A few days before the lights went out in Texas, the California Public Utilities Commission quietly authorized the state’s largest investor-owned utilities to purchase more power over the next few months in order to avoid rolling blackouts this summer. Last August, more than 800,000 people were left without electricity during a heat wave.
The CPUC said the utilities – Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric – may pass the cost of the extra power purchases through to their customers, raising utility bills.
The vote by the CPUC followed a lengthy process that began when Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded a report on the cause of the August blackouts. The CPUC, together with the California Energy Commission and the California Independent System Operator, produced the “Preliminary Root Cause Analysis” last October and finalized the report in January.
Can you guess the root cause of the electricity blackouts during the August heat wave?
Naturally, the report begins by blaming the “climate change-induced extreme heat storm.” The report solemnly declares that the temperatures on August 14-15 were the highest since 1985; except that there was “a similar heat wave” for five days in July 2006, and on three of those days, the temperature was higher than it was in August 2020.
The heat wave caused demand for electricity – here comes the truth – to exceed “the existing electricity resource planning targets.”
And here comes the rest of the truth: “In transitioning to a reliable, clean, and affordable resource mix, resource planning targets have not kept pace to lead to sufficient resources that can be relied upon to meet demand in the early evening hours.”
In other words, California’s “planners” are consistently underestimating how much electricity the state’s residents and businesses need, and not only in August. The “resource planning targets” are not “sufficient,” and “this makes balancing demand and supply more challenging.” This is the normal state of affairs, and then, “these challenges were amplified by the extreme heat storm.”
We’re courting disaster in California, shutting down steady and reliable sources of electricity such as nuclear plants, decommissioning coal-burning plants, and making frown-y faces at natural gas and hydroelectric power. Utilities have been mandated by state law to purchase an ever-greater share of electricity from renewable sources. Even though nuclear and hydro are renewable, they don’t count. Utilities must buy solar and wind power to meet the mandated targets.
And that brings us back to the “Root Cause” report’s admission that there’s an ongoing problem meeting demand for electricity in the “early evening hours.” That’s when people would come home from school or work (pre-pandemic) and turn on lights, appliances and devices. And then just when demand for power peaks, the sun goes down.
Apparently nobody planned for that.
The report explains that the “construct for RA” – RA is power-speak for “Resource Adequacy” – was developed around the concept of peak demand. “The principle was that if enough capacity was available at peak demand there would be enough capacity at all other hours of the day as well since most resources could run 24/7 if needed,” the report says. “With the increase of solar penetration in recent years, however, this is no longer the case.”
Solar and wind power are intermittent, and there is a need for consistent, reliable electricity that these resources just can’t provide. One of the problems last August was “high clouds” from a storm covering parts of California and reducing “available generation from all types of solar generation facilities.”
While California has been “transitioning” to a fictional “reliable, clean, and affordable resource mix,” the state has been surviving by importing electricity from other states. California leads all states in electricity imports.
That was another problem last August. The heat wave crossed state lines in the West, leading neighboring states that might have sent electricity to California to keep it at home.
Clouds, neighbors, it’s always something. It’s dangerous to live on the edge.
In any case, the fear of angry voters seems to have concentrated the minds of key people in Sacramento, leading to the CPUC’s vote to authorize extra charges on utility bills to cover the cost of buying extra power. The “electricity resource planning targets” have been adjusted to prevent rolling blackouts this summer.
That still leaves us with the problem of mindless policies that are gradually starving the state of energy while sharply raising utility bills, or as it’s known in California, “global leadership.”
No one seems to be following. Perhaps suffering in the heat and cold because the utility bills look like mortgage payments is an acquired taste.
Some people who spoke during the public comment portion of the CPUC’s meeting complained that allowing the utilities to buy more power would lead them to buy more fossil fuel energy, just when California is supposed to be transitioning.
The CPUC voted unanimously to let the utilities buy more electricity, no questions asked, and to let them bill their customers for the extra cost.
If lawmakers would let them, utilities could sign long-term contracts for reliable power that would be much more affordable, and that would help California families and businesses survive in this state. It’s a work of fiction that California can run on nothing but sunshine and breezes. Poverty, on the other hand, you can find on the shelves under “True Crime.”
Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley
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