Shades of "The Innovator's Dilemma" and what not. Incumbents do not care for their gravy train being taken away.
Edit: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913 ("Investor-owned utilities served 72% of U.S. electricity customers in 2017")
> Investor-owned utilities, or IOUs, are large electric distributors that issue stock owned by shareholders. Almost three-quarters of utility customers get their electricity from these companies. IOUs are most prevalent in heavily populated areas on the East and West coasts. In 2017, 168 IOUs served an average of 654,600 electric customers. The two largest IOUs are in California: Pacific Gas and Electric, with 5.48 million customers, and Southern California Edison Company, with 5.07 million customers.
They are referring to the last sentence in the paragraph you referenced.
If you had an energy storage technology that could store energy with a very low storage cost, even if it were very inefficient, you could make use of the massive coming excess of summer solar power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/10/controversial-energy-...
> A controversial energy project in south central Washington is one step closer to breaking ground. A federal commission released its final environmental review for the Goldendale Energy Storage Project — to the consternation of several tribes and environmental groups.
> The project is part of a potential solution to one of the biggest problems for renewable energy development: the variability of wind and solar. As the Northwest transitions off fossil fuels, power will need to be stored for when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow.
cool, but prices for electricity in California still somehow 3 times higher than places where electricity is exported?..
There's lots of supply and less demand at noon in June compared to 6 pm in January. You're not going to get anywhere near average retail price for exports in either case, but especially not in the first one.
Out of state buyers don't care about PG&E's liabilities either, they are choosing from competing suppliers. They are not captive to PG&E's monopoly the way consumers are, so PG&E has no hope of charging them their retail rate.
Worth noting that there isn't a lot of room for growth of solar that isn't battery-backed. California exports a ton of energy during the bright months. As a practical matter, the era of sending excess rooftop solar generation to the grid is over.
[1] https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/