How the pieces fit
Solar makes low-cost energy in daylight. Gas fills in at night and on cloudy days. Batteries smooth the handover. Together they can serve a large load around the clock, with or without a grid connection.
What the site needs
- Enough flat, buildable land for the solar field, which is the largest land user.
- A good solar resource.
- A gas pipeline nearby that can deliver fuel, and an air permit.
- A transmission line or substation within reach if the site will also use the grid.
Few parcels meet all of these at once, which is why hybrid siting starts with a wide screen.
Questions people ask
Why not use solar and batteries alone?
Some projects do. Covering every hour of the year with only solar and batteries takes a lot of land and storage, so many designs keep gas for the long gaps.
Does a hybrid project still need the grid?
Many keep a grid connection for backup or to sell spare power. That connection goes through the normal studies.
Related
More glossary
- What is time to power?
- What is powered land?
- What is a powered shell?
- What is large load interconnection?
- What is a point of interconnection?
- What is an interconnection queue?
- What is queue position?
- What is ERCOT?
Need a site, or have one?
Tell us what you need and Voltane finds, reports on and prices candidate sites in ERCOT. Or bring a site you already have for a path-to-power report (by request for now).