Comment by idiotsecant
13 hours ago
This isn't a good thing unless it's paired with storage and transmission upgrades. Every time this kind of story posts I make this same comment and am met with the same probably well-meaning but ignorant responses. Solar generation is easy and cheap and simple. Actually getting that power where it needs to be, when it needs to be there is complex and expensive. You either need to store it or you need to transmit it very long distances, neither of which we can do effectively right now. Most of California routinely goes into negative power pricing - this is not the mark of a healthy system, it represents a massive inefficiency and destabilizing factor.
We need to pressure politicians to subsidize pump storage powerplants and massive transmission system upgrades (which means being ok with permitting new transmission lines) it's simply impossible to continue increasing the solar on the grid otherwise, we are rapidly approaching instability.
Check out the crazy amount of battery additions in California in 2025 and planned for 2026. It’s gunna be fine
That 'crazy' amount is not even scratching the surface of the surface of what we would need for a high-solar grid, let alone a majority solar grid. Not even within an order of magnitude. You don't have to take my word for it, the CAISO literally provides the data.
How much more do we need? 2x the capacity? 5x? 10x? The state has added a ridiculous amount of battery over the last couple years so it doesn't seem intractable
I remember looking at CAISO's graphs a few years ago and when the sun goes down we were basically completely dependent on imports and natty gas, especially for scaling up to demand around 6-7pm. Looking at today's graph, batteries were actually our top electricity source for a while around peak electricity time. Natty has been able to stay pretty flat, and even now its neck and neck with batteries