[bob1029]

Gas plants are only the most expensive in the simple cycle configuration. Combined cycle plants are competitive with other forms of baseload generation. The trouble is the response time.

With day ahead forecasting, we can try to turn that peak load into base load. Grid operations are a non trivial part in how this AI energy situation plays out.

[pbmonster]

Batteries are an even bigger deal. You can completely stop building single stage peaker gas turbines when it gets economical to just drop a 2GW / 1 GWh battery pack next to every gas plant. When demand spikes, you just discharge the battery while you heat soak the steam turbine and the drum to prepare it for increased load.

[conductr]

We’re too busy cranking out disposable e-cig cartridge batteries with our limited battery capacity. It’s like we know what’s right but just can’t seem to do it.

[pbmonster]

disposable e-cig cartridge batteries are a disgrace and should be illegal, but that's not hindering grid scale battery build out.

First of all, the resources those tiny batteries use are less than a drop in the bucket of what we ideally would like to add to the grid, and secondly, we're currently nowhere close to being limited by battery capacity. China alone had the industrial capacity to produce more than 2 TWh of new batteries last year, but they actually produced a bit less than 1 TWh because there was no market demand for this many batteries.

They just overbuilt production capacity by over 100%, per their industrial policy.