other states have moved to close coal-fired power plants in recent years, reducing the amount of electricity California can import when high temperatures boost electricity demand.
In other words, the problem with wind/solar is that they are not controllable, and so California was planning on using the rest of the grid as a buffer -- all of Western US is on one grid. Thus California can still import from coal fired plants in Utah when it needs power, say on a hot day when AC use is high or a day when the wind isn't blowing too strongly.
Except now it's realizing that as other states adopt the same strategy, that the grid can't be relied on so much and the state has to do that itself or face blackouts in hot days or windless days. So with this new awareness that the rest of the grid will not be able to bail them out, they have updated their estimate of needed battery capacity in time for the planned shutdowns. Alternately, they are scrambling for some sources of energy that could be tapped on demand in place of battery capacity.
Scream it from the roof tops. Most think California is green. What they did was outsource energy production to other states. This allowed them to move "dirty energy" from their balance sheet. But moving your coal plant to another state does not reduce GHG production. It only moves it across state lines.
EDIT: [1] Here some context with a link about the different types of GHG measurement methods.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28714396
EDIT: the gist being that if we moved to "B. (Absolute) GHG footprint accounting" we wouldn't be creating policy based on false accounting and those "loopholes" would be obviously misguided.
It's also not great for grid reliability to increase the watt miles used (is there a real term for that?).
Was this actually a plan, or just what ended up happening?
My understanding is that CAISO has continued their resource adequacy program to ensure that there is guaranteed supply to meet the expected demand (plus margin), but the problem is that this program was developed before renewables and therefore the central metric is peak demand (which happens around 5pm), which is insufficient for planning when there is a lot of solar & wind generation, because then the most critical period is after peak demand (around 7pm).
In other words, I thought that CAISO failed to plan properly, not that they planned to lean heavily on imports.
It's a good question, and depends on your perspective.
I said "planned to" because that is what the state has historically been doing -- relying on the rest of the west coast grid for 25-30% of its electricity, especially for swing capacity.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46156
"The California Independent System Operator is soliciting power producers across the West to sell more megawatts to the state in July and August in anticipation of regionwide heat waves that will substantially boost electricity demand." -- back in 2021. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-scrambles-to-find-el...)
So the grid has always been what's bailed California out from it's poor energy policies and what has saved California during the summer.
Now one can call this lack of planning, but if something's been going on for a few decades, then at some point it has to become part of the plan, although maybe not an official plan written down anywhere. But when someone discovers that the unofficial plan is not going to not work anymore, then you need to scramble.
FYI, the whole Enron electricity scandal was all about selling energy to California, because California is constantly in need of energy. Why they didn't wake up after that scandal and start building out more energy sources remains a mystery. Instead, they went in the other direction to reduce domestic capacity.
But that's not all, because a lot of the private utilities are being given mandates to get more green energy sources and storage that they are going to have a hard time meeting. You can't simply order someone to get battery power that lasts through the night when batteries last 4 hours. This is discussed in the article:
"“We are literally on the cutting edge” of rapidly adding renewables, Mr. Wan [PG&E] said. “And along with that, there are some things we are learning by trial and error, and we are taking some risks in the process.”"
In other words, you have the legislature giving mandates that the CPUC can't meet, and then the CPUC gives mandates to the producers that they can't meet, but everyone is shaking each other's hand at what a green future they are building.
Meanwhile, the lights in California are kept on by coal and gas fired plants in the rest of the country. That system obviously doesn't work if the rest of the country tries to adopt California's model.
There are several different classes of electricity imports, and I think it is important to consider them separately - there are imports under long term contracts, opportunistic imports due to lower prices in the short term market, and short term contingency imports (when CAISO is freaking out due to unexpectedly high demand or low supply, or both). I guess I had incorrectly assumed we were discussing contingency imports.
California does import a ton of electricity from outside the state. I don’t think it is accurate to characterize most of this as a bailout - the majority of this imported supply is either secured under contract well in advance, or used instead of available in-state supply when it is cheaper. Neither of these cases are saving California from it’s poor energy policies, these are part of California’s energy policies. IMO, your description only applies to the third class I mentioned above (emergency imports).
These imports include a lot of different sources - a lot of coal and gas, but also a lot of wind, solar, and hydroelectric (especially from the Pacific Northwest).
I agree that California’s shift to renewables has been poorly planned and done too fast, but I don’t think this is simply because California imports a lot of electricity in general. The issue is really handling the period after peak demand when demand is dropping but supply is dropping faster (solar & wind) - right now this is not handled well and there was apparently no plan to handle it well, and it leads to leaning a lot on unplanned imports, as you highlighted.
> FYI, the whole Enron electricity scandal was all about selling energy to California, because California is constantly in need of energy. Why they didn't wake up after that scandal and start building out more energy sources remains a mystery. Instead, they went in the other direction to reduce domestic capacity.
FWIW, the current resource adequacy program used in California was developed in response to this mess in 2001.
> The drought has constrained the output of some of the region’s most significant generating facilities, including the Hoover Dam. … “What changed dramatically…is we have had significantly bigger and more West-wide heat waves than ever before,”
Maybe a failure of planning, but the plan was not to get "bailed out" by the grid as you guess.
FYI, there is a fun wikipedia page that lists California droughts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California
The first sentence is:
"Throughout history, California has experienced many droughts, such as 1841, 1864, 1924, 1928–1935, 1947–1950, 1959–1960, 1976–1977, 1986–1992, 1999-2004, 2006–2010, 2011–2017, 2018 and 2020-[1][2] 2021. "
So the idea that OMG, we didn't realize there might be a drought - doesn't sound very plausible to me.
The claim however was that they become more frequent and severe. Not every drought is the same. From your link:
> the 2012–15 period was the driest in at least 1200 years
Also, according to your link, about there was a drought in 12 of the last 20 years, with only one or two years in between droughts, where they previously usually were spaced by around a decade or more.
The data listed there really doesn't seem to contradict the article's claim about more frequent droughts in the future.
Again, I don't see how the possibility of severe droughts was some unforseen thing when the law was passed. In fact the law was passed in an environment of terrible fear about climate change, so you can't really argue that no one predicted this when writing the law, can you? Don't you think, if you believe the climate is changing, that your energy plan should include production of energy not dependent on the climate?
> The data listed there really doesn't seem to contradict the article's claim about more frequent droughts in the future.
FYI, California droughts have in the past lasted more than 200 years. The idea that you can count years in the last century and extrapolate drought risk doesn't work. The state goes through long secular wet and dry periods, and this is something we have known for some time.
Therefore any energy plan that breaks down if there is a prolonged drought is not an energy plan suitable for the state of California in any period of time. In fact any policy at all that breaks down during a prolonged -- say 100 year -- drought is not one suitable for the state of California. We have the tree ring data, and we know that this used to be called "the Great American Desert". That is why we fought water wars and built enormous public works, it's why San Francisco considered breaking off icebergs and floating them down to the bay in order to get water. California as a state has a highly variable water supply susceptible to century-long droughts.
Check out this article:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-pa...
The drought in question is a drought in the entire western US (and therefore the Colorado river basin).
Maybe they didn't expect to need the contingency so soon, but that is on their risk analysis of the weather.
Unless you talk about actual contingency plans for emergencies in which case I don't quite understand what's so scandalous about falling back on the grid in emergencies. France also falls back on Germany's power generation when they have to shut down some of their nuclear reactors during heat waves.
In 2019, 25% of its electricity was imported[1]. This is before California takes even more power offline and replaces it with variable power.
Also, yes, being able to import from other places as a contingency is not a bad thing, it’s one of the major benefits of having the Western Interconnect at all.
“What changed dramatically…is we have had significantly bigger and more West-wide heat waves than ever before,” Mr. Randolph said. “Those aren’t built into our planning standards.”
This may be a result of climate scientists presenting conservative estimates due to the fear of being labelled alarmist.
I don't think that the state is alarmed about climate change as it aims to have a carbon neutral grid by 2045, which is already quite late even following the conservatives estimations.
It's seems hasty to order companies to build up plants in just three years, but it's not made clear if that order is made too late by the state or if it's a reaction to the companies neglecting their responsibilities.
A bit further down there's also mentions of less foreseeable complications like wildfire damages and less power output of hydroelectric plants due to draughts.
Even further down the changes brought on by more frequent heat waves are blamed. And that makes sense, those both increase demand and negatively impact all forms of power generation, including nuclear and solar.
Edit: Surprising amount of downvotes here, didn't realize this was so controversial, the Wikipedia page talks extensively about the wsj's stances (with citations):
"The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. The Journal disputes that it poses a major threat to human existence and can be prevented through public policy and has published articles disputing that global warming is occurring at all. The Journal is regarded as a forum for climate change deniers"
I have found this site to be much more reliable when looking for media bias.
According to the site you find reliable,
NYT: biased center left, factual reporting “high”
WSJ: biased on the right edge of center right, factual reporting “mostly factual”
Wikipedia: “least biased”, factual reporting “mixed”
"Overall, we rate the Wall Street Journal Right-Center biased due to low biased news reporting combined with a strong right biased editorial stance."
This poll shows 67% of Republicans think warming is happening and 56% think warming will continue in the future if nothing is done to address it.
https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/climateinsights2020...
Stating this is not denying anything. It's accepting the complexity of the issue rather than indulging in emotive cliches.
Is the issue that they gave too short notice, or waited till the last minute to figure out replacement?