For many years, rolling blackouts and pressing requires power conservation have been a part of life in California — a reluctant summer time ritual nearly as dependable as the warmth waves that drove them. However the state has undergone a quiet shift lately, and the California Unbiased System Operator hasn’t issued a single a type of emergency pleas, often known as Flex Alerts, since 2022.
Consultants and officers say the Golden State has reached a turning level, reflecting years of funding in making its electrical grid stronger, cleaner and extra reliable. A lot of that’s new battery power storage, which captures and shops electrical energy for later use.
The truth is, batteries have been transformative for California, state officers say. In late afternoon, when the solar stops hitting photo voltaic panels and individuals are dwelling utilizing electrical energy, batteries now push saved photo voltaic power onto the grid.
California has invested closely within the expertise, serving to it mature and get cheaper lately. Battery storage within the state has grown greater than 3,000% in six years — from 500 megawatts in 2020 to greater than 15,700 megawatts right now.
“There isn’t a query that the battery fleet that has grown quickly since 2020, together with the state’s increasing portfolio of different provide and demand-side assets, has been an actual sport changer for reliability throughout summer time durations of peak demand,” stated Elliot Mainzer, CAISO’s president and chief government.
It was solely 5 years in the past {that a} record-shattering warmth wave pushed the grid to its restrict and plunged a lot of the state into darkness. Within the wake of that occasion, California’s power leaders vowed to take motion to make the grid extra resilient.
Since then, CAISO has overseen an enormous build-out of latest power and storage assets, together with greater than 26,000 megawatts of latest capability general, which has additionally helped make the grid extra steady, Mainzer stated. The state hasn’t seen rolling blackouts since 2020.
“Excessive climate occasions, wildfires and different emergencies can pose reliability challenges for any bulk electrical system,” he stated. “However the CAISO battery fleet, together with the extra capability and shut coordination with state and regional companions, have offered an indeniable profit to reliability.”
Batteries at the moment are key to California’s local weather targets, together with its mandate of 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.
Photo voltaic panels and battery storage models on the Eland Photo voltaic and Storage Middle within the Mojave Desert of Kern County on Nov. 25, 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Occasions)
Already, batteries have enabled the grid to function with dramatic decreases in the usage of planet-warming fossil fuels. Now they’re changing into a more cost effective and dependable substitute for growing older gas-fired energy crops, in keeping with Maia Leroy, founding father of the California power consulting agency Lumenergy LLC and co-author of a latest report on the rise of battery storage over fuel technology in California.
“Traditionally, Flex Alerts have all the time come by in summertime when it’s tremendous scorching and everyone seems to be cranking their AC,” Leroy stated. “But additionally within the summertime, we’re seeing that fuel crops underperform as a result of combustion doesn’t work effectively with ambient warmth. So once we’re capable of shift that want from having to make use of fuel crops to one thing extra steady, dispatchable and versatile like battery storage, then we’re capable of meet that demand in the summertime with out having to depend on these underperforming fuel crops.”
Battery power storage is just not with out challenges, nevertheless. Lithium-ion batteries — the commonest sort used for power storage — sometimes have about 4 to 6 hours of capability. It’s sufficient to help the grid throughout peak hours because the solar units, however can nonetheless depart some gaps to be stuffed by pure fuel.
Nikhil Kumar, program director with the power coverage nonprofit GridLab, stated the expertise already exists for longer-duration batteries, together with by completely different chemistries corresponding to iron-air batteries, which launch power by oxidation, and circulation batteries, which retailer power in liquid chemical compounds that circulation by a reactor.
These batteries usually are not but as mature and could be dearer and bigger than their lithium-ion counterparts, Kumar stated. However a latest GridLab report signifies that equation is altering, with the common price of a brand new fuel plant typically on par with four-hour lithium-ion batteries and solely barely inexpensive than longer-duration battery applied sciences.
“Batteries are going to get cheaper,” Kumar stated. “Fuel isn’t.”
The battery storage shift is happening because the Trump administration takes steps to stifle photo voltaic and different types of renewable power in favor of fossil fuels corresponding to oil, fuel and coal. On the finish of September, the administration introduced that it could open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining and supply $625 million to recommission or modernize coal-fired powered crops, which officers stated would assist strengthen the economic system, shield jobs and advance American power.
Throughout an hourlong information convention on the initiative, Inside Secretary Doug Burgum described wind and photo voltaic power as intermittent sources which can be “actually depending on the climate” — however neither he nor every other official talked about the expansion of battery storage that has made these sources extra dependable and extra promising.
It’s not a partisan situation. ERCOT, which operates Texas’s electrical grid, has greater than 14,000 megawatts of batteries on-line, a virtually threefold enhance from early 2023. California and Texas are continually buying and selling locations as the highest state for battery storage.
Battery storage models on the Eland Photo voltaic and Storage Middle within the Mojave Desert of Kern County on Nov. 25, 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Occasions)
However Trump has made strikes to help the manufacturing of batteries within the U.S. Presently, about three-quarters of the world’s batteries are made in China, and Trump’s tariffs — together with a proposed 100% tariff on China — have been good for at the least one Sacramento-based battery producer, Sparkz.
“The administration desires vital materials manufacturing to occur within the U.S.,” stated Sanjiv Malhotra, founder and chief government. “They principally are very a lot in favor of home manufacturing of batteries.”
Sparkz is making lithium-iron batteries that don’t use nickel and cobalt — a composition that has lengthy been an trade darling however that is determined by imported metals. As an alternative, their lithium-iron-phosphate batteries have a provide chain that’s totally primarily based within the U.S., which implies they’ll benefit from federal tax credit that favor the manufacturing of unpolluted power elements made principally of home components, Malhotra stated. The corporate’s purchasers embody information facilities and utilities.
Malhotra added that California has carried out a superb job “beefing up” the grid’s storage capability in the previous few years. He stated batteries are a significant motive why the state hasn’t seen a Flex Alert since 2022.
“The numbers principally inform the story that it was all due to, primarily, power storage,” he stated.
There’s nonetheless work to do. Whereas the state’s grid has seen enhancements, it’s greater than a century previous and was constructed primarily for fuel crops. Consultants and officers agree that it wants extra substantial upgrades and reforms to fulfill present power calls for and targets.
Allowing can also be a hurdle, as California sometimes requires prolonged environmental assessment for brand new tasks. The state, typically controversially, is now dashing assessment, and lately authorised an enormous photo voltaic and battery storage farm, the Darden Clear Vitality Challenge in Fresno County, by a brand new fast-track allowing program. It’ll make sufficient electrical energy to energy 850,000 houses for 4 hours, in keeping with the California Vitality Fee.
Security stays a substantial concern. In January, a fireplace tore by one of many world’s largest battery storage services in Moss Touchdown, Monterey County. The power housed round 100,000 lithium-ion batteries, that are exceptionally harmful when ignited as a result of they burn extraordinarily scorching and can’t be extinguished with water, which may set off a violent chemical response. The blaze emitted harmful ranges of nickel, cobalt and manganese that have been measured inside miles of the location.
“Once you’re coping with giant applied sciences typically, there’s all the time going to be some form of hazard,” stated Leroy, of Lumenergy. “This factors to the large want for diversifying the applied sciences that we use.”
Different types of power, corresponding to oil and coal, additionally pose appreciable well being and security dangers together with the emission of air air pollution — soot, mercury, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide contributing to local weather change.
California is within the means of eliminating coal energy and expects to be utterly coal-free by November. And whereas pure fuel nonetheless makes up a big piece of the state’s portfolio, renewables represented practically 60% of California’s in-state electrical energy technology in 2024, in keeping with the U.S. Vitality Info Administration.
The numbers proceed to development upward. Within the first six months of this yr, CAISO’s grid was powered by 100% clear power for a mean of nearly seven hours every day.
“We’ve got actually simply demonstrated that California is ready to run with tremendous clear assets, with backups from pure fuel,” stated Kumar, of GridLab. “And it really works. We don’t have Flex Alerts.”
