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Shouldn't they use "Megatons" instead of "Megawatts"?
Interesting. They could supply my household for 20 years on a full charge. I’m missing a count on how many households they can supply with sun power during the night. Also how does this hold up vs. kinetic storage? (pumping water uphills) Seen from a global perspective storing power in li-ion seems bonkers, since it would probably drive lithium prices up to a point where it’s no longer economically viable, but ofc. they sit on much of the supply chain over there…
American House with an EV, all electric, and no solar, I use about 1200 kWh/mo (1.2 MWh/mo) on average. This could only carry me through about 3y. Even if I had access to good public infrastructure I think best I could do is 6y (again, all-electric home).
But I digress. Lithium ion as purely load shifting is a pretty reasonable, I'd argue critical, solution for covering day/night loads, but starts to fall apart completely when it comes to seasonal (summer/winter) loads.
But what makes this plant interesting is the addition of super capacitors. The combo battery/SC plant is less about day/night load shifting and more about providing stability to a shifting grid. As supply and demand grow increasingly decoupled, and we try and shift away from expensive peaker plants always on standby, systems like this can dramatically help smooth grid performance.
~90 MW of peaker capacity is small potatoes currently, but this is a big step towards a more reliable grid future.
I’m curious, do you know how much you use for heating, cooling and the EV? I supposed those are the big differences to my household.
30-50% of my energy is the EV. About 20% is 120V plug loads (computers, fridges, home server), ~5-10% lighting, ~15% large equipment (dryer, electric range, electric water heater), and the remainder (15-30% seasonally) is HVAC (heat pump)
Any gas appliances would bring a lot of those numbers down
Thank you for the details. We have district heating here and no EV, that makes a big difference! We use about 15MWh of district heating each year but less than 2MWh of electricity. Our house is from the 70s, but have decent insulation, could be better though
Supercapacitors provide ultrafast response times – specified at 0.001 seconds – and maintain over 85% capacity at –40°C, significantly outperforming lithium-ion batteries in extreme cold.
Outperform how? At being a capacitor? That's their whole point.
On the energy side, 85% of 29 MW-min is 0.41 MWh. Even if the batteries lose 99% of their capacity at -40 °F, last I checked .42 MWh > 0.41 MWh.
These are two different tools for two different purposes, I'm not sure how you compare their "performance" under this metric.
Batteries and capacitors both store electrical potential, but in different ways. So yes you can compare their performance at storing and then delivering electricity under specified conditions.
Batteries can keep charge longer with less loss, but capacitors are faster at responding to rapid changes in eletrical supply and demand.
The quote you included shows exactly how they compared the performance at low temperatures, as an example. Maybe I am missing your objection?
A capacitor has ~1% of the storage capacity of a battery of similar power rating.
Saying its storage performance is better because its holds a larger % of that capacity at low temperatures is nonsense because its storage performance objectively sucks (and not what it's designed to be good at)
It's like saying a Tesla is better than a 747 because it can go from 0-60 faster. A technically true statement but a meaningless performance comparison.
Supercapacitors are for stabilizing the grid, the batteries are for flattening the peaks/load-levelling at diurnal scale.
The caps also average charge fluctuating in the batteries, which should significantly enhance the cell lifespan.
I love when people point to China and their “renewables” and batteries as an example, and just ignore the fact that they’re building dozens of new coal power plants every year, along with nuclear plants which the people pushing these articles refuse to even consider.
...not to mention the years and years of wanton polluting.
You should update your info more often. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/
That sentence is not true since at least 5 years
Nuclear plants are a good thing overall.
Pal bad tho.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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