LS Energy Solutions activates 200 MW / 400 MWh energy storage in California
The Big Rock battery energy storage site is comprised of 137 containerized batteries and will help the California grid meet resource adequacy requirements.
State solar policy on the frontlines
For a couple months every two years, every state’s legislative session align, and this year, energy policy dominated many states’ sessions. In regulated energy markets, advocacy groups crusaded against utilities that were relentless to not lose any of their monopoly share to clean energy.
California’s home batteries are replacing gas plants and saving hundreds of millions
The Brattle Group analyzed a gigawatt-hour virtual power plant test that may be the world’s largest as part of its review of California’s distributed peak-shaving program.
California cuts funding for nation’s largest virtual power plant
With California facing a $12 billion budget shortfall, the state’s lawmakers opted not only against a boost in funding for its flagship virtual power plant program as initially planned, but to not renew its funding all together.
Virtual power plant legislation lay in Gov. Newsom’s hands after sailing through California Assembly
California lawmakers passed two bills that aim to facilitate how the state and its utilities handle virtual power plants.
Enphase introduces commercial-scale solar microinverter with 97.5% efficiency
The inverter is designed for three-phase grid configurations without using external transformers. It contains gallium nitride technology, a first for Enphase’s microinverters.
California now hosting canal top solar-plus-storage plant
California has completed the 1.6 MW Nexus canal-top solar pilot, adding a 75 kW iron-flow battery system as part of a $20 million state-funded project to test water and energy benefits.
Making sense of CAISO’s bid cost recovery mechanism and what it means for batteries
As California batteries increasingly depend on bid cost recovery to smooth out market deviations, the make-whole mechanism is being reshaped to balance flexibility and fairness.
California requires utilities to offer dynamic pricing that favors low-cost renewables
Solar trade group SEIA said that dynamic pricing of electricity in California would reduce renewable curtailment and could in the long term reduce costs for all customers.
California’s virtual power plant program helped prevent blackouts and reliance on fossil fuels. Now its future is in jeopardy.
Gov. Newsom pushed off making a decision over the fate of a program to prevent California’s blackouts and lower costs, but now his time to make a decision is running out — and so is the program’s funding.
