California’s regulation has led to “Electricity Woes” as UK energy expert Colin Robinson noted their “law of increasing intervention” but the Golden State is now rolling back regulations and suspending the authoritarian environmental rules.
Facing a 3,500 MW shortfall in power generation capacity to meet current peak demand, and predicting a 5,000 MW deficit next summer, Rob Nikolewski summarized Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reversal on leftist policy.
“With energy resources looking exceedingly tight amid a persistently hot summer that has seen a spate of wildfires burn across the West, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation Friday to free up extra megawatts of power to help make sure the state’s lights stay on in the coming months.”
The highlights sound very conservative:
- suspending licensing requirements to speed up the expansion of battery energy storage systems of 20 megawatts or more that can discharge for at least two hours by Oct. 31 and deliver energy when the grid needs it most
- easing restrictions on using backup generators when the power system is squeezed
- allowing natural gas power plants to use more fuel than typically allowed by air quality districts when the state’s grid operator has issued an emergency notice or a grid warning, and
- exempting ships berthed in California ports to operate on auxiliary engines — which can mean using diesel fuel — instead of using shore power when the grid is strained.
“Our first attempt will always be to deploy clean energy,” Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer told reporters during a conference call.
“There will be some backup energy that will be from fossil fuels that (will be) used in very intermittent, very extreme and very rare occasions but the tools will be in the toolbox for us to deploy.”
TRANSLATION: Deregulate licensing requirements, restrictions on generators, increased fuel usage, allow more diesel fuel consumption offshore and permit more fossil fuel energy.
The full post at the San Diego Union Tribune HERE