No, the plant is full of primary batteries! 4.2 million AA cells!

I assume they used to fire up the coal plant to fill gaps but now use the battery which stores excess energy generated.

Edit:

The plant’s 185 megawatts of instantaneous discharge capacity match what the old coal plant could inject into the grid, though the batteries react far more quickly, with a 250-millisecond response time. Instead of generating power, they absorb it from the grid, ideally when it’s flush with renewable generation, and deliver that cheap, clean power back in the evening hours when it’s desperately needed.

Seems pretty clear to me.

Coal is also energy storage, well, all fossil fuels. That’s their primary advantage, on-demand easily accessible stores of energy.

If only they didn’t simultaneously pollute and cook the earth when used…

All our “energy production” just converts energy from one state into another. Like a battery.

A dam is often referred to as a giant gravity potential energy battery.

in terms of usage though, they are quite similar. Coal serves on-demand power, whereas renewables generate power at times that don’t always align with demand. Batteries can take the role of a coal plant if the renewables already generate sufficient energy, just at the wrong times.

There’s some promising headway with molten sodium-sulfur batteries. Not only are they at similar capacity as lithium, but their molten nature allows for the batteries to store energy long-term. The downside is a low cycle rate and the heating requirement. Another promising battery tech is sodium ion batteries, which can use iron as a cathode to output similar power and cycling as lithium

They didn’t say react all at once. I bet you it’s a much slower ramp up.

“I cast lightning bolt”

Flicks switch

I’d rather have brownouts, and I don’t think either is likely.

Solar panels still provide power on cloudy days.

In fact under certain conditions they’ll produce more power than under full sun - solar panels drop in efficiency when they are too hot. (Yes I know this isn’t normal; normally full sun will produce more power, but some people don’t know cloudy days are fine for solar energy production.)

They did talk about that. The article said that in some cases solar producers have had to curtail production because the thermal plants needed to keep running. Solar will generate a lot during the day that might not otherwise be used, the battery allows that surplus to be stored until it’s needed. They also mentioned that more solar projects are being constructed.

Great but the article didn’t address how they are making up for that lost production capacity besides stating “renewables”

This is just non-sense. No general understanding of principals, or local understanding of context.

Hawaiian Electric’s modeling suggests it can reduce curtailment of renewables by an estimated 69% for the first five years thanks to Kapol Energy Storage, allowing surplus clean electricity that would otherwise waste to get onto the grid.

Hawaii, I hope you all got that larger than life D.

The question is, what brand? Duracell?, Eveready?, Energizer?

Oh my pkcell…

The fabled Z cell

Ohana means coal industry.

Geothermal energy requires a very stable heat source near the surface. Unfortunately, while volcanoes meet both the “heat source” and “near surface” criteria, they are not at all stable.

None. But still it gives power when it’s dark and solar panels stop producing power. It’s a miracle.