Ventura County to Replace Natural Gas Generation with Battery Storage

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

News flash: batteries do not *generate* electricity.

Did California actually think this through? 

Removing / retiring natural gas plants for generating electricity and creating a huge battery for (temporarily) storing electricity.

 

Ventura County to Replace Natural Gas Generation with Battery Storage

Ventura County, California, is moving forward on developing a 100-megawatt, 400-megawatt hour battery storage facility to replace the need for new natural gas-powered generation.

The enormous Ventura Energy Storage project will be situated on a brownfield site in a private industrial park, according to developer Strata Solar. Southern California Edison and Strata Solar signed a 20-year power purchase agreement in April 2019 for the local capacity.

“The electrical grid in Ventura County is stressed by diverse terrain, extreme weather, and the planned retirement of old and inefficient natural gas-fueled power plants along the coast,” Strata Solar said. Venture Energy Storage should improve reliability without increasing emissions, the developer added.

Strata awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract to Tesla for its Megapack battery system, a massive energy storage system that comes pre-assembled and pre-tested in one enclosure from the company’s Nevada Gigafactory. On Tuesday, the Verge reported that Tesla is fully reopening its factory in Nevada despite earlier announcements that the company would resume limited operations.  ...

 

[NickW + 2,714]

9 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

News flash: batteries do not *generate* electricity.

Did California actually think this through? 

Removing / retiring natural gas plants for generating electricity and creating a huge battery for (temporarily) storing electricity.

 

Ventura County to Replace Natural Gas Generation with Battery Storage

Ventura County, California, is moving forward on developing a 100-megawatt, 400-megawatt hour battery storage facility to replace the need for new natural gas-powered generation.

The enormous Ventura Energy Storage project will be situated on a brownfield site in a private industrial park, according to developer Strata Solar. Southern California Edison and Strata Solar signed a 20-year power purchase agreement in April 2019 for the local capacity.

“The electrical grid in Ventura County is stressed by diverse terrain, extreme weather, and the planned retirement of old and inefficient natural gas-fueled power plants along the coast,” Strata Solar said. Venture Energy Storage should improve reliability without increasing emissions, the developer added.

Strata awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract to Tesla for its Megapack battery system, a massive energy storage system that comes pre-assembled and pre-tested in one enclosure from the company’s Nevada Gigafactory. On Tuesday, the Verge reported that Tesla is fully reopening its factory in Nevada despite earlier announcements that the company would resume limited operations.  ...

 

I think the clue is somewhere in this - 'Strata Solar'

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

On 5/15/2020 at 1:08 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

News flash: batteries do not *generate* electricity.

Did California actually think this through? 

Removing / retiring natural gas plants for generating electricity and creating a huge battery for (temporarily) storing electricity.

 

Ventura County to Replace Natural Gas Generation with Battery Storage

Ventura County, California, is moving forward on developing a 100-megawatt, 400-megawatt hour battery storage facility to replace the need for new natural gas-powered generation.

I do not know the details of this particular installation, but I do know the concept, and it is not inherently silly. Those gas plants are peakers. They only come online when the baseload plants (plus solar and wind)  cannot meet the demand. If the peakers being replaced never need to generate more than 400 MWh during the biggest peak event, and never need to exceed 100 MW, then the battery can replace them. If battery storage/retrieval is more efficient than the efficiency difference between a peaker and a CCGT plant, then it saves money operationally, also, even if it is fed from CCGT instead of wind or solar.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Just let California ‘go green’ with the caveat that once they take this path, they own it. No federal money will be available to ‘fix it if it breaks’. If this is where Californians want to go, just remember that all decisions have consequences.

If it works out...great! If not, I do not want to hear about it.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Douglas Buckland

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

11 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Just let California ‘go green’ with the caveat that once they take this path, they own it. No federal money will be available to ‘fix it if it breaks’. If this is where Californians want to go, just remember that all decisions have consequences.

If it works out...great! If not, I do not want to hear about it.

That's fine, as long as it applies to all types of energy, not just "green".  No coal bailouts, no federal money for oil or gas, etc.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

56 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

That's fine, as long as it applies to all types of energy, not just "green".  No coal bailouts, no federal money for oil or gas, etc.

What? We are discussing CALIFORNIA’S decision to go totally green, not the rest of the 49 states...stay on topic.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

3 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

What? We are discussing CALIFORNIA’S decision to go totally green, not the rest of the 49 states...stay on topic.

Sorry, Doug, but I feel that this is on topic. the Feds make me pay income tax. I don't want that money distributed to other states on terms that are different than they distribute it to my state.

[John Foote + 1,135]

On 5/15/2020 at 3:08 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

News flash: batteries do not *generate* electricity.

Did California actually think this through? 

Removing / retiring natural gas plants for generating electricity and creating a huge battery for (temporarily) storing electricity.

Of course it wasn't thought through, but the notion of using storage to replace gas electrical generation is fundamentally sound, except for the economics.

With the right conditions, solar generation is very economical, although a combined cycle gas electrical generation is better. But solar's fundamental challenge is obvious, you need sun. So in this case you seriously overproduce with solar, charging batteries. Then "buy" from batteries in non-solar producing times. Unfortunately the economics don't work, but the physics does.

Another thing not talked about as much. Electric generation by natural gas, while in many locations is the most economical, by having gas electric generation operations deliberately not running anywhere near peak efficiency in order to absorb the fluctuations of other sources, that infrastructure also becomes more expensive than necessary. So we are losing on two fronts.

The best example of using storage is by the TVA. A nuclear site is very efficient, but it doesn't ramp up and down very well. So at night they run a nuke near an optimum, and drive large electric pumps, pumping water uphill into a reservoir.  In the day they get hydro from the reservoir. An elegant, efficient solution, but not applicable to most of the world.

Last month was a milestone. Renewables our produced king coal in the USA for electric production. Some of that is growth in renewables. I suspect the bigger factor is switching to gas. It's just dumb economics to run coal.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

10 hours ago, John Foote said:

Of course it wasn't thought through, but the notion of using storage to replace gas electrical generation is fundamentally sound, except for the economics.

With the right conditions, solar generation is very economical, although a combined cycle gas electrical generation is better. But solar's fundamental challenge is obvious, you need sun. So in this case you seriously overproduce with solar, charging batteries. Then "buy" from batteries in non-solar producing times. Unfortunately the economics don't work, but the physics does.

Another thing not talked about as much. Electric generation by natural gas, while in many locations is the most economical, by having gas electric generation operations deliberately not running anywhere near peak efficiency in order to absorb the fluctuations of other sources, that infrastructure also becomes more expensive than necessary. So we are losing on two fronts.

The best example of using storage is by the TVA. A nuclear site is very efficient, but it doesn't ramp up and down very well. So at night they run a nuke near an optimum, and drive large electric pumps, pumping water uphill into a reservoir.  In the day they get hydro from the reservoir. An elegant, efficient solution, but not applicable to most of the world.

Last month was a milestone. Renewables our produced king coal in the USA for electric production. Some of that is growth in renewables. I suspect the bigger factor is switching to gas. It's just dumb economics to run coal.

4-hour lithium batteries are cost-effective, regardless of the source of the electricity, because they replace peakers. Peakers are less efficient than baseload generators including CCGT. Batteries are a great deal more efficient than hydro storage.

When you have generators with near-zero marginal cost (solar or wind) or very low marginal cost (nuclear), then batteries make even more sense.

Batteries don't make much sense for mid-term or long-term storage: they are far too expensive per KWh. There, you use hydro or gas to store your nearly-free solar, wind, or nuclear energy even though the storage/retrieval efficiency is not very high. You still need the batteries because the retrieval system (hydro or gas) does not react quickly.