Countries are now even more cautious towards droughts, heat waves, and hard-to-distinguish wildfires amidst the aggravating climate change and increasingly hot summer, and now the “clean grid” plan of California is also encountering several unforeseeable challenges.
California is expected to be hit with a peak in power consumption in the future, where a void of power supply as high as 3,500MW will be seen then, which means there will be zero power for 2.6 million households. Now the state is promoting renewable electricity by establishing a clean grid using solar and wind power, though the lack of sun and wind would be pointless for such implementation that requires these natural conditions.
Hence, in order to replenish the void of power consumption and reduce the grid consumption from major electricity users, California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to permit industrial energy users to generate power through diesel generators, as well as invest additional equipment in improving the air quality and reducing carbon emission, as stipulated in the latest emergency announcement.
The announcement on July 30th also stated that the state government will pay industrial energy users to generate power using reserve generators in order to reduce the power consumption from the grid, as well as allow ships that are docked at the ports to use the auxiliary generators. Most of these reserve power is derived from diesel generators. California will also alleviate the requirements on air quality for natural gas power plants.
Newsom’s office commented that these measures are merely the final implementations, and do not indicate setbacks in the environmental objectives of California.
California aims to elevate the ratio of green energy to 60% by 2030, while US President Joe Biden’s target is even stricter at hoping to achieve decarbonization in power systems by 2035, though difficulties are inevitable as long as there is a need to increase the ratio of renewable energy since it is prone to the issue of intermittence on one hand, and that it also exacerbates climate change on the other.
California, similar to Taiwan, has also encountered a severe drought and water scarcity during summer this year. The two power outages in Taiwan during May was caused by the unexpected power consumption peak and the annual survey on multiple generators, whereas the drought had also drastically reduced the dispatching capacity of power. Similarly, California has been deprived of 1,000MW of hydroelectricity due to the drought, and has to confront the early arrival of the wildfire season, with challenges imposed on the transmission and distribution system at the same time.
When it rains it pours. A fire incident had just broke out at a natural gas plant in San Francisco, which removed 300MW of power provision, while Pacific Gas & Electric, as well as San Diego Gas & Electric, also commented previously that the battery energy storage system that was scheduled to initiate operation on August 1st will now be postponed due to the impact on the supply chain from the pandemic, and did not reveal the time for the new grid-connection.
(Cover photo source: pixabay)