Modernizing the US power grid while incorporating increasing volumes of intermittent renewable energy is the electrical engineering challenge of our time. And there’s a lot at stake from costly blackouts to highly profitable energy storage solutions.

Fragmented and often outdated regulations enforced by competing government agencies from local to national levels compound the problem. These are some of the issues discussed in a recent Los Angeles Times article titled “Power struggle: Green energy versus a grid that’s not ready.”

“Making a green energy future work will be ‘one of the greatest technological challenges industrialized societies have undertaken,’ a group of scholars at Caltech said in a recent report. The report notes that by 2030, about $1 trillion is expected to be spent nationwide in bringing the grid up to date. – LA Times

California has ambitious renewable energy goals, but the grid is having trouble keeping up.

“We are getting to the point where we will have to pay people not to produce power,” said Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, a system operator board member.

“One of the biggest challenges is you can’t create a market for these resources without solving the demands of moving electricity from one physical place to another,” said Neil Fromer, executive director of Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute. “But you can’t solve that problem until you understand what the market structure looks like.”