California's Distributed Battery Network Shows Its Power in Recent Test

The rapidly evolving energy landscape of 2025 is bringing remarkable innovations across multiple sectors, from affordable electric vehicles to creative renewable energy solutions and unexpected comebacks in nuclear power.

Ford's announcement of a $30,000 electric pickup truck represents what CEO Jim Farley calls a "Model T moment" for the company. Using revolutionary manufacturing techniques including unicasting and parallel assembly, this vehicle will contain 4,000 fewer feet of wiring than conventional models. Despite having a smaller battery than the current Lightning, it's engineered to power a home for up to six days during outages – positioning it as both transportation and energy resilience infrastructure. In a competitive jab, Ford claims this new vehicle will have lower five-year ownership costs than a three-year-old Tesla Model Y.

The energy storage revolution continues gaining momentum with Tesla securing a massive $2.7 billion battery order from Georgia Power for 3,022 megawatts of capacity across eight sites. Meanwhile, California successfully demonstrated the power of distributed energy resources when thousands of residential Tesla Powerwalls and Sunrun batteries simultaneously discharged 535 megawatts to the grid during a coordinated two-hour test event. This virtual power plant experiment shows how household batteries can collectively function as significant grid assets.

Perhaps most surprising is nuclear power's unexpected resurgence. NextEra Energy is working to recommission Iowa's Duane Arnold nuclear plant – shut down in 2020 for economic reasons – as surging data center electricity demand creates new economic justification for existing nuclear facilities. In New York, state officials propose extending zero-emission credits for upstate nuclear plants for an additional 20 years beyond 2029, recognizing their value for carbon-free electricity. These developments, alongside innovative projects like Ohio's six-megawatt floating solar array, demonstrate how rapidly our energy systems are transforming to meet the challenges of climate change and growing electricity demand.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Energy stories for this the second week of August
2025.
In the first one, fordannounced they will build a new
electric pickup truck built inKentucky that will sell for
about $30,000.
Ceo Jim Farley referred to theunderlying new construction
approach as a quote Model Tmoment.
The platform will initially beused for the truck and then

(00:20):
later support other body styles,such as SUVs.
Employing an entirely newmanufacturing process, the
company will use unicastingsimple ways of casting larger
parts and assemble multiplesections of the vehicle in
parallel before uniting themnear the end of the assembly
line.
The truck will include 4,000fewer feet of wiring who knew we

(00:41):
had well over a mile of wiringin our electric vehicles?
And a newer lithium-ionphosphate battery that may be
structurally integrated into thevehicle's floor.
That battery will be smallerthan the one in the current Ford
Lightning but be engineered topower one's home for up to six
days in the case of a poweroutage.
The company also took a swipeat Tesla.

(01:01):
In its press release, itcommented that this new Ford
vehicle will, quote, have alower cost of ownership over
five years than a three-year-oldused Tesla Model Y.
Ouch Well, if those pickups aregoing to Hawaii, they may be
going on different ships than inthe past.
Madsen, the shipping companythat has been responsible for

(01:22):
bringing the majority of EVs toHawaii's islands, has ceased
delivering EVs and plug-inhybrids to the state, citing the
risk of battery fires, madsensent a letter to customers in
mid-July informing them thechange was effective immediately
.
In March, a study on maritimeEV battery fire hazards was
released, noting that such fireson board are nearly impossible

(01:44):
to contain, and in June, a cargoship with 3,000 vehicles on the
way to Mexico, of which 70 werefully electric and about 680
were hybrid, caught fire andsank off of Alaska.
Speaking of Tesla, but not itsEVs, the company nailed a huge
mega-pack battery order fromGeorgia Power.
Huge mega-pack battery orderfrom Georgia Power, with that

(02:08):
utility planning to deploy 3,022megawatts and 12,088
megawatt-hours of Tesla batterystorage packages, priced at a
total of $2.7 billion, acrosseight sites throughout its
service territory.
The Georgia Public ServiceCommission still has to approve
the deal.
That storage addition isestimated to be able to support
2 million homes.
For four hours On thedistributed battery front in

(02:28):
California, on July 29th at 7 pm, thousands of Tesla Powerwalls
and Sunrun home batteries jumpedinto action and began
discharging power into the gridas part of an experiment to see
if various entities couldcoordinate distributed batteries
as a virtual power plant acrossthe three largest California
utilities.
For two hours, this aggregationdischarged 535 megawatts of

(02:50):
power to the grid.
The batteries were alreadyenrolled in the utility's
Emergency Load Reduction Program, the ELRP and Demand Side Grid
Support DSGS programs, but thisis the first time they'd all
been discharged simultaneously.
According to Pacific Gas andElectric's press release, this
test was just one of manyplanned.
The ELRP program calls for atleast 20 hours of battery

(03:18):
dispatch annually, while DSGScalls for a minimum of one event
per month.
So if no real activities oremergencies occur, similar test
events will continue.
Well, nextera Energy recentlyfiled a request with the US
Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission to reclaim
interconnection rights that ithad transferred from Iowa's
shuttered 615-megawatt DuaneArnold nuclear plant to a solar

(03:38):
facility.
The nuclear plant was takenoffline in 2020 for economic
reasons, but with a surge indata center demand, it will
likely join Michigan's Palisadesand Pennsylvania's Three Mile
Islands plants in beingresuscitated and getting a new
life.
Nextera stated that rather thanbuild a solar project on the
site, it's looking to acceleraterecommissioning of Duane Island

(04:00):
, which still has all of itsfuel there in a dry storage
facility.
And speaking of nukes, new YorkState plans to keep its upstate
nuclear plants operating fordecades, with the Department of
Public Service proposing toextend the existing zero
emission credit subsidy programfor Constellation Energy's four
nuclear plants past the currentplanned date of 2029 for another

(04:22):
20 years.
One estimate from an oppositiongroup sees those payments
possibly totaling over $30billion, though state officials
put that number at half that sum.
And finally, the municipalutility in the village of
Monroeville, ohio, will soonhost one of the largest floating
solar installations in thestate and country.

(04:42):
D3 Energy has startedconstruction on a six-megawatt
floating solar array that willcover about 30 acres of water
and deliver energy toMonroeville's distribution grid,
with Monroeville buying thepower through a long-term PPA
with project owner GardnerCapital.
Floating solar provides otherenvironmental benefits, such as
reduced evaporation and improvedwater quality.

(05:04):
The system is expected to becommissioned by early 2026.
Quality the system is expectedto be commissioned by early 2026
.
A recent US government studyestimated total US potential for
so-called floatovoltaics atbetween 860 and 1,062 megawatts.
Well, that's all for this week.
Thanks for watching and we'llsee you again soon.