Batteries now cheaper than gas for peak demand power supply
- CSIRO analysis indicates large-scale batteries are becoming cheaper than gas-fired power for firming electricity supply, as technology costs continue to fall.
- Growing demand for gas turbines—driven in part by AI-related energy needs—is pushing up equipment costs and weakening the economic case for new gas generation.
- The findings support a shift toward storage-backed renewable energy systems, though experts note challenges remain in ensuring reliability and managing the energy transition.
Runaway demand for turbines from data centres in the US is making new gas-fired power uncompetitive with batteries in the evening peak for the first time, a report has found.
Australia’s top science agency, the CSIRO, said batteries were helping to lower high evening prices for electricity as the costs of the technology fell and significant extra capacity was added.
At the same time, the CSIRO said the costs of gas-fired power were rising as insatiable demand for power from data centres caused a shortage of the giant turbines at the heart of gas plants.
Data centres are enormous farms of servers that are being used to power the boom in artificial intelligence.
While the centres are springing up all over the world, in no country has their arrival been as pronounced as the US, where the Department of Energy forecasts they will consume 6.7 to 12 per cent of electricity by 2028.
Paul Graham, the agency’s chief energy economist, said the extraordinary growth of data centres, and their consequent need for gas-fired power, was flowing all the way through to Australia.
Mr Graham leads the CSIRO’s GenCost project, a collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator that assesses the cost of building new generation and …
... read the full article here
Original article and photo by "ABC News"
