Creaking California: Golden State's struggling power grid on brink of collapse, officials say

washingtonexaminer.com

Creaking California: Golden State's struggling power grid on brink of collapse, officials say

Tori Richards

7–9 minutes

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Downtown skyline is seen behind high tension towers in Los Angeles, California on August 16, 2020. - California on August 14 ordered rolling power outages for the first time since 2001 as a statewide heat wave strained its electrical system. Pacific Gas & Electric, the states largest utility, tweeted that it would turn off power to about 200,000 to 250,000 customers in rotating outages for about an hour at a time. (Photo by Apu GOMES / AFP) (Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)

This is the first of a three-part Washington Examiner series on California’s aging infrastructure and its impact on the lives of residents after years of failed spending programs and neglect from elected officials.

California was once the proverbial shining city on the hill when it came to electricity in the United States.

It was 1882, and Los Angeles Mayor Homer Toberman flicked the switch on the nation’s first electric street light . California would lead the way in the following decades with the beginnings of today's grid, starting with the world’s longest voltage power line. It seemed as though the state had caught lightning in a bottle. However, decades of neglect and mismanagement have decayed the once-great grid to the point where the grid could come crashing down in a high-pressure situation.

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“We had 10 days of [power cutback] alerts, record-breaking utilization on our grid — went right up to the edge of breaking our grid, but it didn’t,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Clinton Global Initiative event in September.

The grid was saved by battery power, Newsom said while promoting the state’s push toward carbon neutrality in 2045.

“We’ve backed up those goals with regulation and laws. There’s no jurisdiction anywhere in the world that has set down more ambition,” Newsom said. “When California moves, it moves the national market, which in turn has an impact globally.”

But at what cost?

Hundreds of thousands of Californians deal with blackouts every year, caused by either the weather or catastrophes such as forest fires.

Not ready for prime time

Although California has legislated goals to rid itself of fossil fuels, there is no getting around the fact that 38% of the state’s power comes from natural gas. Nuclear and hydroelectric contribute about 20%, while solar and wind combined are 25% of electric generation, a 2021 state report said.

A customer shops for groceries at La Tapatia Market during a blackout in Napa, California, on Oct. 9, 2019. Half a million homes and businesses in Northern California lost power and more will soon follow as bankrupt California utility giant PG&E Corp. carries out its biggest-ever intentional blackout to keep power lines from sparking blazes.

(David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

California does not have the means to mass-produce hydrogen, which is a clean derivative of natural gas. This would be needed to make up for the shortfall, said Jack Brouwer, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

While clean fuel cells are being produced, there are insufficient ways to transmit this energy through pipes and wires. The electrical grid does not store the majority of its power — when a light switch is flipped, that energy is provided from a source where it was produced at that moment.

“What we are investing in is insufficient. We need natural gas. That is where the state has failed," Brouwer said.

“In recent years, more than one time per year, the grid has been close to failing,” Brouwer continued. “That is why Gov. Newsom has had to declare a state of emergency and ask people not to use electricity. Usually, that is happening during a heat wave or a wildfire. … High temperatures lead to wires getting too hot.”

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant at the edge of the Pacific ocean in San Luis Obispo, Calif., as seen on Tues. March 31, 2015.

(Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Every year, environmentalists and members of the public mount campaigns to shut down power plants across the state. This started with the environmental movement in the 1970s, and now only one nuclear plant still operates out of the six that had been built.

“Nuclear has a big challenge with its waste, but regarding greenhouse gas and pollutants, it’s very, very good,” Brouwer said. “They’re extremely low in pollutant emissions.”

Lawmakers at odds  

As with most issues, California’s Democratic and Republican lawmakers disagree on how to deal with the grid crisis as the state pushes consumers toward electric cars. In 2035, it will be illegal for dealers to sell gas-powered vehicles.

This means an extra 12 million vehicles will be utilizing the grid to get a charge. That would require triple the amount of power coming off the grid along with five times the number of solar and wind farms produced over the past decade, a CalMatters investigation found.

To put it another way, if people in the Western U.S. began using mostly electric cars, it would take five nuclear power plants just to accommodate them all, a Stanford University study said.

Charging the cars at night while an owner is home from work will also cause electric bills to go up because those are the peak hours, the study said.

“Rates will always go up. Other utilities will ask for rate increases because they are forced to buy the green energy,” said Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle, vice chairman of the Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee. “Our power grid is not diverse enough. We are not planning for the future.”

But Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a champion of green energy, said the push toward carbon neutrality is essential to protect the environment. She has authored numerous bills seeking to supplant the grid with green hydrogen.

“Green hydrogen is a game-changer, not only because it’s made from renewable energy sources, but because it’s extremely versatile,” Skinner said in a press release. “[My bill] will also support existing, good-paying jobs because much of our fossil fuel industries and infrastructure can be transitioned to green hydrogen.”

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Newsom echoed his commitment to going green with his Clinton Global Initiative talk.

“There’s no jurisdiction anywhere in the world that has set down more ambition, backed up by not just policy and regulatory framework, but by a record-breaking $54 billion in this year’s budget to fast-track our transition to low-carbon green growth,” he said.