Moving beyond California’s one-sided view of reliability

The following is a contributed article by Sam Maslin, vice president of energy storage at Endurant Energy

On August 31, in response to a significant heat wave impacting California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, declared a State of Emergency and directed all state agencies to act to ensure the availability of sufficient power to safely satisfy the increased demand created by this extreme weather.  Over the next several days, the California Independent System Operator implemented a number of emergency energy supply and savings measures to meet what ended up as a record grid peak of 52,061 MW. These actions dovetail with another related measure in Governor Newsom’s proposal to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, as it is seen as necessary to support the grid while we await larger renewable deployment.

All told, it’s clear that California has an urgent need for reliability resources during peak windows.  

The problem is, the current reliability process — the Resource Adequacy, or RA, program — is almost exclusively focused on bulk generators and the high voltage transmission system, with scant attention paid to the potential of resources on the distribution system. This one-sided view of reliability results in an unhealthy dependence on slow-moving mega-projects, and a cycle of reactive executive orders and the repeated extensions of generation sources not favored by policymakers or consumers.

We need a path to quickly scale the complete set of energy resources needed to match renewable generation with statewide load at all times. Specifically, we need to spur the mass development of distributed assets, in load pockets, that can permanently shift energy demand away from peak periods and improve our ability to handle extreme weather events. To do this, we need to directly incentivize the reliability benefits of these assets, the same way we do on the transmission side.