So if ALL power generation of the US would stop right now, EVERYTHING would still have power for 25 minutes. (ignoring all safeties tripping, and perfect load balancing)

That sounds so impressive.

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clarionbell 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No. Because neither storage nor generation is evenly spread. In some places you would have nothing, in some you could have potentially hours.

In practical terms, you would most probably get nothing, because situation like this would lead to complete grid breakdown and interruption of service.

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viraptor 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Technical detail question: if all of those batteries were on connecting allowing feeding back to the grid, would they be able to synchronise the frequency/phase? What's the threshold/requirement for that to happen?

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crote 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It can be done, but it would requires additional equipment. Batteries are traditionally grid-following, so they'll just follow whatever frequency the grid is already running on. The frequency itself is then provided by the rotational inertia of "spinning metal" power plants.

But there's no reason that has to be your frequency source. Any single battery installation on its own is perfectly capable of making up some frequency, which is why home power banks with island-mode AC output are a thing - or even just a traditional UPS. Doing the same with thousands of individual battery installations across the grid? You'll need some way to get everyone to agree exactly on frequency and phase, which in practice is probably going to mean getting them to agree on time to within a few microseconds, which could be done (albeit not very sabotage-proof) using GPS.

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bluGill 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> The frequency itself is then provided by the rotational inertia of "spinning metal" power plants.

This might or might not be true. I used to live near a large plant that took HVDC from a power plant several states away and transformed it into AC. They used electronics to provide the grid frequency, not spinning metal. All the other local peak power generation was run in grid following mode.

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tialaramex an hour ago | parent [-]

Grid Forming Batteries are a thing - but since it's not free to implement of course such a provider would like to get paid, not give it away, whereas both a conventional thermal plant or a hydro plant unavoidably has spinning metal, their stability comes free with the electrical supply.

The risk vs reward isn't great. If you made your country's 10GW grid work with only batteries for 15 minutes to show it's possible, maybe you get one half page in a "Electricity Weekly" industry newspaper. But if anything goes wrong and ordinary people notice - now you're on TV News for a week.

	▲	bluGill 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm under the impression that most grid scale batteries are owned by the utility which in turn cares about this. And the rest are only going to be bought if a utility \ grid gives them a contract where again those who care will give better terms of they need it. My home battery might participate without the above but in to small to matter.

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bob1029 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> What's the threshold/requirement for that to happen?

The RoCoF (rate of change of frequency) must be low enough that the inverters can form the grid without letting out the magical smoke. Having inertia is what slows this rate down.

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oblio 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Considering the accelerating rate of installation and the ever decreasing costs of manufacturing, both problems should be alleviated in 10 years. Instead of 25 minutes, most likely 4-6 hours. Instead of extremely uneven distribution, likely all the major population centers will have at least some non zero coverage.

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DJBunnies 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not public.

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wtch98 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Only if that battery was connected to 500GW of inverter capacity (and the grid was a spherical chicken -- enough intertia-replacement devices to keep timing working, enough capacity to link supply with demand etc)

	▲	rcxdude 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		inertia-replacement is what batteries do best, so in this kind scenario that's probably the least of the problems.