The California grid ran on 100% renewables with no blackouts or cost rises for a record 98 days, late winter to early summer 2024 for an average (maximum) of 4.84 (10.1) hours per day
Source: 1oneplus
The California grid ran on 100% renewables with no blackouts or cost rises for a record 98 days, late winter to early summer 2024 for an average (maximum) of 4.84 (10.1) hours per day
Source: 1oneplus
2 Comments
This is great news. But I find the analysis to support the claim about “no cost rises” to be a bit weak. Using spot prices to evaluate the costs is misleading because most renewables have near 0 marginal costs, which means near 0 spot price, but not near 0 costs (they are usually paid through contracts and don’t participate in the spot market).
Also a the big solar uptake was in part the due to the use of net metering, which is also rightly pointed as one of the reasons why costs went up.
> Compared to the same period in 2023, solar output in California is up 31%, wind power is up 8%, and batteries are up a staggering 105%. Batteries supplied up to 12% of nighttime demand by storing and redistributing excess solar energy.
As this continues to scale we’ll see more and more night time hours powered by batteries