Renewable electricity supplied nearly 100% of California’s electricity demand last Saturday, a record high, officials said, largely thanks to the large amounts of solar power generated along Interstate 10 in one hour east of the Coachella Valley.
Over the weekend, environmentalists celebrated the official online supply rising to 101%, but an electricity sector official said on Monday evening that they had rechecked the data and adjusted it slightly in due to battery and reserve charge and other resource requirements.
As revelers celebrated in the scorching sun at the Stagecoach Music Festival, statewide power demand reached 18,672 MW at 2:45 p.m.and at 2:50 a.m. we reached 99.87% of the load served by all renewables, which broke the previous record… of 97.58%said Anna Gonzales, spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, a nonprofit organization that oversees the state’s bulk power system and transmission lines.
Two-thirds of the 18,000 MW required came from solar energy charged on the electricity grid, or 12,391 MW. The rest came from wind, geothermal and other renewable sources.
Environmentalists, who have been pushing for years to get all of California’s energy from renewable sources, were thrilled on Saturday to see the indicator near and surpass 100 percent.
“Once we reached 100%, we were very excitedsaid Laura Deehan, executive director of Environment California. She said the organization and others have worked for 20 years to push the Golden State to complete renewable energy through a series of increasingly difficult mandates. “California solar power plants play a very important role“.
The group has also been pushing for one million solar rooftops to be installed across the state, which has already been achieved, adding what some say is a more environmentally friendly form of solar power than farms. solar, which eat up large swaths of the Mojave Desert and fragile. landscapes.
Deehan and others said in a statement that more needs to be done, especially at the federal level. “Despite the incredible progress shown by this weekend’s milestone, a puzzling misstep by the Biden administration has supporters of rolling back California’s clean energy goals worried.“.
They said that an investigation into the to have to to solar panels imported by the Department of Commerce delays thousands of megawatts of solar and storage projects in California“a major disruption that Governor Newsom called “one of the greatest stories in the country‘”.
Still, Deehan said that “California has proven that, for a brief bright moment, we can do it! It’s time to switch to 100% clean energy, 100% of the time“.