Stanton Energy Center

[billvon 3,111]

We did a tour of the Stanton Energy Center the other day.  It's a small-ish (100 megawatt) hybrid peaker plant near Disney in Anaheim.

It's a good example of the new generation of peaker plants.  Older peaker plants are just natural gas turbines that the utility contracts with to provide emergency power (during heat waves for example.)  The utility pays them three ways:

-They pay them some small amount to always be ready to go.
-They pay them significantly more to go to "hot standby" (turbine running at idle, connected to the grid, ready to go)
-They pay them top dollar for power when they need it, usually on the order of $200-$1000 per megawatt.

The Stanton plant combines two turbines with a battery plant.  Now when they need to go to hot standby they use the batteries to provide grid services (like frequency control.)  If they get the order to operate they do the first 10 minutes or so on batteries. If they have to go past 10 minutes they spin up the turbine with the batteries, without needing to use any natural gas to keep it at idle, and connect it to the grid.  If they go past 20 minutes they fire it up and start generating with both turbines.

Since they usually don't have to start the turbine they are seeing huge savings.  The plant operator estimates they have reduced their costs by 50%, reduced gas used by 80% and reduced total emissions by 90% (mainly by being able to run at 100% power any time the turbine is providing power.)

And since they don't have to store 4 hours of power in the batteries on site, the battery plant can be much smaller.

This plant went from approval to operation in less than 2 years.  They are adding more battery storage now; that took less than 9 months.  And plants like this are the reason we are not having rolling blackouts here despite higher demand, hotter summers and longer/more intense heat waves.

[headoverheels 334]

When not needed, do they charge the batteries from the grid?

[billvon 3,111]

On 10/13/2023 at 11:32 PM, headoverheels said:

When not needed, do they charge the batteries from the grid?

Or the turbine.  Both are options. When they charge from the grid they do it when the grid has excess capacity.  That used to be from about midnight to 5am, but more and more often that is happening at 10am now when solar generation is near max and load hasn't ramped up yet.

[JerryBaumchen 1,466]

Hi Bill,

This article might be of interest to you:  This energy efficiency engineer uses his old Portland home as a test lab to cut his utility bills - oregonlive.com

Jerry Baumchen

[ryoder 1,590]

2 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Bill,

This article might be of interest to you:  This energy efficiency engineer uses his old Portland home as a test lab to cut his utility bills - oregonlive.com

Jerry Baumchen

This guy is a gold mine of information both home efficiency and renewable energy:

https://www.youtube.com/@UndecidedMF/videos