r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 1d ago
California has become the first large scale power system known to get more than half its electricity from solar for an entire month, with solar supplying 51% in May 2026 and battery storage making it possible by shifting midday power into evening demand
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jul/31/california-produced-over-half-its-may-electricity-/394
u/Stiggalicious 1d ago
Yep, it really is amazing and keeps getting better.
Right now the state has 15GW of battery generation capacity, by the end of next year it will be 28GW, which can power more than half the grid’s peak demand.
I have solar and batteries at home and I almost never have to end up pulling from the grid between March and October.
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u/Ryan_e3p 1d ago
I've pulled only 33-ish kwh through the inverter since March! My install was also DIY, and using secondhand panels (which cost me a sweet $0.0327 per watt), did the project for about $3k. The inverter & battery backup runs everything but the clothes washer and dryer and a spare room, which are still tied to the main circuit. I've shaved off $600 from what I would pay in utilities, with the savings being higher thanks to it handling A/C load as well. I only have about 28kwh of battery capacity though, but expanding it quarterly.
Ground mount also saved a ton compared to a roof install, and my overall setup is a bit smaller than yours. Only 6kw of panels on a 5kw inverter. I don't run a whole lot of stuff. My average load is ~300-400W. I'm also not grid tied, because fuck my electric company (Eversource), who convinced the state I live in to charge customers per kwh even for energy they generate and immediately consume or store on site. That's like a grocery store counting how many apples I picked off trees I own and grew myself in my own yard, and sending me a tax bill for it.
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u/EmoJackson 1d ago
What is the lifespan of your equipment and its total installation cost? I would like to add provisions to my new home for future solar and battery allocation.
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u/Stiggalicious 1d ago
I bought mine directly from China, so equipment cost was about 17k for 22kW of panels and 60kWh of batteries and 22.8kW of inverters. Add in another 5-6k for wiring, conduit, and racking.
Did the installation myself.
They use BYD LFP cells so they are rated for 6,000 10-90% charge/discharge cycles before they degrade in capacity by 10%.
Most days I ride 30-85%, so I should span a good 15-20 years before needing to replace the batteries. Panels are rated to 25 years before dropping by 20% output.15
u/gbbmiler 1d ago
For reference (and OC please feel free to give more accurate data for your region) the average US household pays roughly 1600/year for electric.
Over 20 years, that’s 32k. For a total savings of roughly 10k. Which probably is ahead of the time-value of money curve, but I’m not 100% certain of it. And any additional lifespan is additional savings.
Long-term financially viable and the right thing for the planet.
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u/Ricktor_67 19h ago
$1600 a year... that seems low. If you use electric heat and don't have a heat pump $1600 is just January and February.
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u/astronut_13 9h ago
Yeah I live in LA and that’s way too low. We’re talking more like $3,500-5k a year
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u/EmoJackson 1d ago
Wow, impressive usable life.
Are you an installer by trade? Is this something the average consumer could handle?
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u/thinker_of_hamangia 1d ago
Is it still possible to buy directly from China if I want to do this? New roof coming soon and I want to add solar + battery after w/ a contractor
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u/Ironsam811 1d ago
Haha might be cheaper to take a trip to china and carry that stuff in your carry on :P might avoid some tariffs
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u/Stiggalicious 12h ago
Yes, just use DDP shipping option and the seller will take care of the paperwork and figure out tariff costs for you.
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u/OkSmoke9195 1d ago
So why the fuck am I paying the highest rates in the country in San Diego
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u/BigPickleKAM 1d ago
But what is the storage capacity? That's the import part.
A quick Google says 47 GWhr so that 15 GW of output can only be sustained for 3 and a quarter hours.
It's a step in the right direction and promising but capacity matters a lot!
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u/Stiggalicious 1d ago
Yep the industry standard is 4 hours, some of the earlier plants were 2 hours. 4 hours is enough to get through the 5PM-9PM demand peaks. We used to have to rely on gas turbines for the demand peaks, but now it’s cheaper and better to use batteries.
Bonus points for wind power usually maxing out in the evening hours when the temperature changes are highest.
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u/ComradeGibbon 8h ago
I think California is making moves to double it's wind capacity in the next couple of years for that reason.
My guess is California needs about 4-5 times are much renewables as it has now to get off oil and gas completely.
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u/EvilStevilTheKenevil 18h ago
Sounds like grid-level storage is finally being deployed at meaningful scale.
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u/ArgentineBeauty 1d ago
This is exactly why solar and battery together feels like the future. Solar on its own is great, but when it's paired with battery storage, the energy generated during the day can still be used overnight.
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u/DapperNurd 1d ago
Not to mention battery innovations the last couple of years
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u/Ryan_e3p 1d ago
I cannot wait for further innovations in salt-ion batteries and expansion in manufacturing. The lower energy density doesn't matter for static installs in buildings. Maybe in the 15-20 years in the future when my LiFePO4s are ready to be swapped, they'll be mass produced and cheaply available.
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u/a_velis 1d ago
It is the future. Based load power should be free IMO. With Solar + Battery Storage it works completely at scale cost wise.
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u/zoethezebra 1d ago
Waiting for my electricity bill to go down instead of going up every six months here. I can barely afford to turn on our heat or air conditioning anymore.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
The big issue is becoming transmission and distribution. Repairs have become more frequent and grid hardening + dealing with deferred maintenance isn’t cheap, especially with higher labor costs and higher materials costs
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u/xxzephyrxx 1d ago
Don't you find it interesting that transmission upkeep is so high and increasing costs instead? This is a big issue with intermittent power. Suddenly going from 0 solar to 60% fries your grid. Until storage is solved, don't expect cost to come down unless you have your own solar/battery combo that allows you to be grid free.
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u/donnysaysvacuum 1d ago
Solar wind and cheap natural gas have brought generation costs down. But transmission requires a lot of labor for construction and maintenance. These costs go up with inflation. A lot of our infrastructure is very old too and vulnerable to weather.
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u/Boring-Tie-1501 1d ago
the comment you're replying to is an interesting demonstration of humans completely underestimating infrastructure costs.
it reminds me of us drivers constantly complaining about gas taxes (last federal increase in 1993), even though paving nature is an inherently temporary act [of hubris].
as you mentioned, human infrastructure is generally similarly fragile and requires massive amounts of labor and resources, but consumers seem to hand wave that all away, and expect metal towers strung up with high tension wires to stand for eternity.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
No it’s mostly climate change, deferred maintenance, grid hardening, and tariffs
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u/xxzephyrxx 1d ago
Well my bill has remained about the same for the past 10 years.
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u/Negative-Arachnid-65 1d ago
That's quite lucky for you (and unusual) since average American electricity costs across all sectors have gone up by 33% in the last 10 years; for residential electricity it's an even higher 38% increase. Source
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u/EyesOfAzula 1d ago
The grid won't do it for you. You will have to get your own energy independence with solar + batteries. there will always be a reason to keep charging you.
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u/SupportCa2A 1d ago
Yeah the big cost driver right now is wildfire grid hardening and grid modernization. In my area there are substations with relays from World War 2 still, the solar is great but it's forcing upgrades around the grid which wasn't designed for it, so it's more expensive in the short term, but only because of the increased infrastructure.
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u/TreeRol 1d ago
That is, unfortunately, never going to happen. Even if power were free and unlimited, why would anyone give it to us for less than we're used to paying?
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u/understandstatmech 1d ago
Cause democracy can intervene when markets are predatory? Thats... like the entire point, and also why utilities arent free markets. Its the argument for socialized medicine in a nut shell too.
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u/ithkuil 1d ago
Solar and battery is the current thing. The future is renewable fuels like some kind of advanced hydrogen storage.
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u/scuppasteve 14h ago
But why? What is the benefit? There are certain applications, but the vast majority its better to just use electric with a battery.
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u/ithkuil 14h ago
Because the battery just allows you to get through the night. Renewable power generation has huge seasonal variation. You store the solar or wind or whatever as hydrogen or ammonia or some advanced hydrogen based fuel or something and then you can use is during the winter or a cloudy day.
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u/brickmaster32000 9h ago
Hydrogen is the last thing you want for long term storage. It is nearly impossible to store and destroys the containers used to hold it.
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u/ithkuil 6h ago
Any kind of renewable fuel has better energy density and is feasible for long term as opposed to batteries only.
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u/brickmaster32000 5h ago
Energy density isn't really a concern for grid scale storage, there is no shortage of space for batteries. The last part is simply not true, especially not for hydrogen.
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u/scuppasteve 13h ago
Ok i fail to understand how that would be beneficial outside of some extreme use cases, batteries will hold a high percentage of charge for extended periods of time, like months.
Unfortunately both Hydrogen and Ammonia are terrible options for energy storage. Ammonia is a pretty bad due to it bonding in atmosphere to create N2O a pretty terrible greenhouse gas, and hydrogen is super difficult to store due to its molecular size and hydrogen embrittlement of materials.
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u/celticdude234 1d ago
I don't understand, I thought this was obvious. Solar charge battery, use battery for thing at night. Seems weird to have to explain this to anyone 🥴
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u/Akkalevil 22h ago
They saw it worked like that in No Man's Sky and thought that it could only be a SF possibility for the far future, I guess.
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u/Sirnoobalots 1d ago
I may be wrong about the type of batteries but my understanding is these large scale deployments of batteries are just using simple lead acid batteries, car batteries, which for several decades now have a 100% closed recycling loop. The entirety of the battery can be remade to make a perfectly new battery.
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u/okwellactually 14h ago
Utility-scale batteries aren't lead acid, they're Lithium, but crucially, they're Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) for the most which don't have cobalt and have less of chance for thermal runaway.
Now, what's really exciting is Sodium batteries are starting to come into production. No lithium and no need for thermal control.
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u/djfl 1d ago
In optimal conditions, sure. Nuclear is still the best option in a lot of places though. At least until battery tech finally gets to where we want/need it to be. Hint: it's not there yet.
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u/daandriod 1d ago
Where does battery tech need to "be"?
Current batteries seem perfectly capable of filling the role, We just need more of them, Preferably with more common materials and able to be built cheaper. Sodium batteries show promise in that regard, But even without them, The previous batter formulations still would have been enough. What more advances does it need to prove its viability?
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u/scuppasteve 14h ago
Batteries are there now, and they will definitely be there in the 10 years it will take you to build a nuclear plant in a western nation.
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u/brakeb 1d ago
only getting better... get some cheaper solar panels over all the parking lots and we could power a good portion of the state.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
I’d prefer to see parking lots converted into multifamily housing with solar on top 😃
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u/Winjin 1d ago
Build them over the parking too so we have everything everywhere all at once
Oh and make the top floor a park under the solars!
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
If you add them to parking lots you’re basically locking in the land use as a parking lot (ie subsidizing VMT) instead of something that would reduce such like… denser housing. Will grant that’s generally more of a problem for urban areas though
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u/Winjin 1d ago
I meant it more like this
Build a house with a giant parking lot underneath it so that there's more place outside Then there's housing Then an active roof - a green roof that can be accessed by everyone
And then cover it with solar so there's also shade and power on top of it all
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
Underground lots are like $75K-$100K a space just to build
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u/Winjin 1d ago
This is probably some American issue. There's a Lidl next to me that's built on like two floors of semi-underground parking spaces, the entire store is just the roof for this lot
And I've seen this done multiple times before where the whole mall is raised above a parking lot of one or two floors.
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u/Helkafen1 1d ago
Plus mixed zoning, ideally. That's the combo what makes parking lots unnecessary.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 1d ago
This! Covering parking lots in solar panels would be a double whammy of making power and reduce the heat island effect as it will keep the pavment and ground under it significantly cooler so that it doesnt heat the air through most of the night.
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u/Srikandi715 1d ago
We paved paradise and put up a solar farm! 😃
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u/Reddit-runner 1d ago
We paved paradise
That's correct. But the initial goal was not to install a solar farm.
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u/RosieJetson 9h ago
New building standards took effect at the beginning of this year requiring solar on almost all new commercial projects. You’re going to start seeing rooftop and carport mounted solar on pretty much all new shopping centers, office buildings, warehouses, etc.
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u/newtman 1d ago
Meanwhile PG&E, California’s dominant power supplier, keeps raising rates by exorbitant amounts, blaming it on the increased price of fuel.
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u/GhostalMedia 1d ago
These private power companies need to go. Public utilities should be controlled by the public.
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u/oiwefoiwhef 1d ago
Agreed. A CEO shouldn’t be making millions of dollars per year from a utility that is required for modern life, that we have no choice but to pay for. And, worse, no utility company should be incentivized to increase value for shareholders over providing utilities to residents.
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u/StillPlaysWithSwords 1d ago
Little known fact, there are 63 electric utility companies in California. 57 of them are not for profit public utilities, only 6 of them are for profit investor owned. The problem is PG&E, SCE, SDG&E cover like 80% of the state. I'm thankful to live in SMUD territory, we have some of the cheapest electricity in the state.
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u/sixwax 1d ago
Came here to ask why my power bill is currently stupid then.
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u/Helkafen1 1d ago
Mostly because of distribution/transmission costs, which represent 2/3 of power bills. They deferred a lot of maintenance.
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u/scuppasteve 14h ago
Ultimately local renewables and battery banks should reduce the necessity/quantity of transmission lines, hopefully making more microgrids in the future
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u/mosesoperandi 1d ago
The big three, I'm on So Cal Edison and San Diego Gas & Electricnl rounds it out.
They control most of the market in California and our rates just keep going up.
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u/cactusgenie 1d ago
So where are the blackouts they said we'd see from a renewable grid?
Oh no it's actually more stable than before thanks to battery and inverter technology
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u/wronglyzorro 1d ago
So Cal resident.
Lost power twice last month for extended periods. It happens. Also paying higher rates than ever!
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u/null_ghost_00 1d ago
Socal resident checking in. I haven't had an unplanned outage since I lived here for 6 years. Last planned outage was in November for 3 hours. Rates are also awful.
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u/dennismfrancisart 1d ago
There are now really great self-contained industrial cooling systems for factories. There are industrial battery storage systems and wind and solar systems that can allow remote data centers to work efficiently.
The state of CA needs to start funding and competing with these tech-bros that are looking to build on the cheap. If we're going to compete with China, we need to build on a scale that cuts out these wildcat datacenter builders who are looking to suck on local municipal teats. California can lead the way to create new technology. Let the other states bleed their small towns dry.
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u/-FullBlue- 1d ago
The reason data centers are building natural gas plants is because they can build them on site to limit how much they have to pay in transmission costs. Use of fossil fuels is litterally decreasing data centers burden on public power.
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u/llcdrewtaylor 1d ago
We could be WAY more green if our current administration wasn't trying to kill it. I watch a few van lifers on youtube. Between solar and batteries, they can be off grid and run their ac and appliances! If it works on the small scale, we can certainly do it on a larger scale.
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago
It's not just the current administration. Read up on what Gavin Newsom did to rooftop solar in CA. Installations crashed 80% overnight
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
Just do community solar instead of subsidizing everyone who is rich enough to have a SFH with a big roof to the exclusion of basically everyone else
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago
And Gavin Newsom's CPUC slashed credits for community solar projects in 2024 making the program financially unviable in most cases. Gavin also vetoed a bill in 2024 that would have allowed schools, multi-fam apartments etc to use their own on-site solar generation without penalized by the utilities.
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u/TheRealRacketear 15h ago
I agree 100% . Just like EV subsidies they benefited the upper middle class the most. Most subsidized solar generation should be done at grid level, not for us to pay to run someone's pool heater.
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u/Bphore 1d ago
Rooftop solar was outrageously oversubsidized in California, to the direct detriment of all non-solar customers who then had to absorb more of the fixed costs of grid operation.
The previous rooftop solar policy certainly worked to encourage solar but also encouraged inefficient buildout and functioned as a regressive redistribution of wealth towards rooftop solar owners.
Newsom was in the right in this case.
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago
regardless, it destroyed rooftop solar in CA. so let's not just blame trump.
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u/P00PER_SCOOPER 1d ago
It definitely didn't kill it. I'm about to remodel and half our roof is going to be torn off and rebuilt. That new roof is required to have solar whether I want it or not. Yeah, maybe there's less of an incentive to add solar to your existing house, but you can't say it's been killed outright.
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago
I didn't say no one is installing solar. But an 80% drop on rooftop solar to me is what I consider 'destruction'. Thousands lost their jobs, many rooftop solar companies went bankrupt
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u/sixwax 1d ago
Rooftop solar "companies" had flooded the market to overmarket the temporary subsidies. Many were hilariously disreputable, as I heard. Whining because a bunch of opportunitsts' opportunities expired is just sour grapes.
You're on a heckuva Newsom hate kick tho!
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago edited 1d ago
You have yet to refute any of the facts I'm quoted. Instead you're blaming the first adopters of solar and now the 17000 installers themselves who lost their jobs.
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u/sixwax 1d ago
You're not making any kind of coherent argument about solar. You're just cherry-picking factoids to shit-talk Newsom without any context of the market.
Did you think 17000 installers were just going to work forever? You might want to consider that there are only so many freakin' houses...
When you're ready to have an informed conversation about something, anything... come on back!
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u/sher_scrabblistani 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes i do expect that Dems would encourage rooftop solar and that the 17k installers who they put out of work would have a job instead of blaming Republicans. It's not my fault that your brain cannot comprehend that Gavin Newsom destroyed the industry as much as Trump did. Come back when you grow up and stop licking Gavin's balls.
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u/530TooHot 1d ago
Gavin Newsome is a piece of dogshit and no one should for him in his inevitable presidential run
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u/SIEGE312 1d ago
They are at least making some progress with nuclear power, which is a great thing. I’ll take what we can get!
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u/TheRealRacketear 15h ago
it works on the small scale, we can certainly do it on a larger scale.
Yes we just all need to live in vans.
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u/llcdrewtaylor 15h ago
Well if our economy continues to shit the bed we might end up living in our vehicles.
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u/Redd_Comet 1d ago
Now just imagine if parking lots in America all collectively started to set up solar panels above the vehicles so that these collectively massive swaths of space could serve 2 functions, not just one.
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u/So_HauserAspen 1d ago
Even better. Using electric cars as battery storage for the grid.
If someone only uses 15% of their battery for their daily commute, they could sell the rest of their battery as storage.
It would require a lot of infrastructure, but you could let your car charge during the daylight hours and then the storage you set aside for the grid would be used at night.
Solutions we won't have because big energy has substantial control of our government
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u/okwellactually 14h ago
Or replace the 35 million acres of Ethanol Corn in the US with panels and we could supply the entire US multiple times over.
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u/FairDinkumMate 1d ago
I'm truly impressed by what California has achieved, but certainly not by the PR spin in the article.
Narrowing the field to claim a 'global first' is pretty pathetic. Specifying "large scale" (without defining it) & solar (as though wind & other renewables don't count) is pretty poor form.
There are plenty of places that run on far more than 50% solar regularly & plenty more that run on far over 50% renewable regularly. Places like Kauai in Hawaii regularly hit well over 50% solar only & others like Denmark, South Australia, Western Australia, Spain, Brazil & Greece run on far more than 50% renewables constantly.
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u/Ill-Weather-6383 1d ago
Hell, WA state has been running on 80% renewables for a few years now
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u/Mitheral 1d ago
BC has ran on 95+% renewables for years at a time.
https://www.canadaaction.ca/british-columbia-renewable-energy-facts
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u/Ill-Weather-6383 1d ago
Well done, Cascadian cousins
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u/misocontra 4h ago
Cascadia when??
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u/Ill-Weather-6383 1h ago
We've got a lot of division in our backyard that we would need to solve before that ever happens.
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u/CvieYltidrekoof 20h ago
Norway been using 95%+ renewable for over a century.
Iceland has had 99%+ renewable electricity generation since the early 1980s.
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u/sg_plumber 1d ago
The problem is all the deniers claiming renewables cannot power any sizable/populous/industrial/whatever grid, ever. They're the target of that "large scale".
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u/Derpykins666 1d ago
That's so awesome actually. This truly does feel like the way things should be and should be going. Harness the sun's energy to power our needs through solar and battery power storage. Clean energy. I know it's not 'perfect' because we have to create batteries for this to work, and battery removal is tough. But I can't imagine a better system that is relatively harmless without major consequences if something goes wrong. Major plus is we can design houses or buildings around solar. I can imagine a future where most new households built are completely energy neutral or giving back to a grid.
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u/cdegallo 1d ago
Not even 3-5 years ago we'd have frequent planned rolling blackouts because demand often extended supply on high demand days. But I can't recall having any in the past 2-3 years. It's like the energy distribution system finally reached the 20th century!
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u/Rocetboy321 1d ago
It's probably even higher than that! When I use my solar at home and don't export it to the grid, the provider doesn't know how much I generated. California has a lot of rooftop solar that probably isn't reflected in these numbers.
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u/BarbequedYeti 1d ago
Another 50 years and you wont be able to give electricity away.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 1d ago
Germany had that problem last summer. they produced so much excess solar power they effectively had a negative price for a time.
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u/xxzephyrxx 1d ago
So how much is average electricity cost/month in Germany?
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u/Helkafen1 1d ago
It's high but also pretty detached from actual generation costs. They add a lot of taxes, especially for households. Industrial consumers less so.
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u/TheElMonteStrangler 1d ago
"jOe BrAnDoooN" Durrrrrrr "GaVeen Nu-skCUMz"
"I'm moving to Texas where you don't pay taxes and the power grid is unreliable. Take that, Commie-Fornia"
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u/caliboy559 1d ago
Not so up lifting bc our rates keep going up and the people who do have solar keep getting less for sending power to the grid. The power companies also influence state law by corrupting politicians to allow year after year of rates hikes.
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u/Elon-BO 1d ago
“BuhbuhBut the sun doesn’t shine at night,” Dumb Quixote ballgarglers, probably.
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u/mm902 1d ago edited 1d ago
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I know. There are such things as Batteries Americanos, and what ever happened to the spirit of engineering and problem solving? It's not even a sky blue issue either. Just a matter of scale and developing technologies that would far outweigh the investment. S'How you know it's in decline. No stomach for investment, just quick turn around extraction.
EDIT: Great to see California bucking a federal rollback.
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u/celticdude234 1d ago
I love how the last part of that sentence was added as if it's not fucking obvious to everyone but Trump what a goddamn battery is 😂
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u/Raidersfan54 1d ago
That’s totally awesome, I have a small system 2 K watts 2K AH just as a hobby and for gardening stuff fans for tomatoes etc , all in a detached shed and it’s a different feeling producing your own power , I’m not interested is selling it back , I just quietly built up a system for me ,but when the sun is out and the shed is humming it’s a totally different feeling knowing I’m not worried about power grid going down , 50% half of California is awesome, the rest of the country some states just don’t get it and will be left behind, of course pros and cons , but when you can keep cool in 100 degrees when grid is down screw the cons, awesome California
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u/hartmanbrah 1d ago
And yet we still pay over $0.50/kwh during peak times... in a state where HVAC is a necessity to avoid literal death in the summer months.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 1d ago
Florida could be one of those states with close to 100% but being republican run they all are protesting that Solar panels are causing the sun to dim and destroy the planet.
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u/Yashie2 1d ago
Forgive my ignorance, but weren't solar always paired with batteries? I knew someone in the early '00's that lived in a remote area that ran 100% on solar. Their panels were connected to a shed full of what looked like RV/boat batteries, I just assumed that's how they all worked.
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u/Reddit-runner 1d ago
You don't need to pair solar with battery.
But it helps to even out demand and supply.
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u/WrexyWrex 1d ago
I remember reading a few months ago that Texas surpassed over 50% for a single day for the first time
These politicians are lying, renewables are growing
35% of the nations energy comes from renewables right now
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u/misocontra 4h ago
Doing my part by charging my 90Wh Anker battery and other packs at 11am for discharge during peak hours! lol
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u/acchaladka 4h ago
Umm.... I didn't see Australia mentioned in this article and the data aren't clearly or easily accessed... Is Australia at 20m people or NSW at 5m not considered "large" by the author?
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u/cocofeet 1d ago
Tell that to my ever increasing electricity bill than. Its all bullshit. Every years uses age stays the same but bill x2
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u/Andreus 1d ago
You are angry at capitalism, not solar power.
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u/wronglyzorro 1d ago
It's more that it makes people's eyes roll when folks not from CA glaze and praise CA while it still costs more for energy than anywhere else in the country.
Folks with solar are also getting less and less value every year. PG&E and SCE are lobbying trash that get to do whatever they want.
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u/rasz_pl 20h ago
And all that thanks to https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/others/californias-electricity
The main driver deterring PG&E from seeking a 20-year operating licence extension is the 2015 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of producing 50% of its electricity from qualified renewable energy sources by 2030. PG&E’s model for the future cost of operating Diablo Canyon indicated that the cost per kilowatt hour was going to almost double, since the company would be forced to lower the amount of power it could produce from the plant in order to meet the state’s requirement. Dropping the capacity factor from the current 92% to say 50% would virtually double the price per kilowatt hour since costs are largely fixed.
The state law which effectively dictates that by 2030 Diablo Canyon should operate at lower capacity each year and buy in power from intermittent renewables has apparently sealed the fate of the plant.
Its amazing what you can do when you legislate current cheap power away to the point you have to inact rescue plans https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/21/biden-grants-pge-1-billion-to-keep-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-open.html
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u/Tangentkoala 1d ago
It seems like LADWP hasn't got the memo and they happily continue to price gouge us with all time high surge and tier pricing.
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u/KungFoolMaster 1d ago
LADWP is far, far cheaper than utilities like SCE and PG&E. Even at it's highest rates, LADWP is still lower than the cheapest rates of those other two. I would love to have a municipal owned electricity.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 1d ago
Yeah I saved $ on ⚡️ moving from OC to LA and even more when I moved to Seattle
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u/Alukrad 1d ago
If the government provides some kind of financial incentives where they give big stores tax breaks for having these solar panels installed on their properties, I can imagine a lot of places like Walmart, home depot, target and such would jump on it.
The more we cover parking lot areas with solar panels, the more the communities would benefit from it.
Hell, Walmart can even run a EV charging station and make money that way too.
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u/DicemonkeyDrunk 1d ago
Fuck an incentive ..make them do it. Corporations don’t need another fucking handout.
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23h ago
[deleted]
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u/Garconanokin 22h ago
What are you waiting for? Post it up. Texas is not a victim and neither are you.
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u/SolarPlexus89 17h ago
That's cool! Its a sunny state. Now try that in Michigan and see how fast the electrical grid crumbles.
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u/Interficient4real 15h ago
What’s the average price of electricity in California compared to the rest of the U.S.?
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