Again in 2015, the battery storage trade had put in solely a fraction of a gigawatt of battery storage capability throughout the US. That 12 months, it set a seemingly daring goal of including 35 gigawatts by 2035. The sector handed that purpose a decade early this 12 months after which hit 40 gigawatts a few months later.Â
Prices are nonetheless falling, which may assist keep the momentum for the know-how’s deployment. This 12 months, battery costs for EVs and stationary storage fell but once more, reaching a report low, in response to knowledge from BloombergNEF. Battery packs particularly used for grid storage noticed costs fall even quicker than the typical; they value 45% lower than final 12 months.
We’re beginning to see what occurs on grids with a lot of battery capability, too: in California and Texas, batteries are already serving to meet demand within the evenings, lowering the necessity to run natural-gas vegetation. The outcome: a cleaner, extra steady grid.
AI’s power funding inflow
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The AI growth is sophisticated for our power system, as we lined at size this 12 months. Electrical energy demand is ticking up: the quantity of energy utilities provided to US knowledge facilities jumped 22% this 12 months and can greater than double by 2030.
However no less than one optimistic shift is popping out of AI’s affect on power: It’s driving renewed curiosity and funding in next-generation power applied sciences.
Within the close to time period, a lot of the power wanted for knowledge facilities, together with people who energy AI, will doubtless come from fossil fuels, particularly new natural-gas energy vegetation. However tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Meta all have objectives on the books to scale back their greenhouse-gas emissions, in order that they’re in search of alternate options.
Meta signed a deal with XGS Power in June to buy as much as 150 megawatts of electrical energy from a geothermal plant. In October, Google signed an settlement that can assist reopen Duane Arnold Power Heart in Iowa, a beforehand shuttered nuclear energy plant.
Geothermal and nuclear could possibly be key items of the grid of the longer term, as they’ll present fixed energy in a manner that wind and photo voltaic don’t. There’s a protracted strategy to go for most of the new variations of the tech, however extra money and curiosity from huge, highly effective gamers can’t damage.
