On the hottest of summer days, a natural gas "peaker" usually kicks in to support the wave of air conditioning units turning on at once. It's the electrical grid's lifesaver, a turbine built only for the highest-demand hours of the year, and also one of the most expensive to run. It's what made 7 p.m. electricity so expensive in different parts of the U.S in the first place.
But a shift is taking place. California and Texas are now turning to batteries to power their grids. Power units that were typically used simply to store energy are now being deployed as power sources themselves. California's grid operator has at least 13,000 megawatts of battery capacity, enough to serve several million homes through evening peak hours, and Texas' batteries already power up to 10% of the state's grid at peak.
Electricity customers see the benefits. When batteries set the marginal price instead of gas turbines that cost two to three times as much to run, wholesale power gets cheaper during the hours it used to be most expensive. Gas peakers that already sat idle for more than 86% of the year will eventually lose the few remaining hours that kept them viable, and utilities will likely choose batteries over new gas plants long term.
Unlike gas turbines, batteries don't generate electricity on their own. They move it from the hours when it's cheapest to the hours when it's most valuable. Solar panels flood the grid with power in the middle of the day, pushing wholesale prices close to zero and sometimes below it. Batteries absorb that cheap surplus. When the sun sets and demand surges past what the remaining generation can deliver, they discharge into the gap that gas peakers once filled, offering to do it at a lower price.
In California, the cycle has run at a scale large enough to reshape the wholesale market. In 2024, across the California Independent System Operator's territory, batteries provided an average of 8.6% of all electricity consumed during the highest-demand evening hours, keeping the lights on in roughly three million homes. By 2025, they were regularly delivering more than 6,000 megawatts at peak, six times the roughly 1,000 megawatts they managed three years earlier.
#hours #electricity
But a shift is taking place. California and Texas are now turning to batteries to power their grids. Power units that were typically used simply to store energy are now being deployed as power sources themselves. California's grid operator has at least 13,000 megawatts of battery capacity, enough to serve several million homes through evening peak hours, and Texas' batteries already power up to 10% of the state's grid at peak.
Electricity customers see the benefits. When batteries set the marginal price instead of gas turbines that cost two to three times as much to run, wholesale power gets cheaper during the hours it used to be most expensive. Gas peakers that already sat idle for more than 86% of the year will eventually lose the few remaining hours that kept them viable, and utilities will likely choose batteries over new gas plants long term.
Unlike gas turbines, batteries don't generate electricity on their own. They move it from the hours when it's cheapest to the hours when it's most valuable. Solar panels flood the grid with power in the middle of the day, pushing wholesale prices close to zero and sometimes below it. Batteries absorb that cheap surplus. When the sun sets and demand surges past what the remaining generation can deliver, they discharge into the gap that gas peakers once filled, offering to do it at a lower price.
In California, the cycle has run at a scale large enough to reshape the wholesale market. In 2024, across the California Independent System Operator's territory, batteries provided an average of 8.6% of all electricity consumed during the highest-demand evening hours, keeping the lights on in roughly three million homes. By 2025, they were regularly delivering more than 6,000 megawatts at peak, six times the roughly 1,000 megawatts they managed three years earlier.
#hours #electricity
4 days ago
