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Comment by niftich | Hacker News Reader

"A New Era of Batteries Spells Trouble for Gas in America" is the article's actual title, but the text does not back up this assertion.

Rather, a regulatory agency in California is ordering PG&E it must hold a competitive solicitation to "address two local sub-area capacity deficiencies and to manage a high voltage issue in another sub-area", because they're being blackmailed by Calpine [1] over three peaker plants.

Calpine has said they'd shut down the plants unless they get extensions on their must-buy contracts. The causality suggested in the article is backwards from the actual facts.

[1] http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M200/K6...

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In California, yes, PG&E is being required to use non-fossil fuel resources for peaker functionality.

But, battery storage is cheap enough to start replacing peakers nationwide [1]. GE also laid off 12k people from their gas turbine generator business due to dropping demand [2]. Also, "Major CEOs of power companies have also suggested, in a much more aggressive time frame, that peaker plants will go away entirely by 2020 in the USA." [3]

Batteries will never get more expensive. Renewables will continue their aggressive cost decline curve. Ergo, peakers are stranded assets, and energy storage + renewable will continue their march down the electric generator market vertical (peakers->load following->base load).

[1] https://electrek.co/2017/12/13/solar-batteries-to-take-10gw-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/ge-is-sai...

[3] https://twitter.com/jburwen/status/940635406697160704

The Minnesota report [1] discussed in your links is much more nuanced than just the graph excerpt. It suggests that a judicious use of federal investment credits and future anticipated cost decreases might make storage combined with solar generation a competitive or cheaper option than natgas peakers by 2023, but also proposes that Minnesota is well-positioned to start early, and learn by example.

While this may presage an industry trend, it's a long way away from the raw, unsubsidized numbers of storage-only timeshift solutions fully being cheaper than peakers. Battery storage isn't booming because it's that good right now; it's about to start expanding because of smart players taking advantage of subsidies, and betting on long-term trends.

[1] http://energytransition.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/W...

I agree that there's nuance. Renewables and energy storage receive subsidies, yet there is no carbon tax to level the playing field with traditional fossil peakers (or even load following or base load fossil, for that matter).

Besides California, Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington are also mandating utility scale energy storage. I anticipate additional states mandating the same in the near (1-3 years) future, which will contribute to driving down the cost of energy storage as manufacturing scales up. Time will tell.

Replying here because I can no longer edit.

I just found this interesting article about how China wants to be the destination for all things lithium ion storage for repurposing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-11/china-s-g...

This could mean a profound shift in utility battery storage if all of these EV batteries are going to go into grid storage after their useful life has been depleted in vehicles.

So you disagree with toomuchtodo that storage is cheaper now, but agree about where things are going in the long term.

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