California needs a newer, smarter approach to power
The blackouts that rolled through California in August were the direct result of what happens when we plan based on wishful thinking and not science. Our planning and policies did not hold up to a real-world challenge and millions of Californians lost power during the hottest days of summer.
As our state’s energy regulators and leaders plan for how to prevent blackouts in the future, our top priority should be to plan for a warming planet and more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods. We need to stop planning for normal and plan for notnormal.
To this end, the California Public Utilities Commission should issue an emergency order changing reliability standards to reflect the impact of more extreme weather on our power system. Doing so will likely increase the need for electrical capacity, meaning we will need more energy storage and more imports, and extending the life of, or replacing, soon-to-be-retired coastal plants.
A second emergency order should call for the immediate procurement of any needed capacity, including storage. This should include the procurement of uncontracted existing capacity in the West and new resources to replace fossil fuel plants and retiring generation.
Environmentalists may take issue with this idea since it could require additional fossil fuel generation in the short term. As a former chair of Cal ISO, the independent operator of California’s electrical grid, and as a former utility executive and mayor, I am a strong advocate for reducing fossil fuels. But we can’t ignore reality. If we do, it will mean more blackouts and more justifiable anger from consumers. If new, gas-fired power plants are needed, they would be efficient and run for only a few hours a year to meet peak load events. That means they would also generate relatively few emissions.
A sound energy policy necessarily requires a rapid increase in energy storage. In order to take advantage of the enormous quantities of solar energy generated in California, we need storage systems that bank this energy for the early and mid-evening hours when power demand is greatest. We currently pay other states to take this excess power off our hands or we just throw it away.
We are moving to increase battery storage, but we need to do more. We also need to look at other types of storage, particularly large-scale systems with longer discharge times that will meet unanticipated system needs such as extended weather events such as the heatwaves we experienced in August. We would be foolish to focus all our efforts on any one technology.
Another priority calls for significantly increasing demand response programs and the financial incentives for businesses to conserve and shift energy use. Moving electricity usage away from peak times to prevent blackouts has real monetary value. We need to accurately price these demand response programs to reflect their economic value. Only then can demand response truly take hold and have a meaningful impact.
Finally, we need to plan today — not tomorrow or next year — for the 2025 retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Additional generation or long-duration storage will be needed to replace the 2,200 megawatts of energy we will lose when Diablo Canyon is retired. The CPUC needs to take urgent procurement action to ensure that replacement capacity arrives in time.
As a state, we must take a realistic look at how we plan for future electrical demand and how we procure capacity to meet this demand. This starts with establishing planning and procurement criteria that reflect realworld issues and are grounded in the physics of our electric energy system, rather than starting with a conclusion and working backward. Failure to take such an approach will set back California’s efforts to create a future based on renewable energy. This future is attainable if we plan for it in the right way.