Texas battery rush: Oil state's power woes fuel energy storage boom

[Finishline42]

May 31 (Reuters) - BlackRock, Korea's SK, Switzerland's UBS and other companies are chasing an investment boom in battery storage plants in Texas, lured by the prospect of earning double-digit returns from the power grid problems plaguing the state, according to project owners, developers and suppliers.

Projects coming online are generating returns of around 20%, compared with single digit returns for solar and wind projects, according to Rhett Bennett, CEO of Black Mountain Energy Storage, one of the top developers in the state.

"Resolving grid issues with utility-scale energy storage is probably the hottest thing out there,” he said.

Power prices in Texas can swing from highs of about $90 per megawatt hour (MWh) on a normal summer day to nearly $3,000 per MWh when demand surges on a day with less wind power, according to a simulation by the federal government's U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That volatility, a product of demand and higher reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy, has fueled a rush to install battery plants that store electricity when it is cheap and abundant and sell when supplies tighten and prices soar.

Texas last year accounted for 31% of new U.S. grid-scale energy storage, according to energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, second only to California which has had a state mandate for battery development for a decade.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-battery-rush-oil-states-power-woes-fuel-energy-storage-boom-2023-05-31/

[NNadir]

1. Cheering for a dirtier world. Storing electricity generated by fossil fuels...

...makes climate change and air pollution worse.

Stupidity, including popular stupidity, kills people.

The laws if thermodynamics are not repealed by wishful thinking and popular delusions.

[Think. Again.]

2. You are SOOO right!...

We should be doing everythng we can to build out much more solar, wind, and nuclear power generation so that we DON'T use fossil fuels for the energy we need to store!