No it is you who have no idea what you are reading while pulling up old data and ignoring the new CHANGED DATA.
No changed data. It's the same data.
Everything you say is out of date and wrong.
Inversion fallacy.
Data from both ERCOT (Texas) and CAISO (California) directly refutes the idea that battery storage is "unaffordable" at scale.
Batteries don't produce energy, Kewpie.
In fact, grid operators are building batteries precisely because they are the most cost-effective solution to maintain reliability and lower system-wide energy costs.
Batteries are extremely expensive, Kewpie. They are also dangerous.
1. Battery Costs Have Plummeted by 90%
Bullshit.
The argument that batteries are too expensive relies on outdated pricing data.
Prices have gone up, like everything else. An artifact of the two economic depressions under Obama/Biden and Biden/Obama.
- The Reality: According to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and BloombergNEF, utility-scale lithium-ion battery pack prices have plummeted by nearly 90% over the last decade.
Nope. Prices have gone up.
- The Result: This massive cost reduction is exactly why private developers are flooding the Texas and California grids with storage—not because of government mandates, but because batteries are highly profitable.
Batteries are not generating plants. They don't produce energy.
2. California Proves Scale is Already Happening Affordably
Attempted proof by void.
The poster claims large-scale storage is a fantasy, but California has already built it.
Nope. It's a fantasy. California hasn't built anything of significant size.
- The Reality: California’s battery fleet routinely exceeds 21,000 MW of capacity.
Which means an additional 21000MW of load to charge them.
- The Data: During the evening peak hours, these batteries don't just help
They harm. You have to charge them, which means that power is not available elsewhere.
- —they handle over 40% of the state's total electricity demand.
No, Kewpie. They ADD to the demand.
- Batteries are successfully functioning as a reliable, massive bridge when the sun goes down, completely displacing the need to build expensive new gas "peaker" plants.
California currently imports almost all their power on two overloaded lines (one in the south and one in the north). These lines are fed by the WRIC, covers Canada (BC, Yukon, Alberta), Washington, Idaho, Montanna, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and of course, California.
All of these places are generating sufficient power on their own EXCEPT California.
If those overloaded lines trip, the WRIC will NOT sacrifice itself to save California. It will disconnect it.
All of those solar plants and wind generators haven't a prayer to handle that load, Kewpie.
3. Texas Data Shows Batteries Lower Wholesales Costs
The Reality: In the deregulated Texas market, batteries make money through arbitrage—buying cheap electricity when solar/wind are abundant and selling it back when demand spikes.
- The Data: An analysis by the University of Texas determined that the combination of renewables and batteries saved Texas consumers over $30 billion by suppressing extreme wholesale price spikes. Without batteries, ERCOT would have to pay fossil-fuel plants exorbitant scarcity prices ($5,000/MWh) to stay online, which is far more expensive for consumers than battery storage.
4. Re-framing "Baseload"
It is an old 20th-century concept of "baseload" (coal/nuclear plants running 24/7). Modern grid operators do not look for a single baseload source; they look for
dispatchability.
- Gas and coal plants frequently fail or trip offline during extreme weather (as seen during Winter Storm Uri in Texas).
- Batteries respond to grid stress in milliseconds, a level of speed and reliability that thermal power plants physically cannot match.
Natural gas lines are easily protected from cold weather. They are used even in the harsh winters of Montana and Wisconsin.
Coal plants are even more reliable. They are used all over the western half of the United States, the Midwest, and in the South.
All you really need is a rail line.
Batteries are not power generating stations. They are a LOAD, not a source.
Generators at power plants adjust second by second, simply by adjusting the field current in them. That's all you need. It's more than adequate since the interconnect itself acts as a load ballast.
