Florida Utility To Close Two Natural Gas Plants, Build World's Largest Solar Battery System (electrek.co) 102
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Florida Power & Light has joined the race to build the world's largest solar battery storage system, announcing plans for its massive Manatee Energy Storage Center. The utility plans to build a 409 MW/900 MWh battery, to be powered by an existing FPL solar plant in Manatee County, Florida. It will begin serving customers in 2021. FPL says the battery system will be able to power 329,000 homes for two hours. For comparison, FPL notes the battery system is equivalent to 100 million iPhone batteries, or 300 million AA batteries. The system will be used in periods of high demand. The utility company also said that it will accelerate the retirement of two natural gas facilities at a nearby power plant. "FPL says the project will save customers more than $100 million while eliminating more than 1 million tons of carbon emissions, though no cost estimates for the project were disclosed," reports Electrek.
And while the Manatee Energy Storage Center is projected to be the "world's largest solar-powered battery storage system," it will have some competition from Texas where there are plans to build a 495 MW battery storage system that would be paired with an equivalent 495 MW solar farm in Borden County, Texas. It too is due to come online in 2021.
And while the Manatee Energy Storage Center is projected to be the "world's largest solar-powered battery storage system," it will have some competition from Texas where there are plans to build a 495 MW battery storage system that would be paired with an equivalent 495 MW solar farm in Borden County, Texas. It too is due to come online in 2021.
Don't worry (Score:3)
It's not a problem, because The Sun Always Shines On TV [youtube.com].
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But, if the sun doesn't shine, how will you be able to watch TV?
Florida is a great place for solar, assuming you have a way to hurricane-proof the setup, or eat the cost of rebuilding. It's the energy storage that's the problem.
Ultimately, orbital solar is the way forward for mankind, but in the meantime solar plus storage, or solar plus natural gas works well as long as your latitude isn't too high and you don't have a problem with days-long cloud cover.
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Uh...there's a problem with orbital solar. The energy is up there, we're down here. Care to explain to us how it gets transferred, or has your Space Nut Helmet of Science not yet told you.
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Power can be transferred via microwaves from a satellite. Alternatively, use a big mirror in space to beam light down to the surface and collect this light using a solar furnace or a solar farm. In this case, solar will work during the night!!
However, it is a bit too close to being a James Bond villain's weapon.
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Uh...there's a problem with orbital solar. The energy is up there, we're down here. Care to explain to us how it gets transferred, or has your Space Nut Helmet of Science not yet told you.
Really? The atmosphere is more transparent to microwaves than UV and visible light. There's less loss beaming the power down than there is letting the sunlight come through the atmosphere and then hitting the solar panels. Before you ask, you don't build a death ray to send the power down, you use a receiver that's about a square block (and a retroreflector safety mechanism, so the sat will cut the beam off if it drifts).
Of course, the current designs for orbital solar are thermal, not photoeletric, so th
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With current Falcon 9 launch costs, orbital power is actually cost competitive. But it's new and unknown, so no one's going to take the risk until launch costs fall further or natural gas stops being so very cheap.
If you missed the Slashdot article a couple years back, PG&E actually worked up a serious proposal for orbital power to avoid NIMBY issues, but ultimately abandoned it because of NIMBY issues.
Citation you can see from space needed. I doubt PG&E abandoned it due to NIMBY unless it was concerns about the giant space death ray that the design calls for. PG&E only builds what the regulators tell them to build (or buy). And utilities like reliability and predictability and I'm not sure such a exotic scheme qualifies in the near future. Space is expensive (and dangerous) and there are lots of losses in harnessing energy (the second law of thermodynamics is a bitch). Its hard to see how or
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Citation you can see from space needed.
Give it a read, it's not a joke: https://www.pge.com/nots/rates... [pge.com]
Solaren is using an innovative space-based solar technology, which, if successful, would represent a break-through in the renewable power industry. While emerging technologies like space solar face considerable hurdles under a traditional viability analysis, PG&E believes that potential, significant benefits to its customers from a successful space solar installation outweigh the challenges associated with a new and unproven technology
Space is expensive (and dangerous) and there are lots of losses in harnessing energy (the second law of thermodynamics is a bitch).
Utility-scale power generation is expensive (and dangerous) and there are lots of losses in harnessing energy (the second law of thermodynamics is a bitch). Starting with 4x the power density really helps, though.
You have to get past your 1970s ideas about launch costs and difficulties. Current, real-world, for sale today launch costs are about 1/10th what they were in the 70s, if you include the cost of government subsidies. And costs lo
Did you even read the HEADLINE? (Score:2)
But, if the sun doesn't shine, how will you be able to watch TV?
By using a BATTERY that got CHARGED WHEN THE SUN WAS SHINING.
Which is what TFA was abuot. I know you didn't read it. But did you even read the title of the Slashdot article? It's in that, too.
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The wind is blowing just right. Then wind power is working.
The battery will work when the sun is going up and down.
When the wind stops, is blowing too much.
Thats when wind and solar power gets to be a problem. When it stops working.
At night is back to the energy from nuclear generating stations, hydro, gas to keep the power on.
The great new battery allows for the loss of wind power and the loss of the sun.
Then normal energy can be generated all night an
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Then people who need 24/7 energy will have to pay for that energy from hydro, gas, coal, nuclear.
Thats why the loss of solar at then end of every day is a consideration in 24 hour energy pricing.
Re "coal transport fail" - they extra coal where it's waiting.
Most advanced nations have extra oil stored for "oil supplies"
Nuclear power keeps working day and night for a long time. Maintenance can be scheduled as not to change energy costs.
Thats n
Well... (Score:2)
They build it in Texas, they close fossil fuel plants so you can bet your ass that money can be made this way.
Except... (Score:1)
"Texas’s power grid operator has stressed the need for more electricity resources in the region to power oil and gas drilling operations."
So no, they're not closing fossil fuel plants in favor of this...and the reason they're building this is BECAUSE of fossil fuel efforts.
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The fossil fuel plants they're closing are in Florida, not in Texas. Read the summary again.
Also,isn't it interesting that Texas power grid operator believes solar systems are the way to power gas and drilling operations? It's som
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Not an admission by the Texas grid operator, they've been big on wind for awhile. The problem is that the pols are big on wind too, but only when it issues from their mouths.
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How the grid owner can profit most with solar and batteries. It sells those systems, supplied and installed, first profit, it handles and sells the electricity coming off those systems for profit. For those who can not afford to buy outright, it leases those systems and the energy they sell, helps pay for them over time. As the grid operator it will have a monopoly of the buy price and sell price of that electricity and will not have to negotiate with a major energy corporation, so the margins will be big.
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I agree. All electricity generation should be nationalized.
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This is a good demonstration of something few people realize: oil, outside of the conventional reserves in the middle east and a few other places, isn't really a viable energy source. American shale oil extraction is energy positive, but not enough to be really worthwhile. Oil's value is mostly as an energy storage mechanism to power transportation.
So it doesn't make sense to burn that oil to power your extraction operations. It does make sense to build a solar facility to power extraction.
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Try starting here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Energy return on energy invested is the basic idea: how many barrels of oil do you get if you invest one barrel of oil in production? Shale oil and tar sands are quite a bit below the world average, which means middle east conventional oil must be considerably above that average.
Now, this is my speculation, but a bit of math with fuel prices would probably support it. Oil is a famously inelastic resource, meaning it doesn't really obey the law of supply an
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>"They build it in Texas, they close fossil fuel plants so you can bet your ass that money can be made this way."
Hopefully, yes. Trying to force something to work that isn't ready doesn't pan out well for anyone. This could mean the technology is finally ready. That is good, because we need reliable, long-term energy independence.
Sooo..... (Score:2)
Energy conservation off the table? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if a combination of a reflective roof, improved sealing and insulation of attic ducts, and a higher-efficiency A/C unit is more cost effective than a solar photovoltaic panel?
The reflective roof is more than covering your house in tin -- there are coatings that reflect sunlight with better combined ability to reflect incoming radiation along with emit heat that gets in as infrared. Florida houses typically lack basements, so the A/C ductwork is in the hot attic -- sealing air leaks and insulating the ducts helps a lot. Newer A/C units are much more efficient.
"Uh, why not do both solar electric and A/C efficiency?" Indeed, why not, but all of the resources and press attention is going into the production side over the demand side. Low-hanging fruit, baby!
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Indeed. What's the point of adding all these new "green energy" systems everywhere if you're going to keep wasting most of it?
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<sarc>Well, let's just stop doing all that, then! </sarc>
Re:Energy conservation off the table? (Score:5, Interesting)
"What if a combination of a reflective roof, improved sealing and insulation of attic ducts, and a higher-efficiency A/C unit is more cost effective than a solar photovoltaic panel?"
Then do that too.
I think you're missing the point that this is not a rooftop system. That's important. For argument's sake, let's say this system is 1GW peak. To deploy that on homes you'd need to install 200,000 average 5k rooftop systems. Or, as you suggest, you could improve existing systems to lower the energy use. If that's 1kW per home, then you need 1,000,000 homes to be upgraded.
Current pricing on utility-scale solar is about 80 cents/W. So installing one 1 GW plant will cost you about 800 million dollars. In contrast, installing on the rooftop costs about $3.25/W, so that option would be 3.25 billion dollars. Re-doing the homes as you suggest will cost thousands per home, so I would not be surprised if it was tens of billions.
So the end result is the same, 1GW offset. One solution costs many times less than the others. Done like dinner.
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all of the resources and press attention is going into the production side over the demand side.
American demand for electricity is declining, and is 4% below the peak.
LED lights, better insulation, more efficient appliances, are all driving the decline.
This doesn't make the news because it isn't flashy like a big new solar battery installation.
The adoption of electric cars may reverse the decline.
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Peak electricity demand during the 24 hours of a day will still decline when electric cars are widely deployed. Electric car owners will be incentivised to use cheaper off-peak electricity tariffs during the night. Therefore, the minimum electricity demand will increase during the night to charge up electric cars. This will benefit the Nuclear industry and wind industry by allowing the baseload limit to be increased to accommodate electric cars. It is likely that the number of power plants will go down desp
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More cost effective? Could you please tell us how you plan to cost out the amount of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere to run the AC necessary. Don't hold back, lay it on us.
Manatee Energy (Score:4, Funny)
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There's a lot of viagra in the wastewater from retirement homes.
Re:Manatee Energy (Score:4, Funny)
How exactly does that work? They move too slow to generate a lot of kinetic energy, and burning them is a challenge . . .
Geez .. don't you know .. the manatees are going to be the operators of the plant! Thats why it is called a Manatee Energy Storage Center - the Manatees are operating it.
This is really forward thinking by Florida. When climate change floods the whole state and everything is underwater you'll find that the manatees are eminently suited for manual labor. So its essential to start getting them trained up now for the job.
Vacuum fluctuations (Score:3)
They use the cavitation of the manitee fart bubbles collapsing. these get instantaneously hotter than the sun, cause fusion and also photons streaming out of the squeezed vacuum states.
iPhones? AA batteries? (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, is it true there's only the equivalent of three AA batteries in an iPhone?
Secondly, 100 million iPhone batteries or 300 million AA batteries may sound like a lot, but when divided by the power required by houses, it doesn't seem like much. Can someone convert that in a how-many-tesla-car-batteries-can-fit-in-a-stadium number?
Re:iPhones? AA batteries? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, is it true there's only the equivalent of three AA batteries in an iPhone?
Yes, it is true. A typical alkaline AA battery has up to 2800 mAh capacity [wikipedia.org]. Of course, this is at 1.5V, so the power capacity is around 4.2 Wh. So 3 of them would be around 12.6 Wh. A, iPhone Xs Max has a 3174 mAh battery [zdnet.com], at about 4.2V. So around 12.6 Wh. So yes, about the same capacity.
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I'd need zero AA's to power my Tesla since I don't have one.
Florida Flicker and Flash (Score:1)
We used to call Florida Power and Light (FPL) "Florida Flicker and Flash" when I lived in the Orlando area. They had terrible power. Blackouts weren't that bad, though not rare. But constant brownouts, momentary flickers, occasional spikes were daily life. They couldn't control it worth a damn. Then they brought plants like those two natural gas plants online and things got much better. Guess that was too good, so they want to go back to the flickering and flashing...
Re: Florida Flicker and Flash (Score:1)
And the cost of power (Score:2, Flamebait)
Will tripple or even quadrupole. So far all this "alternative energy" stuff on a large scale has shown not to be less expensive but more expensive. If they really want to sell solar or wind as a better alternative - they need to make it cheaper in cost. It's still cheaper to use natural gas, coal or fossil fuels. I bought solar panels to put on my property to take advantage of the "free" sun. But wow was it costly. It will take me 20 years to recoup the cost......
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pushing the planet's environment to be inhospitable to our way of life. Things must change - change is inevitable. To cling to the past and the status quo is always a losing position.
I assume you were aiming for irony in the above. Mandatory and major change because something is inhospitable to our way of life. We cannot cling to the past! Our way of life is at stake!
Re: And the cost of power (Score:1)
It is already on parity with coal.
It is hard to take you seriously when you spit out nonsense like this. If you really want to evangelise for solar you should at least try to keep your claims in the realm of plausibility, otherwise even people who might have been swayed by your argument will immediately write you off.
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PFFT! And hence reply as AC - no real facts - just climate change boogie man scares.
I wanted to go solar to reduce the cost and reliance on the electric company. But right now there isn't a lower cost yet. The cost of a solar installation needs to come down a lot more to make it cost effective. When it costs $20K+ for a solar installation - yeah not going to cut it. People are better off finding how to do it themselves, build your own pannels - it can be done I found out. Build your own outbuilding with bat
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Look at this AC - he's too stupid to know ANYTHING but how to suck every cock in the joint!
Re:And the cost of power (Score:5, Informative)
Now Hydrogen cars are the solution!
A hydrogen car has an electric drivetrain, a small battery, a fuel cell and a hydrogen tank.
A battery electric car (BEV) has an electric drivetrain and a big battery.
Hydrogen cars are losing the battle against BEVs for the following reasons:
1. The fuel cell and hydrogen tank are not needed in a BEV so this cost and mass are avoided. Instead a BEV is dependent on deploying a battery with a high storage capability (up to 100kWh) with a high power output.
2. A BEV will have a better 0 to 60 MPH rating than a hydrogen car because the fuel cell cannot provide the needed high power output for fast acceleration. Hydrogen cars use a small battery to supply power during periods of high power demand. As battery technology improves, the hydrogen car becomes nearer to being a pure BEV which increases the risk of the fuel cell and hydrogen tank being redundant.
3. A BEV can be charged from anywhere there is a suitable power socket including a domestic house. A hydrogen car requires a hydrogen refuelling station which are rare. Therefore, BEVs already have a better charging infrastructure than hydrogen refuelling stations.
4. Hydrogen needs to be compressed which takes energy and also the hydrogen tank must be designed to be safe during car crashes. BEVs can catch fire in a car crash due to the battery being damaged, however, the probability of a BEV catching fire is less than the probability of an ICE car catching fire.
5. Hydrogen takes energy to be created such as via electrolysis. This energy reduces the overall efficiency of a hydrogen car. If water is used to generate hydrogen using electrolysis then a source of water is needed which will have an environmental impact. Hydrogen can also be generated from industrial fossil fuel processes but this hydrogen would need to be transported to the hydrogen refuelling stations so having an environmental impact.
6. Only a handful of car manufacturers are building hydrogen fuel cell cars and these cars have a very small share of the electric car market. The race to hydrogen fuel cell cars has already been lost to BEVs.
7. There is a race in the electric semi-tractor market between hydrogen fuel cell and BEV. This market has not yet decided which technology will win. Hydrogen may get a foothold in this market because sending freight travels along defined routes so only a few hydrogen refuelling stations are needed to support a freight route. But on the other hand, battery technology is continuing to improve which could eliminate the fuel cell.
The reason people stay with the coal, natural gas, and fossil fuels is COST! Oh electric cars? Yeah you recharge them from what? an outlet? Where is IT getting it's electricity. Oh yeah form one of those big bad coal, natural gas or fossil fuel electric plants. So tell me how they are saving the environment?
The accuracy of this claim depends on which country you are in. The biggest market per capita for electric cars is Norway where the electricity grid is 98% hydro-electric. Therefore, this claim fails for Norway. In France the electricity grid is 75% Nuclear and so your claim is also invalid for France. Renewable energy deployment in Europe is increasing each year which means your claim becomes more inaccurate each year. There are countries in Europe such as Poland that have a high percentage of electricity generated from coal but even for Poland it is better to generate the pollution at the rural coal fired power station than in the cities where the population lives. Therefore, electric cars will still benefit countries that use coal as pollution from ICE cars in cities will be reduced.
Re: And the cost of power (Score:3)
If you can recover the costs within its lifetime compared to using fossil electricity, it's not more expensive, it's cheaper.
Re:And the cost of power (Score:4, Insightful)
And the cost to dumping the CO2 into the atmosphere acidifying the oceans, melting the ice caps, causing more destructive storms, etc. is what, precisely?
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Very good, but expected, almost inevitable ... (Score:5, Informative)
South Australian grid using wind mills widely separated was the first one to go in with a 50 MW system. It stabilized the grid and flattened the spot market prices so much they saved millions of dollars. Every dollar saved by the utility is a dollar NOT EARNED by gas powered plants. The ROI on natural gas plants are going to take a serious rework, they are losing juicy profits in the spot markets.
Now, Florida. Cost of storage batteries [twitter.com] is falling so rapidly, it is like the micro chip revolution in computing. There is a Moore's Law for batteries, with a time period of about 7 years.
The neck of the famous "duck curve" [wikipedia.org] is after sunset in CA. Solar has stopped, but a/c load is yet to peak. That one hour after sunset is the last critical piece needed for solar to become totally effective against natural gas. It is at hand. It is very exciting for the renewable energy fans.
Some of the gas plants operating in the peak load are "quick response" gas turbine plants. Their quick response is still measured in tens of minutes. The batteries are responding in milliseconds. The key thing about spot market electricity is, the price can go negative. If the gas plant is producing power and the grid could not absorb it they need to pay someone to take their power. The gas plant will not throttle down for several minutes. Who can absorb that power and get paid? The Batteries! Once the battery systems reach a critical mass, all natural gas fired power will be sold at long term pre negotiated fixed contract prices. Not the spot market. This will seriously change the ROI calculations of these plants that were already built. I am expecting the owners of these plants to cry uncle and come with hat in hand asking for "relief" from the utility rate payers.
Re:Very good, but expected, almost inevitable ... (Score:4, Informative)
Which is pretty much what FL is doing. Note that what is closing is NOT coal plants. They're replacing one (relatively) clean system with another (cleaner) system, NOT replacing a dirty system with a clean one....
Which, interestingly, is something I saw predicted a few months ago - that solar isn't going to be replacing coal, but natural gas,,,,
Re:Very good, but expected, almost inevitable ... (Score:5, Informative)
Coal is disappearing all on its own. In 1997, coal accounted for 52.8% of the electricity generated in the US. In 2017, it accounted for 27.4%. The reason for the decline is that coal plants have been replaced by...natural gas plants.
And now, natural gas plants are being replaced by solar plants. You could correctly say that solar is generating electricity where coal once did. So, solar is replacing coal, but there is an intermediate step.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
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So natural gas will kill coal very quickly. Solar will kill natural gas slowly.
Natural gas is cleaner than coal. Thats about it. Megajoule per megajoule it emits same amount of CO2 as coal.
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Except Florida only has one active coal plant left in operation, and that is already scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year.
Traditionally, Florida used oil-burning rather than coal-burning electricity plants. Those have steadily been converted to natural gas over the years.
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The link I posted is from bloomberg, not some wild eyed greenie tree hugging site. They calculated load cycle, investment cost, repayment interest, amortization and life of the batteries into the calculations.
Tesla batteries have been absorbing at the rate of 128 kW for several years now, discharging to a surging peak of 400 kW routinely. And you still FUD on chemistry.
NG is a sort of battery? Yeah, sure solar energy from millions of years ago were stored
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The con artist must be having an apoplectic fit (Score:2)
Expect to hear of some kind of "tax" being imposed on companies who don't use coal, or any fossil fuel. The excuse will be they're killing jobs as well as falling for that Chinese hoax of climate change. The same hoax the con artist cited in his need to build a sea wall [politico.com] around his failing Irish golf course [newsweek.com].
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How dare you call the President a con artist. A con artist is able to calculate secondary and ternary effects so as to get an outcome favorable to him. The President has the intellectual depth only sufficient to make him a con to fools and be a tool of the Russian mafia and their boss, Putin.
Bad reporting yet again (Score:1)
It's Oil and Gas combined cycle power plants
You can get the info easily enough from the state public service commission
http://www.psc.state.fl.us/Fil... [state.fl.us]
And the consumer savings are b.s. as well FPL is playing games with the Solar Base rate adjustment program and fuel recovery cost programs
http://www.psc.state.fl.us/lib... [state.fl.us]
Wish they'd told us what KIND of battery. (Score:2)
I'm curious about what battery technology they plan to use. It would have been nice if TFA had mentioned that. (Or did I miss it?)
Lithium Ion? Vanadium Redox? Something else?
Who's the manufacturer?
Does anybody happen to know?
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I think it varies depending on the location. In the Miami-Dade they actually use recycled automobile batteries [fpl.com]. However, I think that's probably a one-off project.
FPL already has 18 solar farms in Florida, and at least one large-scale battery storage project at Babcock Ranch [babcockranch.com], a town designed from the ground up for solar.
According to their 10-Year Power Site Plan [frcc.com] that was filed in April of 2018 they are still experimenting with battery configurations, and purchase through competitive RFP.
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"According to their 10-Year Power Site Plan [frcc.com] that was filed in April of 2018..."
For some reason, this announcement sounds like political greenwashing. The current voter-initiated ballot proposal to open Florida's energy market up to competition would reduce profits to the state-run monopoly.
https://www.miamiherald.com/ne... [miamiherald.com]
NOTE: I was actively petitioning for this campaign in Florida for a couple weeks -Floridians all said their energy bills were too expensive, especially when they're seeing rela
Re: Wish they'd told us what KIND of battery. (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you mean by political greenwashing. What I meant was, in searching for information I found this document posted on that website. I did not find anything that spoke to the specific battery technology, other than the one statement in their Miami-Dade project that use recycled car batteries.
I was trying to be clear that they claim not to be manufacturers of batteries, which I believe, but simply buy them from others. Nothing more or less.