Big Batteries Could Shake Up Power Industry

Two major electrical power crises suffered by the State of California are said to have been instrumental in nurturing a fledgling big battery industry, which could solve some of the most serious problems for alternative energy and help ease the state’s, and possibly the world’s, transition away from fossil fuels. Crisis one was the power shortage of 2000-2001, when market manipulation by the soon to be defunct Texas utility Enron raised awareness of both the consequences of power shortages and the fragility of the existing system, at the same time it helped nurture an undercurrent of antipathy toward the fossil fuel industry. The second crisis was the massive Aliso Canyon natural gas leak of 2015, which is said in this New York Times feature to have been the global-warming equivalent of  about 1.7 million cars driven over the course of a year. Now,in Aliso Canyon and in other parts of CA, giant arrays of lithium-ion batteries are being deployed, in a move that proponents hope will change the equation that determines the viability of so-called alternative power. The batteries allow the storage of both wind and solar power during times of peak production and the subsequent release of that power into the grid during periods when the source is at low production. Companies that install the battery arrays are challenged by the physics of lithium-ion energy storage – in short, it produces a lot of  heat, to an extent that has at times flummoxed engineers, most recently those who designed the battery for the ill-fated Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. For that and other reasons, Wall Street and many utility executives nationwide are cautious, if not overtly skeptical, about the battery storage concept.