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from the reduced-pollution-keeps-the-biters-away dept.
Florida Utility to Close Natural gas Plants, Build Massive Solar-Powered Battery:
On Thursday, Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced that it would retire two natural gas plants and replace those plants with what is likely to be the world's largest solar-powered battery bank when it's completed in 2021.
FPL, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, serves approximately 10 million customers in Florida. The utility says its plan, including additional efficiency upgrades and smaller battery installations throughout its service area, will save customers more than $100 million in aggregate through avoided fuel costs. FPL also says its battery and upgrade plan will help avoid 1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
The plan calls for the construction of a 409 megawatt (MW) / 900 megawatt-hour battery installation at what will be called the FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center. For context, the largest battery installation in the world was built by Tesla at a Hornsdale wind farm in South Australia; that has a capacity and power rating of 100 MW / 129 MWh.
The batteries will be charged by an existing solar plant in Manatee County, FPL said. Being able to store solar power in batteries is a huge advantage to the utility. Solar photovoltaic panels are intermittent sources of energy, because they only produce power when the sun is shining. Generally, that happens in the morning and toward the middle of the day, when power demand tends to be low. If a utility can store excess power in a bank of batteries, it can deploy that electricity later in the afternoon when people return home from work and turn on their air conditioners, running up electricity demand.
FPL made no announcement as to the supplier, price, or even the battery chemistry. Maybe they can arrange to have one of these patrolling the grounds?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31 2019, @07:14PM
The afternoon and evening require more power for two reasons. The first is that most homes have their thermostats set back during the day and businesses are set back at night. In the afternoon period, which are also the hottest part of the day, you have both the home and business air conditioners running to reach their occupied temperature. Therefore, you have more power usage in the afternoon and early evening.