• sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    No, if you’re only now discovering this fact, you’re probably not very familiar with the engineering tradeoffs that led the industry to settle on 4 hours of capacity for any given power rating. These systems are designed to fully discharge every night, and 4 hours is a good guarantee that it can.

    If you have the batteries to build an 8 hour system, it’s more effective, at this stage in the game, to build 2 separate 4 hour systems and place them in different places. That will offset more high-carbon peaker plant usage, compared to a single 8-hour system.

    In future buildouts, the number might be able to creep higher after peaker plants are obsolete year round, but for now building a bunch of 4-hour storage sites is the most cost effective way to decarbonize.