Tag: California

April 16, 2021

SAN JOSE — Last spring, only weeks into the pandemic, Christina Garcia was spending her days struggling to help her two young sons adjust to online schooling when she got such a heavy, painful period she could barely stand. After […]

April 7, 2021

Even as California prepares to expand vaccine eligibility on April 15 to all residents age 16 and up, the state has managed to inoculate only about half its senior population — the 65-and-older target group deemed most vulnerable to death […]

March 31, 2021

Utility reliance on diesel generation to power communities during wildfire-related power shut-offs has been an area of concern for regulators for a while now. PG&E deployed six such shut-offs last year and in January, Senior Vice President and Chief Risk […]

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 […]