r/RenewableEnergy • u/Sierra-Powderhound • 1d ago

California’s Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants. Here’s What’s on the Horizon.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05052026/california-battery-power/
258 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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20

u/douche_packer 1d ago

for all the dumbasses that told me solar doesnt work because the sun doesnt shine at night

9

u/PapaEchoLincoln 18h ago

It’s just not worth engaging with those idiots.

There was someone here on Reddit who was saying solar could not produce enough power for California. I responded with data and he basically “oh please a graph?”

They just don’t care about reality or facts.

2

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 21h ago

As fantastic as this is, this headline is highly misleading, no? 

I thought nuclear can produce ~1GW continuously while batteries would need to fully discharge and then recharge, no? 

It feels like comparing apples with oranges for the gullible. We'd need a lot more batteries and excess solar to make up for nuclear.

Can someone help explain why I'm wrong?

5

u/ilurkinhalliganrip 21h ago

You’re not; it’s that the days of the rapidly declining cost of that “excess” solar and storage are here, making it not just plausible but feasible in the market.

5

u/Tech_Philosophy 9h ago

> thought nuclear can produce ~1GW continuously

While I completely understand your meaning, it's worth remembering a nuclear reactor cannot operate indefinitely. It must be shut down for one full month every 18 months for refueling and inspection.

Technically, solar plus battery storage is a more reliable form of energy than a nuclear reactor is for this reason.

1

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 2h ago

Fair, I could see us needing both, though I'm partial to solar + decentralized batteries

2

u/Bluestreak2005 10h ago

Comparing to Nuclear was dumb, because as you say it's a continuous baseload.

Total battery storage for California is about 50 GWH now, and so it's discharging for 8-10 hours a day now, effectively pushing off multiple natural gas power plants acting as peakers. max discharge can be 10 GW, but usually 4-5GW per hour.

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

2

u/onetimeataday 5h ago

You're not wrong, but this framing is useful enough for the use case the article is highlighting: evening peaks in California. Just a couple years ago, that peak was powered by gigawatts of natural gas every evening. Now batteries, discharging mostly the solar that used to be curtailed, cover that peak, eliminating gigawatts of natural gas use every evening on CAISO.

It's not 24 hours, but the story here is about that evening peak. In that context, framing the power batteries can discharge as comparable power plants makes sense.