Arizona Brings a Huge Grid Battery Online Ahead of Peak Demand

Arizona has activated one of its largest grid battery storage projects to help meet peak summer energy demand. Electrek reports: Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, just brought its 1,200 MWh Papago Storage facility in Maricopa County into commercial operation. The big grid battery is now supplying stored electricity to Arizona Public Service (APS), the state's largest utility, in time for peak air-conditioning season. Papago is the first of three Recurrent projects with APS. Together, they'll provide 1,800 MWh of storage and 150 MW of solar power. That's enough to run about 72,000 homes for four hours and provide year-round solar for another 24,000 homes.

That's a pretty ambitious project...

[outsider007]

For an Iced Tea company.

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[Sique]

But you need a lot of electricity to keep all the ice cool for your tea.

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[saloomy]

Doesnt that Iced Tea company already operate the largest nuclear generating station in America?

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[garyisabusyguy]

The original plans for Palo Verde were 6 reactors, AFAIK they still own the land and other rights associated with the expanded capacity

Enjoy it while it lasts

[necro81]

It's hard for me to see this kind of development as anything other than positive. And yet, as recent US legislative activity proves, there are still enough people in power who think that doubling down on fossil fuels is preferable. Indeed, they seem to have gone out of their way to not only no longer support PV and battery systems like this, but to actively hinder them.

So, enjoy small victories like this one...apparently there won't be many more in the coming years.

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[shilly]

There won't be many more *in the US*. Other countries are going to continue to forge ahead (barring Russia, and maybe Saudi Arabia, although I suspect the latter is willing to make money out of solar)

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[hdyoung]

For the most part, you misunderstand red states in the US. At the state and local level, setting aside a few true troglodytes that actually make it into office, most elected republicans are actually pretty smart and competent. But, the people who elected them have been raised on Fox News or worse. So, the elected republicans get on social media and support whatever crap the current Tucker Carlsons, Joe Rogans or Alex Joneses are currently spouting, knowing full well that theyre promoting nonsense. If they dont, they will get booted out of office by someone who will. Thats a simple hard fact of life. However, they then quietly allow the local governments to operate semi-intelligently. The result is a red Arizona state government that screams BURN ALL THE COAL but quietly lets the local conservative businesses to do what they want, which is to install as much solar and battery power as they can, because nowadays fermented Dino-based electricity is getting to be one of the MOST expensive type of power and solar/battery costs keep dropping like a rock. Downmod in 3,2,1.

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[buck-yar]

We have a solar array on our house but as govt slowly lowers the incentives its becoming less attractive. Its another industry that can't support itself. Republicans unfortunately also take advantage of the "well, the money's been appropriated, may as well get a big a piece of the pie as we can." Its a no-brainer to throw up solar grids when the bill gets sent to everyone else via taxes.

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts

[ToasterMonkey]

Texas feels like that too, all the crazy MAGA talk about windmill cancer and solar bird ovens or whatever isn't reflected in the amount of renewables anyone can see on ercot.com the gov and Lt gov don't seem to talk about it.

There is still a large chunk of conservatives doing the say crazy shit but do something more practical approach to politics. Problem is it's getting harder for them, they're all under a lot of pressure to do more stupid shit or they will get tea partied... or maga'd by someone shittier.

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[Rob Y.]

So then why don't these smart Republicans go on Fox, Tucker and Rogan and explain their positions to the audiences they need to reach to not get booted out of office? I guess I'm assuming these right-wing media outlets will let fellow Republicans on to make their cases - is that not a valid assumption?

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[GooberPyle]

Despite the political road blocks green energy projects are expanding. It's not just green, but is also by far the cheapest and fastest way to bring new power online. It's interesting to see how fast it is growing in red states. It's bringing jobs to those areas as well.

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[MacMann]

Despite the political road blocks green energy projects are expanding. It's not just green, but is also by far the cheapest and fastest way to bring new power online. It's interesting to see how fast it is growing in red states. It's bringing jobs to those areas as well.

Look closely at the "green energy" being added to the grid. Do you notice anything? I did. The "green energy" projects are dominated by onshore wind. Onshore wind is affordable, cheap and easy to deploy, with minimal permitting and such to hold up construction, and cheap land in tornado alley... um, I mean "the wind corridor", to erect the windmills.

Red states are largely also rural states, and windmills tend to "play nice" with ranching and farming as the pylons can be along fence lines or something so

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[RossCWilliams]

a windmill can be put almost anywhere

Not profitably. Which is why you see huge windmill farms in specific locations with the right conditions.

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[RossCWilliams]

t's not just green, but is also by far the cheapest and fastest way to bring new power online.

Exactly right. Politics can speed things up or slow them down. But only marginally. The economics have shifted and are continuing to shift away from fossil fuels to produce electricity. That is an international phenomena which will happen more slowly in places like the United States that produce lots of fossil fuel.

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts

[drinkypoo]

It might be, depending on how they did it.

I am fully in favor of battery storage projects, IF they are done properly.

The Moss Landing battery storage facility shows that you can do serious harm by fucking it up with insufficient compartmentalization and use of used NCM batteries recovered from EVs. Their battery banks were built from such crap, with shitty old LG cells known to be trash no less, and packed into a building in such a way that they could easily set each other on fire.

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[gweihir]

Indeed. Actively hindering is required because it is now cheaper to be climate friendly than otherwise. But the planet-destroyers will find a way to line their very temporary coffers at the expense of everybody. These people are insane and an existential threat.

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[MacMann]

Indeed, they seem to have gone out of their way to not only no longer support PV and battery systems like this, but to actively hinder them.

I have a guess on why Arizona might be hesitant to be supportive of solar PV. I don't recall when exactly but it was fairly recent that there was a ballot initiative in Arizona to pas some law that would call for more solar+storage on the grid. The law was worded poorly and so the opposition used that to change the summary of the law on that ballot.

The original summary of the law was something like, "To support the addition of solar power to the electrical grid." That sounds great, right? So what was th

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[necro81]

The project we're discussing is primarily a battery storage facility - the thing that mitigates duck curve problems.

There is ample market data to indicate that PV+batteries are the least expensive and fastest-to-deploy new electrical source these days, particularly in a sunny place like Arizona (and Texas). Yet certain corners of government don't want to hear that, and think that the only power that should count is power that pollutes.

So close

[slipped_bit]

They couldn't have squeezed another 10 MWh into it?

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[anonymous scaredycat]

1.21 JigaWatt(Hour)s

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[Sique]

No. Canada gets more than enough sunlight to make Solar viable. In fact, 90% of all Canadians live south of the southernmost point of Germany.

Keep it in perspective.

[Mspangler]

It's slightly less than one hour of output from one unit of the Palol Verde nuclear plant.

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[skullandbones99]

The battery storage is not a big UPS. The battery storage provides load balancing and this helps to keep gas peaker plants off-line during peak power demand.

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[GooberPyle]

The nuke plant provide about 25 times the power. Depending on how you do the accounting it is conservatively 40 to 50 times the cost.

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[whitroth]

As long as it doesn't have to be shut down when the river water gets too warm.

Re:Keep it in perspective.

[necro81]

It's slightly less than one hour of output from one unit of the Palol Verde nuclear plant.

I prefer not to pit low-carbon electricity sources against each other - we can make good use of all of them. But, since you brought it up...

This project's cost came in at around $500 million [recurrentenergy.com]. Palo Verde was built for about $6 billion in 1986 dollars [wikipedia.org], or over $17 billion in 2025 dollars [bls.gov]. If it could even be built at all: Palo Verde was ~10 years from construction start through to commissioning. Nuclear power is neither faster nor cheaper today than back then. By contrast, this new project took less than a year to build and commission.

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[flink]

Well, if the above post is correct that that the nuke plant has 25x the output of this storage site, then $17b should be enough to buy 25 storage sites with $4.5b left over to build solar farms to charge them with.

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[gweihir]

At "slightly" less the costs and risks. Your point?

Which tech?

[White Yeti]

The linked materials are light on the technology. Four clicks in, they appear to be using banks of small-cell Li-ion batteries.