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Power Plants
Keep Closer Tabs on DOE’s Billion$ for Nuclear Reactor Demonstrations: GAO
The Department of Energy awarded $4.6 billion last year to bolster emerging small modular and advanced nuclear reactor projects that...
CAISO Extends Just a Few RMR Contracts While Cheering Growth of Grid Storage
The California Independent System Operator’s Governing Board Aug. 31 unanimously approved extending reliability must-run contracts for five small power generation...
Extreme Events Force CA Leaders to Face “Necessary Evils” to Protect Grid
Growing concerns about California’s power system necessitates the recent extraordinary steps by legislators to safeguard reliability, a key member of...
DWR Given Lead on Managing Summer Energy Landscape
Updated June 30, 7 PM The governor signed an energy budget bill approved by the Senate and Assembly July 29—which...
State Carbon Emissions Reduction Plan Update Faces Big Pushback
California will need carbon capture and sequestration, plus 10 gigawatts of new natural gas-fired power plants to become carbon neutral...
Budget Revise Supporting 5 GW of Fossil Power & Waiving Environmental Laws Faces Pushback
The governor’s proposed budget revision providing $5.2 billion—with the lion’s share going to the Department of Water Resources—to add 5,000...
Air Regulators Pitch Heavy Use of Carbon Capture to Slash Emissions by 2045
The California Air Resources Board’s draft update of its plan to cut greenhouse gases in the state would allow a...
PG&E’s H2 Plan Lacks Details Months After CPUC Dismissed Previous R&D Plan
Pacific Gas & Electric’s announcement this week that it will create the nation’s most comprehensive study and demonstration of hydrogen...
Stakeholders, Utility Unite in Face-Off with Regulators Over Arizona Just Energy Transition
Arizona Public Service (APS) raised the national standard for a Just Energy Transition with its $144.45 million settlement with affected...
Calif’s Zero Emissions Goal Drives Huge New Demand, Weird Math and Dunkelflaute
California may face up to a 90% growth in electricity demand to meet its economy-wide zero emissions by 2045 goal,...
PG&E’s Power Customers Hit with 20% Rate Hike
Electricity rates for Pacific Gas & Electric customers will rise an additional 12% this year, on top of an 8%...
Natural Gas Use Rises, Renewables Slow in California, Report Finds
California’s decarbonization target is being jeopardized by increasing use of natural gas for generating electricity and heating in buildings, according...
Delays in Public Ability to Review Renewable Contract & Bids Shortened
It’s been nearly two decades since California first ordered utilities to enter into long-term contracts for renewable contracts and simultaneously...
Shorts
California’s community choice organizations signed agreements for 3,000 MW of clean energy supplies over the last year. “These projects reflect...
Replacement of Dirty Oakland Peaker Delayed
The plan to swap out the polluting Oakland Energy Center with battery storage this coming January has been delayed because...
Controversial Redondo Beach Gas Plant to Stay Online
It’s final. In the tension between electricity reliability and harmful pollution, reliability won out in a vote on Oct. 19...
Future Brightens for the Salton Sea’s Lithium Valley
Prospects are the brightest they’ve been since the beginning of a years-long effort to create a domestic supply of lithium...
120 MW of New Fossil Gas Generation Installed
Source: DWR Four new 30 MW natural gas-fired generators have just been added to the California grid at a cost...
$15B for climate protection, resource adequacy inadequacies
The state grid operator and a federal regulator both point to the fallout from a shortage of supply cushions to...
Totally Different States, Same Problem: Resource Adequacy
In what could be a meaningful coincidence, the California grid operator approved costly reliability ‘must run’ contracts Sept 23 on...