At the Oregon plant, massive lithium batteries will store up to 120 megawatt-hours of power generated by the 300-megawatt wind farms and 50-megawatt solar farm so it can be released to the electric grid on demand. At maximum output, the facility will produce more than half of the power that was generated by Oregon’s last coal plant, which was demolished earlier this month.
Source: Tiny Oregon town hosts wind-solar-battery ‘hybrid’ plant | kgw.com
That’s misleading. The coal plant that was shut down could produce 1 GW, 24 x 7.
The new “renewable energy plant” could hypothetically source 300 MW wind + 50 MW solar + 120 MW battery – if the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, at peak hour of production, and they use the full battery bank for output too.
In real life, that isn’t going to happen except on rare occasions, briefly, so the comparison to 1/2 the original power plant is misleading.
Also, this plant uses Lithium batteries, which imits battery bank output to about 4 hours. Plus, lithium may not be the best choice for a grid scale battery where weight and power density are irrelevant.
