While we should absolutely invest in grid level batteries, right now we use so much power that very large battery installations can only really hope to cover a few hours of usage for a portion of supply. It's great for helping peak solar and peak wind power production to be stored and then re released in times of demand. And definitely can help with grid resiliency.
But I'm not sure we have the battery technology to be able to distribute batteries everywhere with enough capacity to stop most power outages. That's quite a different deployment than centralized batteries on the grid. I hope we get there but the energy densities & costs probably are not be good enough - yet.
And if we do manage that, the outages that do happen will only be more severe. Are we going to have power outage drills? If not tons of people will be caught unprepared.
I wonder if there could be system where power grid tells customers when power is limited and they voluntarily reduce power based on their need. This is similar to system for limiting off-peak usage.
It does require customers to install a smart panel to control what gets power, and controller to drive it. There might be enough savings in off-peak power to get people to install it. They would also be a good idea for local batteries since those don't usually do full power.
But I'm not sure we have the battery technology to be able to distribute batteries everywhere with enough capacity to stop most power outages. That's quite a different deployment than centralized batteries on the grid. I hope we get there but the energy densities & costs probably are not be good enough - yet.
And if we do manage that, the outages that do happen will only be more severe. Are we going to have power outage drills? If not tons of people will be caught unprepared.