Utility PG&E finalized its contract with a battery project slated to displace a jet-fuel-burning power plant in downtown Oakland, California. The Oakland Clean Energy Initiative models a pathway for removing decades-old power plants in dense urban settings while keeping the lights on with new lithium-ion batteries. But the project’s collaborative business model also makes it potentially groundbreaking […]
In California, it’s not just vulnerable families and critical services that could use battery-backed solar systems to ride through wildfire-prevention power outages. Farms also have critical energy needs, like pumping water to crops on set schedules, or chilling them after harvest, that could face significant disruption under the state’s new wildfire prevention regime. CalCom Energy, a long-time solar and […]
State regulators have proposed a major set of responses to what could be a looming grid reliability shortfall in Southern California, including a 2.5-gigawatt reliability resources procurement between 2021 and 2023. Although the proposed ‘all-source’ procurement would allow existing natural gas-fired peaker plants to compete, it could also open a massive new market for renewable […]
San Francisco has made a $2.5 billion offer to buy Pacific Gas & Electric’s grid assets within its city limits, the most concrete step yet from cities, counties and public agencies served by the bankrupt Northern California utility to lay claim to their portions of its power grid. Friday’s offer came in a letter from Mayor […]
Early last year, California utility San Diego Gas & Electric launched a community microgrid project, meant not only to boost the state’s adoption of energy storage, but to serve as the next step in its wildfire prevention efforts — an increasingly important part of the utility mission in a state ravaged by wildfires. But in recent […]
Canadian Solar subsidiary Recurrent Energy has sold its remaining equity stake in the 100-megawatt Mustang solar project, a key resource for California’s flagship community-choice aggregators, to the Renewable Power Group of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Thursday’s deal completes Recurrent’s sale of equity stakes in the 973 megawatts of solar it brought online in 2016 in California. Financial […]
The community-choice aggregators disrupting California’s electricity market have come a long way in a short time, and the credit rating agencies are taking notice. Peninsula Clean Energy, which procures electricity for around 300,000 accounts in the San Francisco Bay Area, obtained an investment-grade credit rating this week from Moody’s, along with a stable outlook. It’s the […]
What started as a routine gas plant procurement ended as a testament to the changing electrical grid. This week, utility Southern California Edison selected a roster of energy storage projects to supply local capacity needs around the coastal city of Oxnard, instead of the 262-megawatt natural-gas peaker plant it had chosen previously. If regulators give their approval, […]
The California Public Utilities Commission has approved two sweeping programs in recent years to spur community solar construction in the state, but the market has yet to gain real traction. Solar developers are now scrambling to organize projects as these programs advance and new opportunities crop up. “There is not a community solar market yet, but […]
The U.S. Department of Energy’s innovation arm wants to disrupt floating offshore wind turbine technology. On February 1, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced it was making available $28 million in funding for research projects to develop new technologies for floating offshore wind turbines. The funding opportunity falls under a new ARPA-E program called ATLANTIS (Aerodynamic Turbines, Lighter […]