Prime US Official Does not Know About Battery Storage – Cue The Laughter :)

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Earlier this month US Secretary of the Inside Doug Burgum testified with little or no background information about photo voltaic programs — but that didn’t cease him from denigrating them. “All of those initiatives you’re describing in Nevada have one factor in widespread,” Burgum sneered. “When the solar goes down, they produce zero electrical energy.”

With that comment, Burgum didn’t acknowledge photo voltaic’s vital companion: battery storage. Giggles and guffaws rumbled by means of the Pure Assets Committee listening to.

Consultant Jared Huffman (D- CA) replied to Burgum with a primer on battery storage options. As an example his case, Huffman submitted a bodily battery into the document. “Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter within the document this wonderful new expertise that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery,” Huffman defined, tongue-in-cheek. “China’s figured it out. That’s why they’re cleansing our clock on clear vitality. However I wish to enter that into the document.”

The show-and-tell did far more than make a clown out of Burgum: it emphasised how far aside public notion is from photo voltaic’s precise on a regular basis practicality. The change would have been enjoyable if the necessity for photo voltaic weren’t so crucial for US vitality independence. It was one in a sequence of coverage divides which have emerged because the US makes an attempt to reconcile its huge vitality wants with the Trump administration’s insistence that Fossil Fuels Are All.

You bear in mind Burgum, proper? This is identical Secretary of the Inside who lower the Nationwide Park Companies. He led the God Squad to weaken the Endangered Species Act. He’s the man that Consultant Susie Lee of Nevada grilled about how his insurance policies have “created a complete allowing mess” in her sunny residence state.

He doesn’t care. The previous North Dakota Governor has been linked to the oil and fuel business for a really very long time. Like his boss, he sneers at clear vitality and has by no means contradicted Trump’s statements that dismiss renewables.

“We don’t need wind, and we don’t need photo voltaic as a result of they’re a blight on our nation,” Trump has stated. “They harm our nation very badly, and sensible nations don’t use it.”

Burgum and different key gamers within the Administration appear to have missed out on the truth that battery storage is now a core factor of latest grids the world over. Battery storage expertise just isn’t novel or new to the vitality scene. Collectively, photo voltaic and storage are a particular form of battery.

Burgum’s testimony was supposed to direct the Pure Assets Committee inquiry away from photo voltaic price — which is dropping yearly — to reliability. That pathway would have made it simpler for him to defend the Administration’s arguments for fossil gas pursuits. Each relished the signing of the One Large Lovely Invoice Act on July 4, 2025 that successfully resets the vitality coverage taking part in subject to a time of fossil fuels dominance.

By failing to debate battery storage, Burgum was in a position to block out value differentiation between renewable and legacy fuels. He didn’t wish to talk about how grids are actually broadly deploying solar-plus-battery programs. He had hoped past any formidable expectation to keep away from the point out of local weather change, low western snowpack in 2026, and the chance of wildfires.

Did he even know that battery storage is crucial throughout peak vitality occasions like summer time blackouts?

Reliability isn’t an Subject When Photo voltaic is Accompanied by Battery Storage

One of many greatest myths about photo voltaic is that it isn’t dependable as a result of the solar solely shines throughout the daytime. Most individuals are blissfully unaware that, whereas the solar is shining, plenty of the electrical energy that’s generated is saved in batteries. It’s known as time shifting — photo voltaic installations can generate electrical energy at 1 pm, for instance, and use it at 8 pm after the solar units.

Battery storage is a typical technique to retailer extra solar energy generated throughout the day for nighttime use.  Moveable and grid-scale storage, as reported in vitality expertise protection, is already a mainstay in resilience planning. There are even neighborhood or neighborhood batteries that can be utilized to offer advantages to folks dwelling in a small space who don’t have their very own residence batteries.

When excessive climate threatens US residents, photo voltaic and battery storage can provide peace of thoughts. The mix has been in a position to keep vitality entry throughout warmth waves, devastating storms, and frigid winter circumstances. On the identical time that energy strains fall or fuel vegetation freeze, distributed photo voltaic and vitality storage is powerful and steady, providing reliability and security in probably the most tough conditions.

Plus, there are such a lot of new, big batteries which might be being built-in into the grid! By 2030, end-of-life batteries may provide greater than 50% of all the vitality storage market.

Batteries are already changing fossil fuels in autos and energy stations. Now they’re starting to drag obligation within the sticky world of hard-to-decarbonize industrial and industrial purposes. “As a lot as numerous excessive rating officers within the Trump administration wish to faux that vitality storage just isn’t a factor current in time and area,” CleanTechnica author Tina Casey explains, “it does.”

Jake Richardson, one other of our CleanTechnica writers, sums up the advantage of photo voltaic and battery storage.

“What makes these solar energy and vitality storage initiatives attainable now could be how a lot the prices of each photo voltaic panels and batteries have decreased within the final ten or eleven years. Once more, they price much less and could be put in a lot quicker than new fossil gas energy vegetation, and, in fact, they don’t generate poisonous air air pollution that harms the planet and human well being.”

Media messaging concerning the Burgum fake pas signified how far aside partisan politics and generally held renewable vitality practices are right this moment. But they don’t should be disparate. The normal mannequin for a way electrical energy is created and distributed was created within the nineteenth century. That mannequin is quickly changing into out of date. As CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley exclaims, “There’s a shiny new day coming, and we will’t look ahead to it to reach!”

As you possibly can inform, we’re very fascinated by photo voltaic vitality right here at CleanTechnica. In truth, during the last 12 months we requested readers to reply a sequence of survey questions; their responses turned the inspiration for a newly launched report, which is now accessible for buy. Click on by means of and be taught extra about photo voltaic and shopper perceptions about dwelling with this renewable vitality supply.

Assets

“ICYMI: Congresswoman Lee grills Trump Inside Secretary on try and kill Photo voltaic in Nevada.” Congresswoman Susie Lee. Might 18, 2026.