Darian Woods

This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed and edited by Marianne McCune and Mary Childs. Alex Goldbach is our executive producer. I'm Darian Woods.

Let me grab my hard hat back there on. Yeah.

Let me grab my hard hat back there on. Yeah.

Let me grab my hard hat back there on. Yeah.

Justin told me how this all works. There's excess solar in the middle of the day, so the power price can be low. So we can take the extra solar that's produced in the day from the arrays and store it for use later in the evening when it's needed most, when the sun is going down.

Justin told me how this all works. There's excess solar in the middle of the day, so the power price can be low. So we can take the extra solar that's produced in the day from the arrays and store it for use later in the evening when it's needed most, when the sun is going down.

Justin told me how this all works. There's excess solar in the middle of the day, so the power price can be low. So we can take the extra solar that's produced in the day from the arrays and store it for use later in the evening when it's needed most, when the sun is going down.

It's such a big facility. There's so much power generated that... It's hard to find one buyer to take it all, so we ended up splitting the output to two different buyers of electricity.

It's such a big facility. There's so much power generated that... It's hard to find one buyer to take it all, so we ended up splitting the output to two different buyers of electricity.

It's such a big facility. There's so much power generated that... It's hard to find one buyer to take it all, so we ended up splitting the output to two different buyers of electricity.

Yeah, this power is kind of... I mean, an electron's an electron. It's hard to tell where it actually came from once it hits a transmission line, but...

Yeah, this power is kind of... I mean, an electron's an electron. It's hard to tell where it actually came from once it hits a transmission line, but...

Yeah, this power is kind of... I mean, an electron's an electron. It's hard to tell where it actually came from once it hits a transmission line, but...

Right. So like all the scale and advancements that went in the manufacturing to make it to bring the scale up. And then to drive the cost down, just weren't there yet to do it economically.

Right. So like all the scale and advancements that went in the manufacturing to make it to bring the scale up. And then to drive the cost down, just weren't there yet to do it economically.

Right. So like all the scale and advancements that went in the manufacturing to make it to bring the scale up. And then to drive the cost down, just weren't there yet to do it economically.

So we're at that really nice intersection where the technology's improved enough, the cost has come down at that intersection where you're meeting the demand at the price they need to be successful, where it allows us to build these sorts of plants to serve that need.

So we're at that really nice intersection where the technology's improved enough, the cost has come down at that intersection where you're meeting the demand at the price they need to be successful, where it allows us to build these sorts of plants to serve that need.

So we're at that really nice intersection where the technology's improved enough, the cost has come down at that intersection where you're meeting the demand at the price they need to be successful, where it allows us to build these sorts of plants to serve that need.

Yeah, so that was one of the big knock on renewables, always has been, it's intermittent. But that hurt us financially as well because we were paid less for our power because we were intermittent. So when you pair storage with solar, now the people we sell power to, it's more valuable to them because we can provide them power when they want it most.