A jolt of clean energy news has arrived from a relatively unglamorous technology: batteries.
Large-scale battery storage in the U.S. increased "a whopping 71%" in one year, and it more than doubled in two years, the Associated Press reported in late December. The report was based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), updated through November 2024.
The ability to store energy in massive battery arrays expands the use of flashier clean energy tech such as solar panels, and it reduces reliance on power plants that pollute the air people breathe — as the AP reported.
By the start of December, about 24 gigawatt-hours of utility-scale battery capacity was in operation across the U.S. Based on the average American home's consumption, that would be enough to power more than 2,000 homes for a year without recharging — which may or may not sound impressive until considering that these batteries can be repeatedly recharged. Another way to think of this is that 24 gigawatt-hours is about the amount of electricity a nuclear power plant produces in 24 hours — based on assumptions used by the AP and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The new level of battery capacity is particularly remarkable because the nation's ability to store large amounts of energy in batteries "was essentially nonexistent a decade ago," the AP noted.
The rapid growth continues a trend remarked upon last year by the EIA. This agency has forecast ongoing expansion of big battery projects.
One advantage of battery storage is that it enhances the potential of other clean tech. Batteries can store energy from solar panels during the day and release it at night. They can also bank energy from wind turbines for when the wind isn't blowing. So they effectively extend the usefulness of both of these energy sources that do not release pollutants during operation.
Another benefit of having more battery storage is reducing the need for dirty, inefficient "peaker" power plants, as the AP detailed.
These supplemental power plants — of which there are about 1,000 nationwide, mostly running on natural gas — help address peak electricity demands. Yet peakers can be less efficient than other plants and tend to be close to "historically disadvantaged" communities, as a Government Accountability Office analysis explained.
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Absolutely 💯 Meeting demand spikes with batteries instead of peakers could reduce levels of toxic air pollution in communities that are already disproportionately hard hit. Limiting peaker use with batteries is "a really obvious solution," Daniel Chu, senior energy planner for the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, told the AP.
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Per the news agency, peakers release more pollutants per unit of electricity than other plants — including pollution with health effects and heat-trapping gases that overheat the planet.
It's true that batteries and other clean technologies have their own environmental costs, including mining for raw materials and using resources in production. However, these costs have generally been found to be less than those of extracting and burning dirty fuels.
Yet another plus for batteries noted by the AP is that they could help lessen the temptation to build new dirty energy plants (or recommission old ones) to address the predicted growth in electricity demand due to factors ranging from increases in electric appliance use to power-hungry AI computing.
"'Do we have enough power plants?' is the classic question every utility asks every year," Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the AP. "The beauty of the batteries is that if there's energy in them, they can be used for unexpected needs."
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