They can smooth out the moment- to-
moment spikes and dips in renewable
generation, such as during periods of
heavy winds or passing clouds. They
can facilitate more deliberate finan-
cial arbitrage, collecting energy at
times of lower cost and selling it back
when prices rise. And they can relieve
congestion on the grid by temporarily
holding electrons at pinch points.
Making all that fit together means
transforming Plummer’s vision of a duck-
billed platypus into something more like
a swan. “Storage can meet your local
demand when transmission constrains
you from importing power, but it also
can take extra power and store it,” says
Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton
University. In a study published in Octo-
ber 2020 in the journal Applied Energy,
Jenkins and his co-authors modeled
how the grid might respond to caching
as part of a broader transition to re-
newables. They found that as utilities
deploy more storage, its value declines.
But as variable generation like wind
and solar increases, the batteries’
value increases again, working cheek
to cheek with the daily fluctuations in
production. For companies like Flu-
ence, chasing to replace the hundreds
of peaker plants across the country is
the appetizer. The main course is the
60 percent of our supply produced
by relatively efficient—but still fossil
fuel–powered—turbines. Not Ravens-
wood’s peakers, but Big Allis itself.
“Ravens wood has historically been
a place where one form of energy is
brought in and converted into an-
other form of energy,” says Plummer.
“I would anticipate that our future is
something similar, although it will no
longer be fossil fuels being brought in
and distributed as electricity but rather
connections to large-scale renewables.”
On the ground in Queens, that means
the rusting peakers on their field of
cracked asphalt won’t be around for
long. The disposal trucks are coming
soon, and the batteries will take their
place. Ravens wood isn’t going any-
where, but emissions that poison the
community will be gone forever.
THE SWITCH(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 85)
INSIDE AND OUTBut Triplett, like all Defy Colo-
rado graduates, can’t skip straight to
startup life. First comes a job, and she’s
managed to find herself a good option:
She joined a road-construction crew,
helping close down streets to traffic.
She likes the gig. She gets to be
outside, and it pays $16 per hour—
enough to treat herself to McDonald’s
and pay for the unlimited phone plan
she bumped up to after hitting her
data cap watching movies. She loves
having a phone. There’s a lot online,
and in the physical world, that she
can now explore 14 years earlier than
she ever expected to. Once she’s in-
dependently established, she’ll be
eligible to join Defy Colorado’s busi-
ness incubator, which connects
graduates with the local business and
funding community. Then she’ll beready to pursue her artwork idea.
Someday, when she is allowed out
of state, she wants to travel some-
place like Tennessee, which she’s
heard is pretty. Or maybe Switzer-
land. “I have never been camping,”
she continues. “I want to go. I have
never been fishing. I want to learn. I
like hiking. I like boulder jumping.”
She describes a spot near a place
called Palmer Lake, just north of
Colo rado Springs, and pulls up
pictures she’s downloaded to her
smartphone, taken during the before
times. Not the pre-pandemic years
but her personal before times.
In one photograph, she’s sur-
rounded by rocks, blue sky, open
space. She is smiling, young, glad for
the chance—then as now—to hop
from one obstacle to the next.(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 101)“It’s about range superiority.
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