ERCOT Loading. It wasn’t long ago that a 50GW day in ERCOT was considered a crazy feat. A few weeks ago it went above 90GW and forecasts have a peak of 120GW in a couple of years. The problem is that at those levels everything has to work quite right with the caveat that something is causing the stress on the grid to begin with. Like a zipper, if one thing goes wrong a lot goes wrong. It’s not just ERCOT, every ISO is dealing with the new need for power because as you know, the economy only works if the grid does.
Both Sides Of The Grid. More on the zipper theory of things going wrong when it comes to the grid. Even without max demand stress, everyone wants their lights, factories and servers to run when they hit the power switch. The entire point is that generation is there when load desires it, with the grid bringing it from one end to another. Forecasters are worried about the demand (load) growing faster than generation (supply). Meanwhile the grid operators want certainty, demand certainty, from both the supply and demand. That is why the headlines and stories from operators and forecasters are focused on things like ride through and backup power. The physics will require overproduction of generation, certainty of demand and A LOT of energy storage. Here’s the wild card though, the grid, inverters, data centers and batteries all run on various levels of software and that software has little to zero oversight and certainly has little value proposition in the solar/storage market.
All About Timing. Wild card number two, when is the supply generated and when does the demand for the load happen, how overlapping is that Venn diagram.
Some News. You may or may not have seen some career updates from me but you can catch it on my LinkedIn here. You can also now subscribe to Wakeup Premium and get one of the seats in this ecosystem we’ve built over the past 14 years. By joining premium Wakeup, a small group of you will be able to shape the discussion that the solar industry is hearing.
- Utility Dive: PJM eyes data center, crypto reliability requirements after 3.8 GW of load trips offline
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- PV-Magazine: U.S. battery storage capacity grows 70% annually over the past three years
- PV-Tech: LevelTen publishes hybrid index to reflect ‘clear shift’ in European PPA market towards solar-plus-storage
- Solar Power World: What is a sodium-ion battery, and why is everyone talking about it?
- Energy Storage News: Octopus Australia turns attention to 128MWh DC-coupled BESS at solar-plus-storage site
- Canary Media: In Puerto Rico, Trump admin backs big battery project but snubs solar
Opinion
Best, Yann