Batteries charge on solar and displace fossil gas at night – stark difference 23 to 24

5 comments

1. April is not an energy intense month in California. Lets see how it fares in August and September during a heat wave

2. I have it on good authority that the goal posts have already been moved! Now we must discuss why solar+battery is impractical for Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and therefore is a dead end!

3. The source of this graph is a really intriguing website called [Gridstatus.io.](https://www.gridstatus.io/) It has live data from about half of the grid operators. If you can’t find your own utility under the list of ISOs, look under “balancing authority”. Some historical data is only available with a subscription, but there is a ton of information available for free, and some really useful graph builders. They also have an informative [Blog, which this graph was taken from.](https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/) The blog answers questions like “is this change due to hydropower because they came out of a drought?” (Answer is no.)

   It makes it very obvious that the energy transition is real, rapid, and accelerating. Grid scale batteries are only beginning to have a large impact, but it is clearly a big one.

4. Why isn’t there more solar power generated and send to the west from the east of the US in the early morning hours?

5. A little misleading to look at just natural gas and leave out imports. Here’s 4/20/24 showing natural gas and imports from CASIO.

   [https://imgur.com/a/ckalMHM](https://imgur.com/a/ckalMHM)