[wp381640]

You don't have to supply the entire grid demand - only smooth out the brownouts, which something the size of Hornsdale would likely be able to do for Costa Rica

Note that Hornsdale is also tiny compared to batteries currently being developed in Australia. The new battery in the Hunter will be 1200MW - which is enough to nullify the need for all gas-generated peaking capacity in that state

[singhrac]

As someone who knows very little about power systems - is this true? Watts are a unit of instantaneous energy delivery, so if the whole system browns out then doesn’t the battery need to handle 100% of the load? I guess I would expect the entire system not to drop at the same time but worth asking if someone knew this.

[whoisburbansky]

I'm assuming a brownout is usually a drop in voltage (a reduction in output power), so a backup battery wouldn't need to handle 100% of the load, just some fraction, for a short period of time.