Tag: California

March 23, 2021

There’s “a light at the end of tunnel” in sight for technology executives that were tasked with suddenly transitioning thousands of city employees and public students to remote work and learning environments last year at the onset of the coronavirus […]

March 19, 2021

A POLR, essentially a utility or entity that is obliged to serve all customers, isn’t specific to the electric sector — telecommunications carriers of last resort, for instance, have existed since the 1990s. In California, the concept has become especially […]

March 11, 2021

California is the top exporter of contaminated plastic in the nation, flooding poor countries who lack infrastructure to manage it, confer stakeholders vested in curbing plastic pollution. And the state could be headed for big trouble (not unlike other states, […]

March 10, 2021

“Disappointing.” That’s how a range of clean energy advocates and demand response providers are describing the California Public Utilities Commission’s latest plan to prevent a repeat of the state’s August 2020 rolling blackouts this coming summer. The proposed decision (PDF) […]

February 9, 2021

Community choice aggregators (CCAs) have become a formidable player in California’s electricity markets, taking over the role of supplying electricity to millions of customers from the state’s investor-owned utilities, announcing big-time clean energy contracts and pushing regulators to add flexibility […]

February 5, 2021

California regulators are on the cusp of breaking open a long-awaited opportunity to enlist rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries and other distributed energy resources (DERs) to substitute for expensive grid upgrades. It’s called the Partnership Pilot, and according to DER developers, […]

January 27, 2021

California utilities have the authority to proactively de-energize their power-lines as a way to reduce the risk of wildfires in their service territories, albeit as a last resort. In 2020, wildfires burned more than 4 million acres of the state […]

January 25, 2021

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, under growing pressure to jump-start a faltering covid-19 vaccine rollout, jetted to Los Angeles on Jan. 15 to unveil a massive new vaccination site at Dodger Stadium that is expected eventually to inoculate 12,000 people a […]

December 23, 2020

California’s long-awaited proceeding on distributed solar compensation may offer important answers to new questions about the costs of renewables that will come with the Biden energy transition. Net energy metering (NEM) compensates distributed solar owners for generation exported to the […]

December 23, 2020

Pacific Gas & Electric is asking state regulators to approve another massive round of energy storage procurements, including its first large-scale contract for behind-the-meter batteries to serve grid needs. The six projects announced Wednesday add up to 387 megawatts and […]

December 10, 2020

California regulators and utilities want to build microgrids for communities most at threat from the state’s increasingly deadly wildfires, and the widespread public safety power shutoff (PSPS) grid outages meant to prevent them. But despite policies to fund and enable […]

December 7, 2020

Clean water infrastructure in California is big. We are home to the Los Angeles Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, the largest wastewater treatment facility west of the Mississippi, and the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System, the world’s largest water reuse project. […]

December 3, 2020

California, like the rest of the nation, is seeing a dramatic rise in COVID infections and deaths — and Los Angeles County has some of the most dire statistics. Health officials reported more than 7,500 new cases in the county […]

November 16, 2020

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) initiated rolling blackouts that affected hundreds of thousands of customers this summer after a record-breaking heatwave swept across the Western U.S., leading to a spike in energy demand. The operator simultaneously faced other issues […]

October 26, 2020

Long-duration storage occupies an enviable position in the cleantech hype cycle. Its allure has proven more durable than energy blockchain, and its commercialization is further along than super-buzzy green hydrogen. Depending on who you talk to, long-duration storage technology can […]

October 16, 2020

The California Energy Commission is putting a “down payment” of $384 million over the next three years on the electric-vehicle charging and zero-emission vehicle infrastructure needed to meet Governor Gavin Newsom’s pledge to end sales of new gasoline-powered cars by […]

October 12, 2020

The Twin Rivers Unified School District near Sacramento achieved a major milestone in its climate action plan by switching 75 diesel-powered school buses to run on renewable diesel fuel provided by Neste. As a result, the district’s fleet is now […]

September 30, 2020

California has more distributed energy resources (DERs) than any other state, pressuring it to find ways to integrate them into the grid. The interconnection rules that tell developers of rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries and electric vehicle chargers how much time […]

September 29, 2020

In a monumental decision to boost electric car sales and reduce transportation emissions, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an order halting new gas-powered car sales after 2035. The state is the biggest car market in the United States, and […]

September 10, 2020

Nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center were on edge as early as March when patients with COVID-19 began to show up in areas of the hospital that were not set aside to care for them. The Centers for Disease […]