https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid
Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
By Robert F. Service
Jul. 11, 2019
This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to
approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also
addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal
calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world's largest
batteries. It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in
2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar
power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That's cheaper than any
power generated with fossil fuel.
"Goodnight #naturalgas, goodnight #coal, goodnight #nuclear," Mark
Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto,
California, tweeted after news of the deal surfaced late last month.
"Because of growing economies of scale, prices for renewables and
batteries keep coming down," adds Jacobson, who has advised countries
around the world on how to shift to 100% renewable electricity. As if on
cue, last week a major U.S. coal company—West Virginia–based Revelation
Energy LLC—filed for bankruptcy, the second in as many weeks.
The new solar plus storage effort will be built in Kern County in
California by 8minute Solar Energy. The project is expected to create a
400-megawatt solar array, generating roughly 876,000 megawatt hours
(MWh) of electricity annually, enough to power more than 65,000 homes
during daylight hours. Its 800-MWh battery will store electricity for
after the sun sets, reducing the need for natural gas–fired generators.
Precipitous price declines have already driven a shift toward renewables
backed by battery storage. In March, an analysis of more than 7000
global storage projects by Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that
the cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries had fallen by 76% since
2012, and by 35% in just the past 18 months, to $187 per MWh. Another
market watch firm, Navigant, predicts a further halving by 2030, to a
price well below what 8minute has committed to.
Large-scale battery storage generally relies on lithium-ion
batteries—scaled-up versions of the devices that power laptops and most
electric vehicles. But Jane Long, an engineer and energy policy expert
who recently retired from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California, says batteries are only part of the energy storage answer,
because they typically provide power for only a few hours. "You also
need to manage for long periods of cloudy weather, or winter
conditions," she says.
Local commitments to switch to 100% renewables are also propelling the
rush toward grid-scale batteries. By Jacobson's count, 54 countries and
eight U.S. states have required a transition to 100% renewable
electricity. In 2010, California passed a mandate that the state's
utilities install electricity storage equivalent to 2% of their peak
electricity demand by 2024.
Although the Los Angeles project may seem cheap, the costs of a fully
renewable–powered grid would add up. Last month, the energy research
firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid
alone would be $4.5 trillion, about half of which would go to installing
900 billion watts, or 900 gigawatts (GW), of batteries and other energy
storage technologies. (Today, the world's battery storage capacity is
just 5.5 GW.) But as other cities follow the example of Los Angeles,
that figure is sure to fall.
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