IS CALIFORNIA MOVING TOO FAST TO TRANSFORM THE STATE POWER GRID?

Energy commission head says reliability is a ‘100% solvable problem’

Managers of California’s electric grid earlier this month issued 10 straight days of Flex Alerts, asking energy users throughout the state to reduce their consumption during the late afternoon and evening hours, to keep the power system from buckling under a relentless heat wave.

And on Sept. 6, the California Independent System Operator — which manages about 80 percent of the electric grid in the state — just barely avoided ordering rolling blackouts.

But the chair of the California Energy Commission, in San Diego on Wednesday for a climate and energy forum in San Diego, said state policymakers remain firmly committed to transitioning to a carbon-free grid.

“The reason that we’re in this situation is because of climate change, so we should not forget that’s the most important thing, and when you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging,” said David Hochschild. “We have got to transition away from polluting technologies towards clean energy and the state is not just committed to continuing, we’re committed to accelerating.”

The heat wave that blanketed California also broiled neighboring states, straining power supplies. Demand on the California ISO system peaked on Sept. 6 at 52,061 megawatts, breaking the old record of 50,270 megawatts set in July 2006 when California’s grid looked very different.

Supplies got so tight that millions of cellphone users in San Diego and the rest of the state received an emergency alert from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services at 5:45 p.m., telling residents: “Power interruptions may occur unless you take action. Turn off or reduce nonessential power if health allows,

now until 9 p.m.”

The appeal worked. ISO officials estimated more than 2,000 precious megawatts were reduced in the space of 20 to 30 minutes, enough to maintain reserve margins and help prevent the grid manager from ordering utilities across the state such as San Diego Gas & Electric to “shed load” — grid-speak for shutting power in some areas until margins were restored.

“I think we’re seeing the onset of what (is) now a new normal of heat and volatility and uncertainty in the system,” ISO President Elliot Mainzer said in a media briefing two days later.

California’s grid has added about 8,000 megawatts of clean energy capacity in recent years. As per directives from the California Public Utilities Commission, the grid has integrated almost 4,000 megawatts of energy storage batteries onto the system — up from only about 200 megawatts two years ago.

But California still relies on natural gas — a fossil fuel — to keep the system operating, especially when solar production vanishes when the sun goes down each day.

During the heat wave, the ISO used natural gas for as much as 60 percent of its generation mix to meet electricity demand, and the share of natural gas never dipped below 30 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The 10 straight days of Flex Alerts in which the ISO asked homeowners and businesses to voluntarily reduce consumption for five hours — and on a few days, the request extended to seven hours — prompted some critics to say the state’s ambitious targets are outpacing practical realities.

“This is clear proof that California has moved too far, too fast,” said Robert Bryce, author of several books on energy and power supply systems. “The electric grid and the state can’t handle the demands that are being put on it.”

At the same time the heat wave moved in, the Legislature in Sacramento complied with Gov. Gavin Newsom and passed an emergency bill during the final moments of the session that reversed the planned shutdown of the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant. Rather than closing in 2024 and 2025, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo will run up to five additional years.

Newsom lobbied for the extension, saying the 2,200 megawatts that Diablo supplies to the state’s grid are still necessary to ensure system reliability.

Assemblymember Jim Patterson, R-fresno, supported the bill but during floor debate, said Diablo’s extension is part of a larger issue.

“This is about running our grid on wind, solar and batteries,” Patterson said on the Assembly floor. “But the physics of electron production, the science of creating electricity is warring against our reckless approach to electricity production.”

A similar heat wave in August 2020 resulted in California’s first wave of rolling blackouts in 20 years, with outages lasting about 3½ hours and affecting about 500,000 customers across the state. In 2021, the state’s grid was again pushed to its limits due to hot weather and a major transmission line in the Pacific Northwest going out of service because of a massive fire in Oregon that interrupted electricity deliveries to California.

Energy mandates

California policymakers have pledged to derive 100 percent of its electricity from renewable and carbon-free energy sources by 2045. Last week, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1020 that not only enshrined the 2045 target but also accelerated the mandate to achieve 90 percent of electricity from carbon-free sources by 2035 and 95 percent by 2040.

In addition to renewable sources, the percentages also include megawatts from large hydropower plants and nuclear power from Diablo Canyon.

Newsom in 2020 signed an executive order banning the sale of new internalcombustion engine vehicles in California by 2035. Last month the California Air Resources Board set specific deadlines, requiring at least 35 percent of model year 2026 passenger cars and trucks sold in California to be electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The numbers ramp up each year, going to 68 percent in 2030 and 100 percent by 2035.

Just days later, the heat wave settled over the state and the ISO issued its string of Flex Alerts. For the first time, the grid manager called on owners of electric vehicles to refrain from charging their cars during that time.

As California relies on greater amounts of electrification to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, peak load on the system is expected to go as high as 78,500 megawatts by 2045. That’s a 50.8 percent increase compared to Sept. 6’s all-time high for demand of 52,061 megawatts.

Can the state’s grid handle that much extra capacity?

Energy commission chair Hochschild says it can and will happen.

“I think electric reliability is a 100 percent solvable problem,” he said. “There’s nothing about this challenge that we can’t overcome. It’s a matter of getting more capacity online.”

Hochschild said California officials are looking at a diversity of preferred resources — solar, wind, geothermal and developments in battery storage that, rather than running for four hours, can run up to eight hours or even up to 100 hours. The state is investing $380 million into long-duration storage.

The energy commission anticipates the development of offshore wind in Central and Northern California can deliver up to 25,000 megawatts by 2045, which is enough electricity to power 25 million homes by mid-century.

Policymakers are also looking to develop ways to enhance demand-response — that is, curbing energy use — by compensating utility customers for reducing their electricity during Flex Alerts.

“It’s not a silver bullet solution. It’s really a silver buckshot solution,” Hochschild said. “But it’s totally solvable. I wouldn’t lose sleep over whether we can supply electricity. All of the solutions are there. It’s really just a matter of getting it built out.”

Other questions

Earlier this week, a large Tesla battery pack at a Pacific Gas & Electric energy storage facility near Monterey caught fire. Residents nearby were advised to shelter in place and keep windows and ventilation systems closed due to concerns about emissions from the fire. The California Highway Patrol also temporarily closed a section of Highway 1.

The 182.5-megawatt Tesla Megapack system burned for hours before firefighters declared the area fully controlled. A separate battery storage site at the same Moss Landing location has experienced at least two incidents of overheating in the past year.

The state’s clean energy policies have also raised questions about their impacts on utility customers’ bills. Californians already pay among the highest prices per kilowatt-hour in the country.

If it’s much consolation, the price in Hawaii (44.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in July and 45.7 in August) recently surpassed San Diego (40.9 cents for both months) for the nation’s highest, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Electricity prices in California have gone up five times faster than electric rates in the rest of the continental U.S.,” Bryce said. “This is all terrible for the poor in the middle class ... The state has painted itself into a corner, and it’s clear that they are going to have to either relax or delay some of these mandates.”

On Sept. 6, when demand hit record levels, human error led to accidental power outages in four communities in Northern California.

The California ISO that evening issued a stage 3 Energy Emergency Alert, a measure that warns energy users that rotating outages may be imminent. But a dispatcher at a power agency serving some municipal utilities misinterpreted a message from the ISO, thinking it was an order to shed load, and cut off power to a few thousand residents in Lodi, Alameda, Healdsburg and Palo Alto.

Power was restored within 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the community.

“These are situations that obviously happen very infrequently and there was a lot happening on the grid for everybody” on the night of Sept. 6, ISO president Mainzer said on a media call. “So we’ll double-down on the communication to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

There have been 11 Flex Alerts so far this year, the highest number since 2006. Last year, eight Flex Alerts were issued.

RICH PEDRONCELLI AP During the heat wave, the California Independent System Operator used natural gas for as much as 60 percent of its generation mix to meet electricity demand.