Arizona's largest electric company installed massive batteries near neighborhoods with a large number of solar panels, hoping to capture some of the energy from the afternoon sun to use after dark.
"This is getting attention, and I think everyone realizes that too many safety incidents ... will be detrimental going forward," said George Crabtree, director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a partnership of national laboratories, universities and companies funded by the U.S. Energy Department."So I think it's being taken very seriously."
Those batteries are tiny in comparison to the 850 megawatts that APS has pledged to build by 2025. Energy storage, and batteries in particular, are projected to take off as renewable energy prices come down and states mandate a growing share of power must come from renewables like wind and solar, which are subject to the whims of Mother Nature.
"Absent battery storage, the whole value proposition of intermittent renewable energy makes no sense at all," said Donald Sadoway, a battery researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of battery storage company Ambri."People just don't understand that the battery will do for electricity what refrigeration did to our food supply."
Nearly all of the utility-scale batteries now on the grid or in development are massive versions the same lithium ion technology that powers cellphones and laptops. If the batteries get too hot, a fire can start and trigger a phenomenon known as thermal runaway, in which the fire feeds on itself and is nearly impossible to stop until it consumes all the available fuel.
They are robbing people of costly electricity ! And turning off people’s a/c over late $50 bills and allowing them to die.