For many years, rolling blackouts and pressing requires vitality 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 in recent times, and the California Impartial System Operator hasn’t issued a single a type of emergency pleas, referred to as Flex Alerts, since 2022.
Specialists 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 vitality storage, which captures and shops electrical energy for later use.
In actual fact, batteries have been transformative for California, state officers say. In late afternoon, when the solar stops hitting photo voltaic panels and persons are dwelling utilizing electrical energy, batteries now push saved photo voltaic vitality onto the grid.
California has invested closely within the expertise, serving to it mature and get cheaper in recent times. 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 is no such thing as 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 recreation changer for reliability throughout summer time intervals of peak demand,” stated Elliot Mainzer, CAISO’s president and chief govt.
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 vitality leaders vowed to take motion to make the grid extra resilient.
Since then, CAISO has overseen an enormous build-out of latest vitality and storage assets, together with greater than 26,000 megawatts of latest capability total, which has additionally helped make the grid extra secure, 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 supplied 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 items 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 Instances)
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 alternative for growing older gas-fired energy crops, based on Maia Leroy, founding father of the California vitality consulting agency Lumenergy LLC and co-author of a latest report on the rise of battery storage over gasoline era in California.
“Traditionally, Flex Alerts have at all times come by in summertime when it’s tremendous scorching and everyone seems to be cranking their AC,” Leroy stated. “But in addition within the summertime, we’re seeing that gasoline crops underperform as a result of combustion doesn’t work effectively with ambient warmth. So once we’re in a position to shift that want from having to make use of gasoline crops to one thing extra secure, dispatchable and versatile like battery storage, then we’re in a position to meet that demand in the summertime with out having to depend on these underperforming gasoline crops.”
Battery vitality storage isn’t with out challenges, nevertheless. Lithium-ion batteries — the commonest kind used for vitality storage — sometimes have about 4 to 6 hours of capability. It’s sufficient to assist the grid throughout peak hours because the solar units, however can nonetheless depart some gaps to be crammed by pure gasoline.
Nikhil Kumar, program director with the vitality coverage nonprofit GridLab, stated the expertise already exists for longer-duration batteries, together with by totally different chemistries corresponding to iron-air batteries, which launch vitality by oxidation, and move batteries, which retailer vitality in liquid chemical substances that move by a reactor.
These batteries are usually not but as mature and might be dearer and bigger than their lithium-ion counterparts, Kumar stated. However a latest GridLab report signifies that equation is altering, with the typical price of a brand new gasoline plant typically on par with four-hour lithium-ion batteries and solely barely cheaper than longer-duration battery applied sciences.
“Batteries are going to get cheaper,” Kumar stated. “Fuel isn’t.”
The battery storage shift is going on because the Trump administration takes steps to stifle photo voltaic and different types of renewable vitality in favor of fossil fuels corresponding to oil, gasoline 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 financial system, shield jobs and advance American vitality.
Throughout an hourlong information convention on the initiative, Inside Secretary Doug Burgum described wind and photo voltaic vitality as intermittent sources which might be “actually depending on the climate” — however neither he nor some other official talked about the expansion of battery storage that has made these sources extra dependable and extra promising.
It’s not a partisan problem. ERCOT, which operates Texas’s electrical grid, has greater than 14,000 megawatts of batteries on-line, an almost threefold enhance from early 2023. California and Texas are continually buying and selling locations as the highest state for battery storage.
Battery storage items 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 Instances)
However Trump has made strikes to assist 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 a minimum of one Sacramento-based battery producer, Sparkz.
“The administration needs important materials manufacturing to occur within the U.S.,” stated Sanjiv Malhotra, founder and chief govt. “They mainly 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 a substitute, their lithium-iron-phosphate batteries have a provide chain that’s solely primarily based within the U.S., which suggests they’ll make the most of federal tax credit that favor the manufacturing of unpolluted vitality parts made largely of home components, Malhotra stated. The corporate’s shoppers embrace knowledge facilities and utilities.
Malhotra added that California has completed a superb job “beefing up” the grid’s storage capability in the previous couple of years. He stated batteries are a serious cause why the state hasn’t seen a Flex Alert since 2022.
“The numbers mainly inform the story that it was all due to, basically, vitality storage,” he stated.
There’s nonetheless work to do. Whereas the state’s grid has seen enhancements, it’s greater than a century outdated and was constructed primarily for gasoline crops. Specialists and officers agree that it wants further substantial upgrades and reforms to satisfy present vitality calls for and targets.
Allowing can be a hurdle, as California sometimes requires prolonged environmental evaluate for brand spanking new initiatives. The state, generally controversially, is now rushing evaluate, and not too long ago accredited an enormous photo voltaic and battery storage farm, the Darden Clear Power Venture in Fresno County, by a brand new fast-track allowing program. It can make sufficient electrical energy to energy 850,000 properties for 4 hours, based on the California Power Fee.
Security stays a substantial concern. In January, a hearth 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 might 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.
“If you’re coping with giant applied sciences usually, there’s at all times going to be some type of hazard,” stated Leroy, of Lumenergy. “This factors to the large want for diversifying the applied sciences that we use.”
Different types of vitality, 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 technique of eliminating coal energy and expects to be fully coal-free by November. And whereas pure gasoline nonetheless makes up a big piece of the state’s portfolio, renewables represented almost 60% of California’s in-state electrical energy era in 2024, based on the U.S. Power Info Administration.
The numbers proceed to pattern upward. Within the first six months of this 12 months, CAISO’s grid was powered by 100% clear vitality for a mean of nearly seven hours every day.
“We’ve actually simply demonstrated that California is ready to run with tremendous clear assets, with backups from pure gasoline,” stated Kumar, of GridLab. “And it really works. We don’t have Flex Alerts.”
