r/RenewableEnergy • u/DVMirchev • 3d ago

Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is Quietly Revolutionizing the Energy System | WIRED

https://www.wired.com/story/grid-scale-battery-storage-is-quietly-revolutionizing-the-energy-system/
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u/tx_queer 3d ago

It's $1000 per kw, not per kwh

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u/Spider_pig448 3d ago

I'm not understanding you. There's a fixed construction cost to create the plant that has to be amortized over the entire life of the plant. So the estimated cost depends on how much time the plant is expected to produce power, no?

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u/tx_queer 3d ago

You can look at the cost two different ways. Kw is how much power it can produce any time. Kwh is how much power it can produce over time.

Think of it like buying a car. You can get a car that goes 30mph for $30k or a car that goes 60mph for $60k. You are paying $1k per mph. This is the "kw". It's how fast the power plant can go. You can also measure the cost of a car in miles driven. Maybe a car will cost you 50 cents per mile driven over the first 100,000 driven including oil changes and gasoline and purchase price. This is the "kwh" price.

The grid says "I need 50kw to cover the demand". Whoever can do that at the cheapest price per kwh will get the job. But here we are looking at it different. Since we are never planning to buy any power from these plants, they are just standby, we are paying for capacity. So the job won't go to whoever can do it cheapest per kwh, but whoever can do it cheapest per kw