California has worked hard to build up a nation-leading clean energy portfolio. And the state has been hugely successful in adding renewable energy, especially solar, to the electric grid. However, having too much solar energy on the grid relative to energy demand can lead to grid operators turning off that clean power. This is costly… Keep reading →
A new study cites gigawatt-hours’ worth of opportunity in customer energy flexibility, but little opportunity for old-school load shedding. California has gigawatt-hours of grid-balancing available in homes, offices, factories and farms that can “shape” and “shift” their energy usage, and a smaller but still valuable market for fast-responding “shimmy” resources. But it has very little… Keep reading →
From Germany to Orange County, cost-effective grid batteries will require adaptability. Controlling and optimizing grid-tied and behind-the-meter batteries is already a complicated business. But it’s going to get a lot more complicated in the years to come, both for utility-facing storage integrators like S&C Electric Company, AES Energy Storage and NEC/A123, and for customer-facing behind-the-meter… Keep reading →
A California public utility has brought the largest battery energy storage in North America online. Funded partially by federal stimulus funds, Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage Project is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of large-scale battery storage systems.
Southern California Edison Company is the largest electricity supply company in Southern California. As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the utility won funding to develop a major battery energy storage system (or BESS). The Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage project consists of an array of lithium-ion batteries capable of storing 32 megawatt-hours, deliverable as an 8 megawatt stream of energy for 4 hours. The LG Chem batteries rely on the same lithium-ion cells installed in battery packs for General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle, and feature 608,832 individual battery cells arrayed in 10,872 battery modules and 604 battery racks. Along with two 4MW/4.5MVA smart inverters, the project will be housed in a 6,300 square foot facility sited at SCE’s existing Monolith substation.
But a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector disagrees. An advanced seismic study conducted by utility PG&E to determine the safety of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant has found that the facility is “designed to withstand and perform [its] safety functions during and after a major seismic event.” The Central Coastal California Seismic Imaging Projectreport was submitted to the Nuclear… Keep reading →
CPUC passes controversial mandate for 1.3 gigawatts of batteries, grid storage by 2020 California’s status as the vanguard in pushing energy storage technologies onto the power grid is now official. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved its proposed mandate (PDF) that will require the state’s big three investor-owned utilities to add 1.3… Keep reading →
More nukes are shutting down than getting built. Cheap and plentiful natural gas accomplished what thousands of anti-nuclear protesters could not: shut down the Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, VT. In late August 2013, the operator of the plant, Entergy Corp., the second biggest operator of nuclear reactors in the US after Exelon, announced that the decision… Keep reading →
CPUC has proposed policies and mechanisms for its landmark energy storage procurement program that sets a 1,325 MW energy storage mandate. On September 3, 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a proposed decision detailing policies and mechanisms for its energy storage procurement program established under the 2010 Assembly Bill 2514, the first… Keep reading →
By John Mecklin The LA Times and U-T San Diego thoroughly covered the local nuclear power plant’s closing, but the wider energy story is still waiting to be told. SANTA BARBARA, CA — Nuclear power plants are complex, interdependent systems of systems, and the state and federal bureaucracies that regulate them are labyrinthine. Because anything to do with radiation… Keep reading →
The U.S. has lost three percent of its summertime nuclear generating capacity as troublesome plants are retired. Robert Stone’s controversial film Pandora’s Promise has brought the question of how nuclear power might fit into a clean-energy future to center stage. We’re not going to hold (let alone resolve) that debate here and now. Instead, we’ll just note that… Keep reading →
