People are wrongly assuming that these battery storages are to power the state by themselves in the case of a blackout .
They are there to smooth or stabilize the grid because of intermittent output from renewables . They are also to be used as peaking plants where sometimes they will only be needed for seconds or a few minutes .
In the event of a loss of a power source , maybe a few wind turbines together , they will prevent a load shock . This means that they wil buy a bit of time for the larger cfps to catch up .
We still need and always will need power generation one way or another . Batteries will mean we don't have to build oversized generation capacity for one off events and will provide smoothing from intermittent supplies ( wind ) or from load spikes .
Battery technology is changing fast . It's quite likely that flow batteries will replace these lithium battery banks as they are probably better suited to large sized installations and will also have a longer life .
Pumped storage or increased hydro will also provide the same service .
