Suitcase-Sized

Two items sat next to each other this morning and I kept comparing them. EDF says the fossil generation pipeline is rebounding while new clean generation slows, and then, almost in passing, that rising turbine costs and supply shortages are making new gas plants more expensive and slower to build. So the pipeline is full, and a lot of it is waiting on machines nobody can deliver quickly.

Meanwhile Wonder, the food platform with 160 locations in the Northeast, put suitcase-sized plug-in batteries into 21 of its New York sites six months ago and says it has saved about $20,000. Call it a thousand dollars a site. The batteries cost Wonder nothing. David Energy supplied them and earns its money on supplier margin plus a share of the demand-response payments the batteries collect.

Nothing about this is exciting, and I think that’s the point. No interconnection study, no turbine slot, no hearing. Someone wheels a box in. Wonder’s executive said his number one goal was to shave the peaks off the bill, and he sounds like a man who would have tried a hamster wheel if it worked.

To be fair, $20,000 is a rounding error next to a 1.8-GW data center, and “free” is doing some work there, since the demand-response money comes out of the same system everyone else pays into. But look at the unit of deployment. A turbine is a multi-year bet on one manufacturer’s backlog. Twenty-one suitcases is twenty-one small decisions, each reversible, none needing anyone’s permission.

PG&E is warning of more shutoffs through Saturday, and I caught myself wondering how many suitcases that would take. Wrong question, probably. They’re built for bills, not blackouts.