Extract from ABC News
It's not just crystals getting charged in California. In the Golden State, famous for its clifftop mansions, wellness culture and iconic Hollywood hills, big batteries are now setting global trends by transforming the energy system.
California has seen exponential growth in large-scale battery storage in the last five years, offering crystal ball gazing into what Australia's electricity system could look like in a few years' time.
For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
These records were broken in the Californian spring, when there was plenty of sunshine without the summer heat that causes people to turn on the air-conditioning and consume more power, but it's a sign of the shift underway.
Solving a duck-shaped problem
Like in Australia, California has been grappling with the issue that comes with abundant rooftop solar energy: too much of a good thing during the day and no solar capacity at night.
The shape of this problem is a duck, known as the California duck curve.
It shows high points of demand for electricity from the grid in the morning and evening, and a big dip in the middle of the day when there is plenty of sunlight and household solar systems are cranking.
While the duck curve might look cute, it means there is excess power during the day, and the goal is to harness the power of the duck's belly to maximise the benefits of renewable energy.
This is where battery storage comes in. Batteries work by drawing the power created by solar during the day, soaking up that excess power, and discharging it in the evening when demand spikes.
This isn't just observational entertainment for local energy nerds: California has a lot in common with Australia, according to Clean Energy Council CEO Kane Thornton.
"California is about the same size from a population perspective, its geography is not dissimilar, it has hot summers, and it can get pretty cool in the winter. They're actually facing some big challenges from the impacts of climate change [with] wildfires, droughts," Thornton said.
"They've got high uptake of rooftop solar, high uptake of renewables, and now batteries are really playing an important role."
Big batteries push out gas
California's battery growth is astonishing. It's worth taking a moment to wrap your head around some big numbers.
In 2019, California had 770 megawatts of battery storage.
Now, it's 14 times higher, at 10,383 megawatts, and by the end of this year, it expects to add another 3,800.
To put that in context, that's about a third of the electricity Australia's national electricity market uses at peak demand, so California's batteries could provide a third of our needs for a few hours every day.
Until recently, California's grid relied on gas and nuclear power for its evening power demand, according to Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
"A decade ago, California's grid was dominated by fossil fuels. There was some nuclear power, some hydropower, some geothermal, small amounts of wind and solar," he told the ABC.
"[Now] we have about 10 gigawatts of batteries — almost 8 gigawatts on the grid and the rest are in people's homes and businesses, and those don't show up on the grid. But what they do is they reduce night-time demand for electricity," Professor Jacobson explained.
"As we're building more solar and batteries and other renewables on the grid, we're seeing more and more reductions of gas, and eventually the gas will be eliminated," Professor Jacobson said.
"There's no need for gas. We're finding in California, batteries fill in the gaps so easily.
"There was an eclipse on April 8, when solar supply went down precipitously for a couple of hours and immediately the batteries kicked in and replaced the solar."
California isn't slowing down its battery boom, either.
The state estimates more than 48 gigawatts of battery storage and 4 gigawatts of long-duration storage will be needed to meet their target of 100 per cent clean electricity by 2045.
Market powers 'trump' politics
California has long been a climate leader. Even during the previous Trump administration when the president withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, California powered ahead with its renewable energy rollout.
But Texas is hot on its heels with its own battery rush, proving that renewables investment isn't just about politics.
"Sometimes we can get caught into this idea that only the progressive left states are pro-renewables and the conservative red states are actually just stuck on fossil fuels. But actually, that's not the case," the Clean Energy Council's Kane Thornton observed after his recent trip to the US.
"In these places, renewables are actually recognised for what they are, which is the lowest-cost form of energy. They're actually creating massive economic opportunities."
Thornton also pointed to the Biden administration's keystone climate policy as an important policy for encouraging batteries and renewables.
"The Inflation Reduction Act was put in place to really accelerate renewables and batteries and that's having a big role in ultimately delivering more investment," he said.
While California is at the front of the pack, Thornton says this is a global trend.
"As we've got to higher levels of renewables, but also as these battery technologies have really been proven and scaled up, then right around the world we're seeing a real increase in the installation of these big batteries," Thornton said, adding that costs would continue to drop.
"We're getting better at manufacturing them, we're installing more of them and whenever that happens, the cost of it naturally trends down."
Dr Asma Aziz is a lecturer in power engineering at Edith Cowan University and says the huge growth of large batteries in the US has been helped by government policy and targets.
"In the US, there are 50 states and almost every state has some sort of mandate to have battery storage in their network. And I think 10 states have a fixed amount that by this year, they need to have this much storage.
"In Australia, we have a target for net zero, but we don't have a target for how much storage we need to have. This is something which is lacking, I think.
"People would want to put money into battery-related projects only when they have a clear signal in terms of how they will be compensated. There needs to be proper guidelines, regulations and compensation schemes for those things."
Australia charges up
The Clean Energy Council's Kane Thornton said he was excited by the pipeline of large-scale battery projects at home in Australia.
"Over much of the last five years, we have been really focused on getting more renewables into the system. The missing bit of the jigsaw puzzle has been around energy storage, and that's really changed, particularly in the last 12 months," he said.
"Last year alone, there were 27 big batteries committed — some $5 billion worth of investment — just in that 12-month period."
Australia currently has 1,705 megawatts of battery storage. While it's a low figure compared to California, another 3,200 have been committed, and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is expecting around 22,000 megawatts of batteries to be connected in 2030.
"While renewables have had a challenging last couple of years, big batteries have really had an enormous record-breaking last 12 months," Thornton said.
The federal government's Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) is a policy that calls for tenders for renewable energy projects and underwrites these investments. In December 2023, for the first time, it included storage capacity.
According to federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the auction was "massively oversubscribed" and they got bids for 32 times the amount of storage they were asking for.
Deep batteries
While Dr Asma Aziz from Edith Cowan University is optimistic about the growth of utility-scale batteries, she is also keen to see more investment in longer-storage options.
Most big batteries currently in the works in Australia can provide four hours of storage at their maximum capacity.
"I have been talking about this issue for quite a few months, about battery storage, and sometimes people take it wrong, that [they think] what I'm saying is that batteries will solve all our problems," Dr Aziz said.
"Batteries will definitely not solve all our problems but batteries are one of the solutions."
That's clearly the case in California, which is also investing in hydropower and offshore wind to bolster its renewables and storage.
At a time when the public debate about renewable energy feels increasingly polarised and fraught in a way that's unique to Australian politics, the experience in the US shows us it doesn't have to be that way.
Australia is far from alone in facing these challenges: we aren't the only place grappling with adapting a grid at the same time as it services millions of people with essential power.
California shows us that what seemed impossible only a couple of years ago is already a reality, and that's going to keep happening as the world moves to net zero.
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