California battery storage increasing rapidly, but not enough to end blackouts, Gov. Newsom says

Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned on April 25 that California continued to quickly add the battery storage that’s essential to the transition to cleaner power, however admitted it was nonetheless not sufficient to keep away from blackouts throughout warmth waves.

Standing in the midst of a photo voltaic farm in Yolo County, Newsom introduced the state now had battery storage programs with the capability of greater than 10,000 megawatts—about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is required to satisfy its local weather objectives.

“That is essential to how we obtain 100% clean energy by 2045,” Newsom mentioned. “Batteries permit us to make use of clear power captured by photo voltaic and different renewable sources always of the day, particularly when photo voltaic era drops after the solar goes down.”

The final word aim, he mentioned, is to sluggish local weather change.

“As the hots get hotter, the drys get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts, and rain bombs, we have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us and we’re doing just that in California,” he mentioned.

Requested by reporters if California now had sufficient battery storage in order that residents not needed to fear about blackouts throughout occasions of excessive energy use, Newsom laughed.

“We have a lot of work to do still in moving this transition, with the kind of stability that’s required,” the governor mentioned. “So no, this is not today announcing that blackouts are part of our past.”

Battery storage installations work by receiving extra photo voltaic and wind power and releasing it later, particularly from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. when the state’s grid is most beneath stress.

Final 12 months, Newsom appointees voted to increase the operation of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant one other 5 years to bolster the reliability of Calfornia’s grid and keep away from rolling blackouts. The growing older nuclear facility and its twin reactors had been scheduled to close down.

In August 2020, a significant warmth occasion fueled by the local weather disaster pressured a number of the state’s first rotating power outages in many years, as the continuing transition to inexperienced power lagged behind demand. Californians narrowly prevented rolling blackouts in 2022 as a record-breaking warmth wave broiled nearly each nook of the state for days.

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