newsOriginal source title: "A huge battery has replaced Hawaii’s last coal plant"
Hawai’i shut down its last coal plant on September 1, 2022, eliminating 180 megawatts of fossil-fueled baseload power from the grid on O’ahu — a crucial step in the state’s first-in-the-nation commitment to cease burning fossil fuels for electricity by 2045.
But the move posed a question that’s becoming increasingly urgent as clean energy surges across the United States: How do you maintain a reliable grid while switching from familiar fossil plants to a portfolio of small and large renewables that run off the vagaries of the weather?
Now Hawai’i has an answer: It’s a gigantic battery, unlike the gigantic batteries that have been built before.
The Kapolei Energy Storage system actually began commercial operations before Christmas on the industrial west side of O’ahu, according to Plus Power, the Houston-based firm that developed and owns the project. (The company just had the good sense to wait to announce it until journalists and readers had fully returned from winter holidays.)
Now, Kapolei’s 158 Tesla Megapacks are charging and discharging based on signals from utility Hawaiian Electric. The plant’s 185 megawatts of instantaneous discharge capacity match what the old coal plant could inject into the grid, though the batteries react far more quickly, with a 250-millisecond response time. Instead of generating power,
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