Julian Spector of Canary Media reports that Arizona has added its biggest battery to the grid.
- Arizona has recently added its biggest grid-scale battery so far – a 1 gigawatt-hour system from NextEra Energy Resources paired with 260 MW of solar to supply one of Google’s data centers.
- Grid batteries have rapidly risen to become the second most popular type of new power plant expected to be built in the U.S. this year after solar, outpacing gas and wind.
- Arizona is leading the country’s battery boom, with NextEra’s massive battery system as well as another 1 GWh battery installation under construction.
“Data centers and AI computing have triggered a historic increase in near-term electricity demand, catching utilities and grid planners by surprise across the country. Some utilities are looking to increase their investment in gas turbines to keep pace with demand, but that approach locks in new carbon emissions for years, if not decades. Google’s Arizona strategy models a different path: bringing dispatchable clean energy online in the places where it’s building the data centers.”
Read the full article here.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
