by Julian Spector

August 31, 2018 August 31, 2018

Futuristic discussions about cleaning up the grid got a lot less theoretical this week when California lawmakers passed a 100 percent clean energy requirement for 2045.

The legislature approved the bill Wednesday, sending it to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown, an avowed climate hawk. He hasn't signed it yet, but I’m writing this column based on the assumption that the bill becomes law.

That leaves the overwhelming question of how California should actually accomplish this. And that’s a question the energy storage industry is best suited to answer.

To succeed, California must strike the right balance between cheap and plentiful renewables serving bulk generation and enough dispatchable resources to ensure power availability around the clock. In this installment of Storage Plus, I examine currently available datasets to sketch out a vision of how this mighty transition will unfold.