100MW configuration.
Smoothing out the daily cycles is exactly what we’re discussing: absorbing the excess during peak and using it to power through the troughs.
Battery power could entirely satisfy the need with the right quantity, it just hasn’t scaled up yet.
The typical coal plant takes up 0.7 acres per megawatt of power generation. 0.7 acres of sodium-ion batteries can store 10-100 MWh of energy.
10MWh of energy is 36 seconds worth of output from a smallish 1GW power plant. Battery storage is a huge way off viable for anything other than smoothing out daily cycles of wind and solar.
A 1GW plant takes up 832 acres, which would be 12 hours of power with 10MW of storage per 0.7 acres, or 120 hours with a high density 100MW configuration.
Smoothing out the daily cycles is exactly what we’re discussing: absorbing the excess during peak and using it to power through the troughs.