Re-imagining the energy grid ... through batteries (Two Indicators)

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

When it comes to solar and wind power, renewable energy has always had a caveat: it can only run when the wind blows or the sun shines.

The idea of a battery was floated around to make renewables available 24/7. For years, it existed as an expensive, little-used technology. Then in 2021, it took off.

In this episode, we explore how this new energy market works in two states: California and Texas.

In California, there is now enough grid-scale battery storage to power millions of homes — at least for a few hours — and it's growing fast. What does this success mean for the grid, and how did the state support it?

Then, we visit Texas, whose approach is more free-market rodeo. The state has the second-most battery storage capacity in the U.S. And in Texas, their system was recently put to the test. So, can these large-scale batteries can help prevent blackouts?

These two stories come from our sister show The Indicator, which recently reported a series about the electric battery market.

Today's show was hosted by Cooper Katz McKim, Darian Woods and Wailin Wong. The original Indicator episodes were produced by Cooper Katz McKim and Corey Bridges, and edited by Kate Concannon. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keeley and Neil Tevault. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	President Trump is back in Washington, pursuing major policy changes on his own terms.
0:06.4	We know from the past that means challenging precedent, busting norms, and pushing against the status quo.
0:12.1	NPR is covering it all with Trump's terms, a podcast where we curate stories about the 47th president with the focus on how he is upending the way Washington works.
0:21.5	Listen to Trump's terms from NPR.
0:24.8	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:29.9	In 2008, Nancy Skinner was elected to the California state legislature.
0:34.6	So technically, my term began in 2009.
0:39.8	Nancy has witnessed the state's vision for clean energy firsthand. Soon after she was elected, a bill was being considered to get more
0:45.7	of their electricity than ever from renewables. But there was a problem. When the sun doesn't shine
0:51.5	or the wind doesn't blow, there's no power. Several people approach
0:55.0	Nancy to raise this issue. We're going to have to figure out how to store it. And one way to
1:00.6	store energy, a battery. Extra solar and wind electrons that aren't needed on the grid could
1:06.6	flow into a battery. The problem was, though, grid scale storage wasn't really a thing.
1:13.7	Nonetheless, Nancy was optimistic that eventually it would happen if you created a market
1:17.7	signal. So she introduced the bill requiring utilities to purchase a certain percentage of
1:22.3	battery storage when they bought electricity. Nancy remembers pushback.
1:26.5	That this was just pie in the sky, this is not real,
1:29.9	like another California pipe dream. Still, in 2010, the bill passed, although nothing really happened.
1:36.8	Gridscale batteries remained a pie in the sky concept for years. And then all of a sudden,
1:42.5	in 2021, batteries took off.
1:47.3	Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Cooper Katz-McCham.
1:50.6	And I'm Darian Woods. After years of nothing, grid-scale batteries are now widely used and growing fast.
	...

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