[leereeves]

> The largest battery currently being planned is a 1.2GWh setup in Australia. That's a big buffer.

Apparently "Total electricity generation in Australia was estimated to be 265,117 gigawatt hours (GWh) in calendar year 2019"[1], which works out to about 30 gigawatts continually for a year.

So a 1.2GWh battery could power Australia for about two minutes (...at average use. Longer in the middle of the night).

Maybe a hundred installations like that could buffer the fluctuations in renewables in Australia. Plus thousands or tens of thousands more worldwide, while building enough batteries to replace all the cars with electric.

I guess it's doable in a decade or two, if Musk and other manufacturers can really produce TWh's of capacity each year.

1: https://www.energy.gov.au/publications/australian-energy-sta...

[jillesvangurp]

That's a battery capable of supplying 1.2 GW peak demand. Or about 1/30th of the energy capacity in Australia if your numbers are correct. Massive buffer.

Those TWH factories are being built right now. Multiple of them. Production ramp up is going to take a few years before they actually produce that much. But you can sort of do the math based on the number of cars they are selling. About half a million last year so that would be roughly a quarter TWH if you assume 50KWH batteries. Ballpark enough to keep Australia running for about a year if your numbers are correct.

That's last year. It's easy to see how they would grow production to a few million units in the next few years. So, at that point they are using TWH of production capacity that they are building right now in Texas, Berlin, Shanghai, and soon possibly India.

Of course the broader industry is growing quite rapidly to probably a few million unit sales this year and tens of millions by the end of the decade. So, definitely already into TWH/year territory right now. Taking care of Australian energy storage needs is not going to be an issue. About a million EVs would do the trick easily. Sadly, they are a bit behind on jumping on that band wagon but they'll catch up soon enough.

[leereeves]

> That's a battery capable of supplying 1.2 GW peak demand.

Is it, and if so, for how long?

I saw several articles talking about battery capacity in GW's, with no mention of how long the batteries can provide that power, so I think some reporters just don't understand the difference between GW's (a measure of instantaneous power) and GWh's (a measure of energy or battery capacity).

Power plant capacity is reported in GW's because they provide that power continually, but batteries should be measured in GWh's.

And Vistra's Moss Landing 1.2 GWh battery storage in Monterey County, California claims to be the world's largest.[1]

> Those TWH factories are being built right now.

I don't doubt the factories will exist soon, but I wonder if they'll be able to find the raw materials to feed so many factories, and customers to buy it all. Probably some/many will go bankrupt.

1: https://insideevs.com/news/489894/vistra-moss-landing-energy...

[worik]

"So a 1.2GWh battery could power Australia for about two minutes "

It is one battery in, if memory serves, the state of Victoria.

It is not being asked to power all of Australia.

[leereeves]

How does the grid work in Australia? Is Victoria on a separate grid, like Texas is in the US?