A huge battery has replaced Hawaii’s last coal plant::undefined
How much electricity do the batteries produce vs the previous power plant?
Why did Hawaii have coal plants to start with? The place is literally made of volcanoes!
Geothermal energy requires a very stable heat source near the surface. Unfortunately, while volcanoes meet both the “heat source” and “near surface” criteria, they are not at all stable.
The child in me just wants there to be a larger-than-life D-cell battery looming on the horizon.
The question is, what brand? Duracell?, Eveready?, Energizer?
Oh my pkcell…
Great but the article didn’t address how they are making up for that lost production capacity besides stating “renewables”
My biggest fear is that these dirty, reliable energy producers get decommissioned without a way to provide power on a unique cloudy week that also has little wind.
I’d rather those dirty producers be kept at the ready, just in case.
They did talk about that. The article said that in some cases solar producers have had to curtail production because the thermal plants needed to keep running. Solar will generate a lot during the day that might not otherwise be used, the battery allows that surplus to be stored until it’s needed. They also mentioned that more solar projects are being constructed.
Solar panels still provide power on cloudy days.
In fact under certain conditions they’ll produce more power than under full sun - solar panels drop in efficiency when they are too hot. (Yes I know this isn’t normal; normally full sun will produce more power, but some people don’t know cloudy days are fine for solar energy production.)
I have solar and battery. They do not provide more energy on cloudy days. You sometimes get lensing for a few minutes but that doesn’t offset the massive loss in production.
the batteries react far more quickly, with a 250-millisecond response time.
Probably also a world record for the most powerful power switch.
Just imagine you press that button, and 185 Megawatts start to flow :-)
