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 these microgrids, California is still far from finding effective ways to get them in place for next year’s fire season.
Even Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility most affected by wildfires and fire-prevention blackouts, is struggling to find solutions to replace the hundreds of megawatts of mobile diesel generators it’s secured to back up blacked-out Northern California communities.
