Battery storage becomes biggest source of supply in evening peak in one of world’s biggest grids

A landmark event occurred in the US on Tuesday night when battery storage become for the first time the largest source of supply in the California grid, which delivers electricity to the world’s fifth biggest economy and is one of the world’s biggest grids.

The milestone was noted by a bunch of energy analysts and data geeks on Twitter/X, including by Joe Deely, who noted that the output of battery storage in the evening peak went above 6 gigawatts (GW) for the first time.

That allowed battery storage to overtake gas, hydro, nuclear and renewables as the biggest source of supply for a period of about two hours in the evening peak.

According to the data tracker Grid Status, the peak output of 6,177 MW from battery storage at 8.10pm local time was nearly 1`0 per cent higher than California’s previous peak of 5,625 MW reached at 7.50pm local time on February 15 this year.

Five years ago, the record output for battery storage was a mere 120 MW, according to Grid Status, highlighting the rapid change in technologies in California’s grid.

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