Honestly at this point it is usually the Europeans that need this (I have been asked if Chile has good tacos from a European). At least in my experience, most USians (in spanish Americans means everyone in the hemisphere) now know more about South America than the average European.
This is not true. Batteries are cheaper than peaker power plants using fossil fuel. They also allow the operator to fulfill market demands at the minute level versus the hours previously that it took to turn on a peaker plant.
This is being done at scale in California and Texas.
Fore more than 2 hours capacity, batteries are expensive than most other and cost keeps increasing as more hours of capacity needed. Without gas or coal to burn when 1hr battery capacity runs out, battery storage is expensive.
It's simple power vs energy equations. Let's say you need to supply steady 1MW to town for 1hr, 2hr or 10hr. This needs total of 1MWh 2Mwh or 10Mwh respectively. Let's say battery would cost $200/kwh, then this would cost 200k, 400k or 2M resp. Battery storage is generally used for less than 2hr duration currently where they are price competitive. For the rest, either gas peaker, coal or hydro is used.
This is the exact scenario they are being used in at scale. The company removes their gas peaker plant infrastructure and replaces them with batteries. Already have the grid interconnect and now can dispatch power on the millisecond level instead of hour level.
My solar panels amaze me every day. It is just crazy that a flat panel, that doesn't have any moving parts, and requires a once a year cleaning (at most), just eliminated my power bill completely.
