Our Transition to Sustainable Energy: Solar Energy and Battery Storage
Author: Earl McKoon
Depending on where you live, you may or may not have noticed things shifting towards sustainability recently. If you live in Texas like me, maybe you were happy enough we weren’t losing power on the hottest days this year, not overly concerned where the power came from as long as the cold air kept blowing. In parts of the US, like the west coast, local government is leading the sustainability effort, while others, like Texas, are moving this direction more naturally (although both locations received benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act). Below we will look at how this shift towards eco-consciousness is playing out in the United States, specifically with solar energy generation and battery storage.
Solar Energy
Over the last decade ending in 2023, the capacity to generate solar energy in the USA has increased almost 7-fold. As impressive as that is, by the end of 2024, its expected to see another 36.4 GW of utility-scale solar capacity added to our nations electric grids this year. That number is about equal to the total solar capacity the US had in 2016, and almost double the increase in solar capacity from last year.1 ?
?Texas and California are and have been adding solar capacity at a higher rate than anywhere else in the USA, so let’s look at how the solar generation capacity has evolved and is contributing to their electric grids.? The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) operates the Texas grid.? In 2022, the record contribution from solar energy topped at 10.03 GW @ 11:35am on August 28th. Almost a year later, 2023’s record day saw a 35.6% increase in solar contribution on August 19th, hitting 13.6 GW at noon. 2024 hasn’t come to an end yet, the days are getting shorter, but we continue to break records. September 8th made a new record contribution reaching 21.66 GW at 2:00pm. The year-over-year increase was 59%, and maybe more impressive, the increase over the 2-year period was 116%! Over the 2024 summer, solar energy has made up between 25-30% or more of the fuel mix at any given time while the sun is out. A year prior, solar energy was providing about 14-20% of the fuel mix throughout the day. 2
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) oversees California’s bulk electric power system. Starting in 2022, CAISO saw the largest contribution from solar on July 1st at 1:05PM, 14.21 GW of electricity was being contributed to their grid. By 2023, that number increased 11.89% to 15.9 GW on July 5th, slightly after noon. 2024’s record was on August 14th, once again slightly after noon, 19.62 GW of solar energy was contributed. That’s an 18.9% increase year-over-year, and 27.5% increase over the last 2 years. While the load amount from solar is similar to what ERCOT receives, the percent of the fuel mix is much higher for CAISO. Generally, solar energy is contributing 50-60% of the load for the CAISO grid while the sun is out. Similar to ERCOT, the percentage solar contributed of the full load also increased about 10% from the previous year. 3
Battery Storage
Looking at battery storage, The EIA reports more meaningful battery storage gains began coming online in 2021and have continued to ramp since then, with a record expected increase of 89% in battery capacity for the US in 2024. 15 GW in battery storage is expected to be added to the existing 16 GW in the US. The nature of Solar power makes battery storage pair well with it to extend the amount of time it can contribute to the grid, so it comes as no surprise that California and Texas also lead the country with installed battery storage capacity. 4
According to gridstatus.io, the 2024 record level battery energy storage discharge in ERCOT’s grid shows 3.927 GW at 7:35pm on August 20th. This made up 4.9% of the fuel mix at that time, which was still relatively close to peak power usage. Solar energy was fading fast as natural gas was heading towards its high contribution of just over 60% of the grid’s power. In 2023, the maximum contribution from battery storage came on August 30th, with 1.64 GW, providing 2.4% of the grids power at the time. 2
Battery Storage had its record contribution to CAISO’s grid August 14th, 2024, discharging 8.322 GW at 7:35pm. At that time, battery storage was providing California’s grid with 21.9% of its supplied power. 2023’s largest contribution of 4.75 GW was August 23rd at 7:10pm, providing 11.7% of the grids power at that time. 3
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Conclusion
Both ERCOT and CAISO’s battery storage nearly doubled in capacity from 2023 to 2024. The combination of solar power and extending its ability through batteries has significantly added to each grid during the times of day power is needed the most. This trend is expected to continue growing as increasingly larger installations are planned, and innovative ideas continue being implemented. Some exciting innovative ideas to keep an eye out for include the massive iron-air battery to be built by Form Energy. This is expected to be able to discharge for up to 100 continuous hours, providing the New England grid with up to 8500mwh of energy.5 Another one, in Oakland, California, the fleet of electric school busses are testing out vehicle-to-grid charging. This adds much needed power to the grid during peak times and offsets the cost by discharging to the grid while power is more expensive and then recharging when it is less expensive.6
Whether we have noticed or not, the transition to sustainability is taking place around us every day. While some of our options like nuclear might take 10 years before providing us relief, we can expect significant advancements from solar and battery power in the interim.
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2 个月Well done!
LatAm Senior Analyst @datacenterHawk | MBA
2 个月Great piece
Great piece Earl McKoon! Now we need the US to use more wind generation to compliment solar like Brazil is doing. Overall these are positive steps forward, just need to take bigger steps!
Guess less on data center real estate.
2 个月Go Earl!