California went a record 98 days with 10 hours of electricity from renewables

[k310]

My electric rates more than doubled. No doubt for different reasons, including previously shelved infrastructure improvements such as underground lines.

For whatever reason, it hurts like hell.

[rayiner]

Is the retail electric rate really almost $0.30? Here in Maryland, it’s half that, and charging my EV is like $0.11. At $0.30, having an EV wouldn’t be any cheaper than buying gas!

[hedora]

Every year, I run the numbers to see how many years it will take for going completely off grid (to avoid paying for prior and current corruption at PG&E) to pay for itself.

Every year, it decreases.

[g8oz]

Yeah, also the article says "The California Public Utilities Commission, for instance, authorized its three largest utilities to collect $27 billion in wildfire prevention and insurance costs from ratepayers between 2019 and 2023."

[vantassell]

Rates are high because we’re paying for all the wildfires the electric utilities have started.

[danny_codes]

The taxpayer is covering PG&E's wildfire liabilities and deferred maintenance costs. You know, instead of the PG&E shareholders. Capitalism only applies to poors, as we all know.

[ZeroGravitas]

The article kind of jumbles the paper it's reporting on, the paper's headline might be better (or linking the paper directly):

"No blackouts or cost increases due to 100 % clean, renewable electricity powering California for parts of 98 days"

> This paper uses data from the world's 5th-largest economy to show no blackouts occurred when wind-water-solar electricity supply exceeded 100 % of demand on California's main grid for a record 98 of 116 days from late winter to early summer, 2024, for an average of 4.84 (and maximum 10.1) hours/day

[aeternum]

Why are the live statistics so different than the conclusions in the paper?

Here you can see that CA power is more than double the cost of PJM, Southwest, and Midcontinent power. Whenever I look at it, CA is still be burning a huge amount of natural gas, especially overnight.

https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso

[phillipseamore]

"As a result of the increase in WWS supply and decrease in demand from 2019 to 2024, the daily-average gap between WWS supply and demand decreased gradually during that period. This culminated March 7 to June 30, 2024, when the 24-h average WWS supply reached 61.3 % of demand, versus 56.1 % of demand during the same period in 2023."

Also "peaked at 83.2 % of daily demand on May 25."

Note that demand in 2023 was 533.6 Gwh/day and went down to 529.1.

"between June 2023 and June 2024, nameplate capacities of utility solar, wind, and batteries increased by ∼18%, ∼4%, and 73.3%, respectively"

Cost and details of those capacity increases isn't mentioned but it seems that the average 31.7% increase in capacity only yielded a 5.2pp increase (mostly from the batteries which appear to handle 4 hours of load).

The study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812...

[mistrial9]

electric bills for average residential customers in this PG&E area have increased five times in one year. The average residential bill has increased 56% in three years. This is after a state-backed replacement of senior management after the court losses.

source: local news reporter Kevin Truong

[linotype]

Electricity is expensive in California, more at 11.

[bell-cot]

> The state went a record 98 of 116 days providing up to 10 hours of electricity with renewables alone

Nice...but "up to 10" < 24, and 98 < 116, and "how easy was the first 1/4?" is generally a crap indicator of how easily a job can be finished.

[cma]

Real subheadline says:

> The state went a record 98 of 116 days providing up to 10 hours

Does the study clarify? "Up to” could mean almost anything, and could be rewritten ”no more than"

[hedora]

Yeah, I don’t see how this is the record. California went many years without producing more than 10 hours of electricity from renewables.

I wonder what the study actually found.

[throwaway5292]

That sounds incredibly efficient.