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Title: California Has Got Really Good at Building Giant Batteries

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/29/1642...

California's battery power capacity rose from 500 megawatts in 2018 to nearly
16,000 megawatts in 2025. Nearly a quarter of America's battery capacity is
now in California alone, according to Bloomberg. At their daily peak around
8pm, batteries can provide as much as 30% of the state's electricity. The
batteries charge in the afternoon when solar power is cheap and release
energy in the evenings when Californians get home and crank up their air
conditioners. In the middle of the day, when the sun is strongest, as much as
three-quarters of the state's electricity can come from solar. California
relied on regulation to achieve this scale. In 2013, the California Public
Utilities Commission ordered the state's three big investor-owned utilities
to procure 1,325 megawatts of energy storage by 2020 to help meet renewable
targets and stabilize the grid. That goal was easily met. Mark Jacobson, an
engineering professor at Stanford University, told Economist that most days
this year contained periods when solar, hydropower and wind, helped by
batteries, met 100% of California's demand -- even though just 54% of the
state's electricity generation comes from renewables.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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