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Last month, the governor announced that the state’s energy policies had set new records whereby clean energy had exceeded grid demand at some point during 40 of the last 48 days. Left unsaid, however, is that clean energy is not always produced when it is needed. When production exceeds demand as in those 40 days, one possible outcome continues to be that prices go negative and a portion of that production is wasted. The bureaucratic checklists get checked, but end users are left with paying the costs. To counter this waste, the state policies also require increasing battery storage
additions to the grid, with the state reaching 10.4 GW of capacity last month as well. This approach reduces the need to “throw away” clean energy production, but in essence requires end users to pay for generation of the same energy twice.
The state’s policies, however, also set another record. In this case, electricity prices hit the trifecta of reaching the highest average price levels across all three major end uses—residential, commercial, and industrial—among the contiguous states. The state’s energy policies continue to reach new records for production. California energy users continue to see new records in the associated costs.
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