Energy Future: Powering Tomorrow’s Cleaner World

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

• Peter Kelly-Detwiler • Episode 41

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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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Energy stories for this the second week of August 2025. In the first one, ford announced they will build a new electric pickup truck built in Kentucky that will sell for about $30,000. Ceo Jim Farley referred to the underlying new construction approach as a quote Model T moment. The platform will initially be used for the truck and then later support other body styles, such as SUVs. Employing an entirely new manufacturing process, the company will use unicasting simple ways of casting larger parts and assemble multiple sections of the vehicle in parallel before uniting them near the end of the assembly line. The truck will include 4,000 fewer feet of wiring who knew we had well over a mile of wiring in our electric vehicles? And a newer lithium-ion phosphate battery that may be structurally integrated into the vehicle's floor. That battery will be smaller than the one in the current Ford Lightning but be engineered to power one's home for up to six days in the case of a power outage. The company also took a swipe at Tesla. In its press release, it commented that this new Ford vehicle will, quote, have a lower cost of ownership over five years than a three-year-old used Tesla Model Y. Ouch Well, if those pickups are going to Hawaii, they may be going on different ships than in the past. Madsen, the shipping company that has been responsible for bringing the majority of EVs to Hawaii's islands, has ceased delivering EVs and plug-in hybrids to the state, citing the risk of battery fires, madsen sent a letter to customers in mid-July informing them the change was effective immediately. In March, a study on maritime EV battery fire hazards was released, noting that such fires on board are nearly impossible to contain, and in June, a cargo ship with 3,000 vehicles on the way to Mexico, of which 70 were fully electric and about 680 were hybrid, caught fire and sank off of Alaska.

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Speaking of Tesla, but not its EVs, the company nailed a huge mega-pack battery order from Georgia Power. Huge mega-pack battery order from Georgia Power, with that utility planning to deploy 3,022 megawatts and 12,088 megawatt-hours of Tesla battery storage packages, priced at a total of $2.7 billion, across eight sites throughout its service territory. The Georgia Public Service Commission still has to approve the deal. That storage addition is estimated to be able to support 2 million homes. For four hours On the distributed battery front in California, on July 29th at 7 pm, thousands of Tesla Powerwalls and Sunrun home batteries jumped into action and began discharging power into the grid as part of an experiment to see if various entities could coordinate distributed batteries as a virtual power plant across the three largest California utilities.

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For two hours, this aggregation discharged 535 megawatts of power to the grid. The batteries were already enrolled in the utility's Emergency Load Reduction Program, the ELRP and Demand Side Grid Support DSGS programs, but this is the first time they'd all been discharged simultaneously. According to Pacific Gas and Electric's press release, this test was just one of many planned. The ELRP program calls for at least 20 hours of battery dispatch annually, while DSGS calls for a minimum of one event per month. So if no real activities or emergencies occur, similar test events will continue.

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Well, nextera Energy recently filed a request with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reclaim interconnection rights that it had transferred from Iowa's shuttered 615-megawatt Duane Arnold nuclear plant to a solar facility. The nuclear plant was taken offline in 2020 for economic reasons, but with a surge in data center demand, it will likely join Michigan's Palisades and Pennsylvania's Three Mile Islands plants in being resuscitated and getting a new life. Nextera stated that rather than build a solar project on the site, it's looking to accelerate recommissioning of Duane Island, which still has all of its fuel there in a dry storage facility. And speaking of nukes, new York State plans to keep its upstate nuclear plants operating for decades, with the Department of Public Service proposing to extend the existing zero emission credit subsidy program for Constellation Energy's four nuclear plants past the current planned date of 2029 for another 20 years. One estimate from an opposition group sees those payments possibly totaling over $30 billion, though state officials put that number at half that sum.

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And finally, the municipal utility in the village of Monroeville, ohio, will soon host one of the largest floating solar installations in the state and country. D3 Energy has started construction on a six-megawatt floating solar array that will cover about 30 acres of water and deliver energy to Monroeville's distribution grid, with Monroeville buying the power through a long-term PPA with project owner Gardner Capital. Floating solar provides other environmental benefits, such as reduced evaporation and improved water quality. The system is expected to be commissioned by early 2026. Quality the system is expected to be commissioned by early 2026. A recent US government study estimated total US potential for so-called floatovoltaics at between 860 and 1,062 megawatts. Well, that's all for this week. Thanks for watching and we'll see you again soon.