Technology
Giant Batteries Are Transforming the World’s Electrical Grids
Global energy storage capacity has tripled in recent years, thanks to an industry that barely existed a decade ago.
Illustration: Jay Daniel Wright for Bloomberg Businessweek
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Inside an unmarked stucco building in a Silicon Valley office park, more than 1,000 black metal cabinets, each about the size of a fridge, line the floor in rows.
Each cabinet contains 20 new lithium-ion batteries that, starting this spring, will feed power into California’s often-strained electrical grid, helping prevent blackouts. They’re essentially bigger versions of the rechargeable batteries that power phones, laptops and electric cars. Together they’ll supply 75 megawatts of electricity to the grid, enough to power 56,250 homes.