Advanced Energy Perspectives

Californians are grappling with recurring power shut-offs, wildfires, poor air quality, heat waves, and rising energy costs. These combined challenges are straining the electricity system as well as Californians’ finances, so much so that 55% of Californians say their monthly energy bill is a significant concern. To prepare our energy system and protect communities from worsening climate impacts, California must continue to make a rapid transition to clean electricity. But the way California supports solar, its leading clean energy resource, is about to change. If not done correctly, this change could threaten the state’s ability to meet its clean energy goals, and leave our electric power system more vulnerable than ever. 

California’s legislative session drew to a close on September 10 this year, uncharacteristically early, and with less fanfare than in years past. In many ways, the session started off like a sequel to the one prior, with economic recovery, energy reliability, and wildfire severity all top of mind. But rather than a sprint, with a crowded field rushing to the tape, the 2021 legislative session was more like a marathon, with fits, starts, and a finish line stretching an additional week, when the tally for the September 14  gubernatorial recall election was finished. The implications of this consequential recall campaign – including raised stakes for the state’s clean energy ambitions – reverberated throughout the Capitol and, in some cases, had a chilling effect on political appetites. But in the end, the advanced energy industry gained major breakthroughs on electric transportation, with some unfinished business, as wildfire concerns dominated the conversation on reliability and resilience. 

Record-breaking heat waves and drought in the western U.S. are threatening the reliability of electric power, as electricity use is up and hydropower and energy imports from neighboring states are down. In California, Flex Alerts – asking consumers to conserve energy to relieve grid stress – are becoming a regular occurrence. And these weather patterns are no longer unusual: “This is really the new normal,” AEE policy director Leah Rubin Shen recently told Fox 40 of Sacramento. “These weather events are becoming more and more common and more and more frequent.” The energy crisis that results points to the need for a regional transmission organization (RTO) in the west, connected with a more expansive transmission network, to move power – especially renewable energy – where it’s needed, when it’s needed, at lowest cost.

When most people think about electric cars and California, they think about Tesla. The buzzy automaker was the first all-electric vehicle (EV) company to reach mass production. Having grown significantly over the past decade, the company now employs over 30,000 workers in California between the solar-storage-EV company’s corporate headquarters in Palo Alto and EV assembly factory in Fremont. But there’s a quieter yet equally important story of EV industry growth unfolding in nearly every corner of the state.

For years, large companies in California have been calling for expansion of Direct Access (DA), California’s limited retail choice program for commercial and industrial customers. Retail choice allows customers to shop around, rather than relying on their local electric utility. It also allows large customers to meet sustainability commitments by procuring more renewable energy than the utility provides. Such corporate purchases have driven development of renewable energy in markets that allow retail competition, and for that reason AEE and the Advanced Energy Buyers Group have jointly supported the expansion of DA in California. That expansion could be coming, if recommendations contained in a California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) report on extending DA to all nonresidential customers are acted upon by the California Legislature. But the expansion is more likely to happen – and happen faster – if some misplaced worries in the CPUC report were put to rest.