In a serious milestone, July 28 marked the one hundredth day of a 144-day stretch by which California provided 100% of its electrical energy demand with renewables.
The 100 days of continuity means not that renewables are powering the grid for your entire day, however that it’s taking place constantly each day – and that’s unprecedented.
Since March, historic output from photo voltaic, wind, hydro, and battery storage has fulfilled all of California’s electrical energy demand practically day by day, for time intervals starting from 5 minutes to a number of hours.
Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford College professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of Stanford’s Ambiance/Power program, has been monitoring California’s renewables efficiency, and he shares his findings on Twitter (X) when the state breaks information. Yesterday, he posted:
Jacobson defined to Electrek in an e-mail how California achieved its renewables milestone:
California’s milestone of 100 days powered, for a median of a number of hours every day, by over 100% wind-water-solar (WWS) (onshore wind, utility-scale photo voltaic, geothermal, and small and huge hydroelectricity) from March via July 2024 is unprecedented.
It’s pushed by a 30% development in utility-scale photo voltaic and an 8% development in utility-scale wind energy output in only one yr.
It’s additionally pushed by the expansion in rooftop photo voltaic PV, which helped to lower demand on California’s grid as a result of rooftop PV is used first to provide electrical energy in buildings, avoiding the necessity for grid electrical energy. As well as, battery storage capability greater than doubled in the course of the yr (to almost 8 GW/32 GWh), permitting a lot of the surplus wind and photo voltaic on 100%+ days to be saved and used at night time. All of those components lowered the usage of fossil gasoline on the grid by near 40% in the course of the interval.
These statistics point out that the day when California shall be powered each day and night time with 100% WWS is close to. What’s wanted is extra rooftop and utility PV, extra batteries, offshore wind, to maneuver extra hydroelectricity era to nighttime, and to make use of extra demand response.
Demand response is giving folks incentives to shift the time of their electrical energy use to a time when grid demand is low (and WWS provide is excessive).
Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Marketing campaign for 100% Renewable Power at Setting America, mentioned, “California proves that clear power applied sciences can work on an enormous scale.”
Setting California identified that current warmth waves within the state meant pure gasoline was wanted each minute of the day for greater than two weeks, so California will want much more photo voltaic and wind energy to achieve its 100% clear electrical energy by 2045 aim. The excellent news is, we all know that it’s achievable.
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