It’s industry standard due to historical reasons, not because a primary concern is not how much storage (how long a given source can provide the nameplate power for) there is. Until recently the nameplate on a power source could be generally expected to run at its rated capacity factor indefinitely.
Battery storage has almost been exclusively used for ancillary services, where storage was almost irrelevant. Now that it’s starting to be expected to provide actually useful power to consumers it will slowly become the primary metric that matters.
Usually power capacity is used in press releases to greenwash things and be purposefully misleading to a naive audience. Nice to see this finally starting to change.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't see it as a greenwashing conspiracy, and I especially don't see it as a journalistic error as the parent claimed.
Just because someone doesn't know industry terms doesn't mean those terms are incorrect.
Regarding your point about nameplate power, dispatchable sources have existed for almost a century using this convention.
> Regarding your point about nameplate power, dispatchable sources have existed for almost a century using this convention.
The only thing that came close to batteries would have been pumped storage hydro power. And rather small installations at that. These number in the dozens (at best) worldwide. They were irrelevant for public discourse on the topic, therefore nameplate capacity was a useful metric as it was the only material one that mattered.
Mentioning nameplate capacity for a source that has single-digit hours of fuel (storage) available is misleading at best short of writing targeted at industry insiders. Storage was simply an irrelevant metric until very recently, and it's very easy to leave it out (or not understand it's a missing bit of critical information) if you don't know anything about the topic at hand.
It's not a conspiracy and I never stated such. It's folks who have an agenda to push at worst, or much more likely folks who simply don't have a clue about what they are writing about and take press releases at their word without applying critical thinking.
It would be like quoting flywheel storage at nameplate and not mentioning that the rated capacity is only useful for single digit minutes to a naive audience. Misleading at best, but certainly not a conspiracy. Factually correct but incomplete information is typically no better than misinformation. It hurts the cause in the end.
I think battery storage is on the right track, but the past 5 years of journalism on the subject has left their audience with incomplete at best information on the topic. Adding 1GW of grid capacity in batteries is simply not the same as adding 1GW of natural gas, nuclear, or hydro power but most reading these articles would not come away with such an understanding. Having had casual chats with "laymen" on the topic the average person simply does not understand this level of nuance. You get to first attempt to explain the difference when someone tries to compare a battery source to a nuclear power plant. This is where my real-world frustration over journalism here stems from.
fwiw I think the writer here did a good job! I also disagree that the interchanging of units was incorrect. It read factually correct to me as they quoted both as any competent writing on the subject should.
I see this far more as an indictment of journalism (with a nod towards PR departments perhaps trying to greenwash) than anything remotely resembling a conspiracy.
Battery storage has almost been exclusively used for ancillary services, where storage was almost irrelevant. Now that it’s starting to be expected to provide actually useful power to consumers it will slowly become the primary metric that matters.
Usually power capacity is used in press releases to greenwash things and be purposefully misleading to a naive audience. Nice to see this finally starting to change.