Batteries -- Idle Thoughts -- December 27, 2020

The discussion of batteries will center around five or six issues, at least.

• commercial vs residential vs individual
• household vs wearable
• cost
• efficiency / technology
• time between charging

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New York City -- Op-Ed 

Updates

December 28, 2020: a reader replies. 

Original Note 

New York City is about to buy 45 seconds of back-up power for one-half billion dollars.  And no one seems to care. Mention this to a New Yorker and at best you will get a shrugged shoulder. Guaranteed.

New York won't be able to buy its way out of blackouts -- Watts Up With That -- December 25, 2020. Link here.

New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.

NYC presently peaks at around 32,000 MW needed to keep the lights on.  

So for reliability we need, say, seven days of backup, which is 168 hours. Here’s the math:

32,000 MW x 168 hours = 5,376,000 MWh of stored juice needed to just make it.  Mind you for normal reliability we usually add 20% or so. 

400 MWh is not “significant scale. It is infinitesimal scale. Nothing. Nada. Might as well not exist.

[I estimate 45 seconds of backup power from the facility. Someone correct me if I’m wrong~CR]

Cost: how much will this 45 seconds of backup power cost? If you are a New Yorker, I hope you are sitting down.

Cost: how much will this 45 seconds of backup power cost? One-half billion dollars.  

So, what would it cost to reliably back up wind power for NYC? $8 trillion.  

We have no idea how to make 5 million MWh of batteries work together. The tiny 400 will be a challenge. It may not be possible.