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  • Hacker News
  • For comparison, US grid capacity is about 1250 GW, average usage 500 GW.

    So, this adds over two minutes of average usage.

    https://seia.org/research-resources/energy-storage-market-ou... says total storage now is about 200 GWh, or about 25 minutes of average demand.

    by Someone
  • One thing that would really help batteries is permitting reform. The BAAJA reform bill would really help not just the batteries themselves but the transmission lines which are far more difficult to construct thank to an insane system and lots of lawsuits.
    by daedrdev
  • It's impressive to see the battery capacity growing on ElectricityMaps over the years : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/yearly

    But why is the utilization rate so low? It was barely 0.8% of electricity in California last year.

    Edit: Got the answer, the batteries fire up around 6pm during the evening peak at around 9GW for ~25% of the total consumption. We would need approximately 5x more batteries and renewable power to move out of carbon-intensive production entirely.

    by goldenarm
  • Makes sense. With battery technology improving and being the cheapest it's ever been, why not? This is probably the direction most countries will go in the future.
    by Synaesthesia
  • That's one third of what China added in December, 2025:

    https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/16/chinas-batteries-move-b...

    by cisc
  • Politically force datacenters to consume only solar and battery. Instead of total collapse, we now have tremendous amounts of cheap energy when the bubble implodes. That seems like the only way to hedge the bet on AI.
    by 1970-01-01
  • I'm glad they're reporting it as the energy storage capacity and not the power output capacity. Too many news sites like to report the power output capacity in stories like these, which is horribly misleading, and then often they also frame it as though this is equivalent to adding actual power generation to the grid, which is even more misleading.
    by bradfa
  • In Australia, the real value of these big batteries is not necessarily to provide emergency power, but more to respond in milliseconds to variations in demand and to smooth out the 5 minute spot market.

    Having a sink and a source for spikes aids grid stability and somewhat helps to reduce the need to build more infrastructure to handle transmitting power from the generators during those peaks.

    It also helps avoid the viability of gas powered generators which are very expensive and carbon intensive.

    by nicois

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