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California has given America a glimpse at what running one of the world’s largest economies on renewable energy might look like.

The state recently hit a milestone: 100 days this year with 100% carbon-free, renewable electricity for at least a part of each day, as tracked by Stanford University engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson.

The state notched the milestone while — so far — avoiding blackouts and emergency power reductions this year, even with the hottest July on record.

That progress is largely due to the substantial public and private investments in renewable energy — particularly batteries storing solar power to use when the sun isn’t shining, according to energy experts.

“California has made unprecedented investments in our power grid in recent years — and we’re seeing them pay off in real time,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement to CalMatters. “Not only is our grid more reliable and resilient, it’s also increasingly running on 100% clean electricity.”

The state faces a huge challenge in coming years: A series of mandates will require carbon-free energy while also putting more electric cars on roads and electric appliances in homes. California, under state law, must run on 60% renewable energy by 2030, ramping up to 100% by 2045.

Signs of progress are emerging. From January to mid-July of this year, zero-carbon, renewable energy exceeded demand in California for 945 hours during 146 days — equivalent to a month-and-a-half of 100% fossil-fuel-free electricity, according to the California Energy Commission, the state agency tasked with carrying out the clean energy mandates.

But California still has a long way to go to stop burning fossil fuels for electricity. Natural gas, which emits greenhouse gases and air pollutants, remains its single largest source of electricity.

Just over half of power generated for Californians in 2022 came from solar, wind, other renewables and nuclear power, while 36% came from natural gas plants.

Reliability of the power grid is a top concern as the state switches to solar and wind energy. Unpredictable events like wildfires and winter storms also cause outages, while hot summer months, with air conditioners whirring, strain the supply.

In August of 2020 California experienced its first non-wildfire blackouts in nearly 20 years, and in late August and September of 2022, a severe heatwave forced regulators to ask consumers to voluntarily reduce power for 10 days.

Since September 2022 — when California teetered on the edge of those blackouts and the governor pleaded for conservation — nearly 11,600 new megawatts of clean energy have been added to the state’s grid, said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the grid. (That’s enough to power around 9 to 12 million homes although it’s not available all at one time.)

California also now has more than 10,000 megawatts of battery capacity, making it the largest supply outside of China. Battery power from large commercial facilities proved its worth during last month’s heat wave, Mainzer said.

Batteries “were a major difference-maker,” Mainzer said. “The batteries charged during the day, when solar energy is abundant, and then they put that energy back onto the grid in the afternoon and evening, when solar production is rolling off the system.”

California relies heavily on four-hour duration lithium-ion batteries, which come in large, centralized facilities and hybrid facilities paired with solar energy projects. More homes also are installing batteries with their rooftop solar installations, but they supply a small amount of power.

Planning and practicing various emergency scenarios has also helped immensely, Mainzer said.

“Our grid operators are now increasingly experienced at managing these extreme heat events,” Mainzer said. “Our forecasters also did an excellent job of reviewing the next day’s conditions so that the market could respond effectively.”

‘The table is set’ for clean energy

California may need to more than double its energy generation capacity by 2045 to meet the 100% clean energy target while adding electric cars, appliances and other technologies, said Siva Gunda, who sits on the California Energy Commission. 

To do that, California aims to build about 6,000 to 8,000 megawatts of new energy resources each year. The state hit a record last year, adding more than 6,000 megawatts, Gunda said. Each megawatt is enough to serve between 750 and 1,000 homes. 

“The table is set,” Gunda said. “The pieces are there for success, and it’s about executing it, together with a common vision and collaboration.”

The commission is closely monitoring a new concern: Artificial intelligence technology, which uses large data centers that consume power. “We’re carefully watching where the loads are going to grow,” Gunda said.

Stanford’s Jacobson said running on 100% renewable energy is becoming more common.

Over the July 28 weekend, California marked the 100th nonconsecutive day within a 144-day stretch in which 100% of electricity came from renewable sources for periods ranging from five minutes to more than 10 hours, he said.

On April 8, a solar eclipse reduced solar power generation and increased demand on the grid, which was met by batteries. On May 5, wind, hydroelectric and solar energy reached more than 160% of demand for a significant portion of the day.

California continues to waffle about ending its reliance on natural gas and nuclear power.

Fearing emergency rolling blackouts like the one in 2020, Newsom and the Legislature in 2022 allowed some natural gas plants that were supposed to go offline to keep operating. 

And the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant will continue operating while Pacific Gas & Electric pursues federal permission to stay open past 2025. Nuclear power is considered renewable and carbon-free but it creates radioactive waste.

State officials and private investors aim to create an entirely new industry — giant floating ocean wind platforms — to produce 13% of California’s power, enough to power 25 million homes, by 2045. The massive projects will cost billions of dollars. 

Some Democratic legislators are hoping to make it easier to build wind and solar projects, since sometimes local obstacles and permitting take years. They are negotiating an end-of-session package of proposed laws that could streamline construction, CalMatters reported earlier this month. California’s legislative session ends Aug. 31.

Jacobson said the cost of large-scale solar power projects has “dropped substantially” in recent decades largely because of “economies of scale — just the huge growth of solar on a worldwide scale.”

“There’s no miracle technology that was developed,” he said. “It’s just subtle improvements in existing technologies and deployment, deployment, deployment.”

California hits milestones toward 100% clean energy — but has a long way to go is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

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Few places in California are as unforgiving for driving an electric car as the remote and sparsely populated Imperial Valley.

Only four fast-charging public stations are spread across the valley’s vast 4,500 square miles just north of the US-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That means if you’re Greg Gelman — one of only about 1,200 Imperial County residents who own an electric car — traveling almost anywhere is a maddening logistical challenge.

“It’s been, I won’t say a nightmare, but it’s been very, very, very inconvenient,” Gelman said on a recent afternoon as he charged his all-electric Mercedes-Benz at a charging station in a Bank of America parking lot in El Centro. “Would I do it again? No.”

California’s electric charging “deserts” like the Imperial Valley pose one of the biggest obstacles to the state’s efforts to combat climate change and air pollution by electrifying cars and trucks.

Experts say the slow installation of chargers in California’s remote regions could jeopardize the state’s phaseout of new gas-powered cars. Under the state’s mandate, 35% of sales of 2026 models must be zero-emissions, ramping up to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.

Nestled in the desert in California’s far southeast corner, Imperial County ranks dead last in electric car ownership among California counties with populations of 100,000 or more, according to a CalMatters analysis of 2023 data. Only 7 out of every 1,000 cars are battery-powered there, compared with 51 out of every 1,000 statewide.

High poverty and unemployment are a major factor in the region’s slow transition to electric cars, but its lack of public chargers are a big drawback, too.

People living in rural, low-income regions like the Imperial Valley have the least access to electric car chargers, according to a state Energy Commission analysis. More than two-thirds of California’s low-income residents are a 10-minute drive or longer from a publicly available fast charger.

Luis Olmedo, executive director of El Comite Civico del Valle, a nonprofit advocating for environmental justice, has battled for years against the Imperial Valley’s unhealthy air. Now he is making a bid to become its go-to supplier of charging stations for zero-emissions cars.

Olmedo isn’t waiting for businesses or the state to make chargers a reality in Imperial County. Instead, his group has embarked on a $5-million, high-stakes crusade to build a network of 40 fast chargers at various locations. It’s an open question whether his somewhat quixotic endeavor will succeed.

Electric car chargers “are an opportunity for us to be able to breathe cleaner air,” Olmedo said. “It’s about equity. It’s about justice. It’s about making sure that everybody has chargers.”

Esther Conrad, a researcher at Stanford University who focuses on environmental sustainability, said getting chargers in places like Imperial County is critical to California’s effort to transition to electric vehicles in an equitable way. Apartment dwellers and others who don’t have charging at home need nearby and reliable places to charge. 

“When you have a rural community that’s low-income and distant from other locations, it’s incredibly important to enable people to get places where they need to go,” Conrad said.

Hours from urban centers

A car is essential for traversing Imperial County, which is the most sparsely populated county in Southern California.

Its neighborhoods are vast distances from urban centers that provide the services that residents need: El Centro — its biggest town, home to about 44,000 people — is much closer to Mexicali, Mexico, than it is to San Diego, which is about a two-hour drive away, or Riverside, nearly three hours. Its highways and roads cross boundless fields of lettuce and other crops that give way to strip malls, apartments and suburban tracts — and then even more crops and open desert. 

If you drive an electric car the 109 miles from El Centro to Palm Springs, your route takes you through farmland, desert and around California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, which is also one of its biggest environmental calamities.

The Salton Sea has been receding in recent years, causing toxic dust to blow into Imperial Valley towns. The region’s air quality is among the worst in the state, with dust storms and a brown haze emanating from agricultural burning and factories in the valley or from across the border in Mexicali, a city of a million people.

About 16% of Imperial County’s 179,000 residents have asthma, higher than the state average. The air violates national health standards for both fine particles, or soot, as well as ozone, the main ingredient of smog; both pollutants can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

More than 85% of Imperial County’s residents are Latino, and Spanish is widely spoken here. Agriculture is a major employer, and many businesses are dependent on cross-border trade and traffic from Mexico. The county’s median household income is $53,847, much lower than the statewide median, and 21% of people live in poverty.

Now the discovery of lithium, used to manufacture EV batteries, at the Salton Sea has the potential to transform the region’s economy. State officials say the deposit could produce 600,000 tons a year, valued at $7.2 billion, and assist the U.S. as it tries to foster a domestic electric car industry that rivals China’s. 

But Olmedo worries that when the mineral is removed from the valley, it won’t meaningfully change people’s livelihoods or their health. He points to examples in the developing world where local people have been left behind as extractive industries take what they need.

“We’re about to extract, perhaps, the world’s supply of lithium here, yet we don’t even have the simplest, the lowest of offerings, which is: Let’s build you chargers,” Olmedo said.

Chicken and egg: Too few EVs and too few chargers

Last year, electric cars were only 5% of all new cars sold in Imperial County, compared with 25% statewide. Getting chargers into low-income and rural places will become more and more important as California struggles to meet its ambitious climate targets.

The Energy Commission estimates that California will need 1.01 million chargers outside of private homes by 2030 and 2.11 million by 2035, when more than 15 million electric cars are expected on the roads. So far the state has only about 105,000 nonprivate chargers. 

Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, which researches the electric car market, said charging companies won’t locate chargers in regions with few electric vehicles.

“You need revenue, and if the EVs aren’t there, then your customers aren’t necessarily there, so you do have a legitimate chicken and egg problem,” Nigro said. “We have to look to public policy to help that market failure.”

The Biden administration will invest $384 million in California’s electric car infrastructure over five years. And state officials are investing almost $2 billion in grants for funding zero-emission vehicle chargers over the next four years, including some special grants in rural, inland areas for up to  $80,000 per charger.  Olmedo says the funding has been insufficient so he’s had to turn to donations and other sources of funding.

Patty Monahan, one of five members of the California Energy Commission, said “it’s particularly important that we see chargers” in the Imperial Valley and other low-income counties with poor air quality.

Imperial Valley has only four fast-charging stations open for public use, where chargers are capable of juicing batteries up to 80% in under an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Three are in El Centro, with one exclusively for Teslas; another is in the border town of Calexico and was recently installed by El Comite. Six other stations offer only slower chargers.

Olmedo envisions a network of 40 publicly accessible chargers throughout the valley. El Comite is expecting funding from the California Energy Commission, and has received donations from Waverley Streets Foundation, the United Auto Workers and General Motors. The group is seeking more state funding.

Olmedo acknowledged that he is facing a slew of challenges with his project, including some local opposition and the high cost of installation and maintenance.

At a warehouse in the city of Imperial where El Comite stores the chargers, Jose Flores, project manager for the group’s charging initiative, said he and three colleagues spent four days in Santa Ana, about 200 miles north, at a facility managed by BTC, the company that makes the chargers that El Comite is installing.

They received training on installation and maintenance techniques, and discussed how not all chargers can be used by all electric vehicles. He learned about payment and cooling systems, and that the chargers might need more frequent maintenance because of Imperial Valley’s harsh desert conditions.

“We’re like a testing ground because we have poor air quality here due to the Salton Sea and being in a desert,” he said.

El Comite installed its first charger at its Brawley headquarters in 2022. Last December, El Civico pressed ahead with a more ambitious project: Four of their fast chargers are now operating in a park in the border town of Calexico.

Chris Aldaz, 35, a U.S. Postal Service worker who lives in Calexico, charges at home, but at times uses chargers at the group’s Brawley headquarters that people can use for free. It is a Level 2, which can take several hours to charge.

“The reason why I wanted to get an EV was that it was cheaper,” Aldaz told CalMatters. “I don’t want to be spending all this money on gas, and on maintenance, and it was better for the environment.”

Nevertheless, Olmedo’s electric car chargers have become a local political issue.

Maritza Hurtado, Calexico’s ex-mayor, and coordinator of a City Council recall campaign, said it was inappropriate for El Comite to have built four electric car chargers in a downtown park. The chargers were a distraction “from our police needs and our actual community infrastructure needs,” Hurtado said at a public hearing at the county’s utility, the Imperial Irrigation District, in January. She declined to speak to CalMatters.

“We had no idea they were going to take our parkland,” Hurtado said at the hearing. “It is very upsetting and disrespectful to our community for Comite Civico to come to Calexico and take our land.”

Olmedo hopes that the chargers ultimately will be something the county’s Latino community takes pride in.

“Put this in perspective: It’s a farmworker-founded organization, an environmental justice organization, that is building the infrastructure. It’s not the lithium industry. It’s us, building it for ourselves.”

Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report.

This county is California’s harshest charging ‘desert’ for electric cars. Local activists want to change that  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Stay up-to-date with free briefings on topics that matter to all Californians. Subscribe to CalMatters today for nonprofit news in your inbox.

As a historic 10-day heat wave threatened brownouts across California last summer, a small San Diego County school district did its part to help: It captured excess power from its electric school buses and sent it back to the state’s overwhelmed grid.

The eight school buses provided enough power for 452 homes each day of the heat wave, and the buses were recharged only during off hours when the grid was not strained.

California energy officials have high hopes that this new power source, called bidirectional charging, will boost California’s power supply as it ramps up its ambitious agenda of electrifying its cars, trucks and buses while switching to 100% clean energy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called two-way charging technology a “game changer,” saying “this is the future” during a speech last September, about a week after the heat wave ended.

This year, a bill already approved by the state Senate in a 29-9 vote would require all new electric cars sold in California to be equipped with bidirectional technology by 2030. In the Assembly, two committees approved the bill earlier this month and it is now under consideration by a third.

This two-way charging has big potential — but also faces big obstacles. By 2035, California expects to have 12.5 million electric cars on the road, but it’s an open question how much California can rely on them to feed the grid. Automakers say the technology would add thousands of dollars to the cost of an electric car, and California’s utilities are still sorting out how to pay ratepayers for selling them the kilowatt hours.

The ability to use electric cars, trucks and buses to feed energy back into the grid would be especially helpful during peak times for energy use, such as heatwaves. But relying on vehicles as a year-round power source may not be practical — at least not yet.

“It’s a great idea conceptually…but we haven’t had the time to flesh out the details of what needs to happen for California to be able to power itself on electric vehicles,” said Orville Thomas, state policy director for CALSTART, a sustainable energy nonprofit.

“It should be on the menu of options that California has. Is it going to be the number one option? Definitely not.”

So far, its use has been limited in California. Pacific Gas and Electric has a pilot program — the first in the nation — that lets up to 1,000 residential customers with bidirectional chargers sell power back to the utility. Some school districts also are experimenting with it.

Only about half a dozen electric car models currently are equipped with bidirectional capabilities, including the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Leaf and Ford F-150 Lightning. Tesla announced recently that all its models will have it by 2025.

Electric vehicles convert one type of energy, alternating current electricity, into another, direct current, which is stored in a battery. Bidirectional charging means that an electric vehicle can convert the energy it has stored in its battery and send it to other sources, such as home appliances or back to the grid.

Willett M. Kempton, a University of Delaware professor who has studied bidirectional charging for more than two decades, said the vast majority of the time a vehicle is parked and not using electricity.

“Five percent of the time you’re using the car and you want to have enough energy — electricity or gasoline — to get to where you’re going and back. But most of the time, it’s just sitting there and some other use could be made of it,” he said.

Kempton said these vehicles, properly managed, could be sources of reserve energy, supplanting backup sources that burn fossil fuels. 

Gregory Poilasne, co-founder and CEO of Nuvve Holding Corp., which sells electric fleet charging services, said a big challenge is that cars are unreliable energy assets. “At any time, somebody might come in and unplug the car,” he said. But he added, as the technology becomes more reliable and affordable, bidirectional cars and fleets should increase. 

The cost: $3,700 per car

In Denmark, bidirectional charging earns electric vehicle fleet owners who sell power to the grid $3,000 per vehicle a year, Poilasne said, adding that this reduces the average total cost of electric car ownership by about 40%.

But citing the high cost, automakers oppose the Senate bill that would mandate the chargers for all new cars sold in California by 2030. It would increase the average cost of an electric car by $3,700, according to an opposition letter written by Curt Augustine of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Ford and other major auto companies.

About $3,000 of that cost would be adding battery capacity to meet warranty requirements, while other costs are for hardware and software.

“This technology is a competitive matter between vehicle manufacturers and should remain that way,” Augustine wrote. “Not all customers will see an advantage of bidirectional charging, and therefore, should not have to pay more for a technology that they will not use.”

Thomas of CALSTART agreed, saying it should be optional.

“There might be a situation where there are people that want to do it and will pay a little extra for a car that is bidirectional, but there will also be people that just want to use a vehicle for driving,” he said. “Do we raise the price of electric vehicles for everybody?”

But Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Oakland who authored SB 233, said she wants to ensure that automakers don’t reserve the technology for only their higher-end models. She said since the relatively affordable Nissan Leaf has it, it can be widely available.

Skinner said all consumers would benefit from the technology by selling energy to the grid or using the energy in emergencies. But she said another important reason is that it could end reliance on diesel generators during power emergencies like during wildfires.

“If you have an EV you don’t need that diesel generator,” Skinner said. “Why would we want to encourage diesel generators? They’re extremely polluting.”

Jeffrey Lu, an air pollution specialist with the California Energy Commission’s vehicle-grid integration unit, said the state is working with owners to identify the best times to charge — called smart charging — to protect the grid. Bidirectional charging takes the concept a step further, he said.

The Energy Commission is not yet ready to say how reliant California will be on bidirectional charging to provide sufficient power and meet the state’s 2045 mandate for carbon-free electricity.

“We’re fairly early in this process. California is very committed to load flexibility broadly, but where that load flexibility specifically comes from, how many megawatts or gigawatts are coming from any particular kind of resource? We’re working on that,” he said.

California’s utilities are running pilot projects and studying how bidirectional charging might work and how electric car owners could be compensated for selling energy to the grid.

The California Public Utilities Commission has studied the issue for more than a decade, said spokesperson Terrie D. Prosper, including funding pilot projects and establishing two working groups.

Last year many utilities signed a “Vehicle to Everything” memorandum of understanding with car manufacturers, state agencies, the federal government and others seeking to accelerate all aspects of bidirectional charging.

Southern California Edison, which serves about 5 million businesses and residences, wants to go beyond using bidirectional charging as just an emergency backup. 

Chanel Parson, Edison’s director of electrification, said the utility is working on a rate program that would allow customers to sell their power back to the grid every day of the year. 

“By selling it back to the grid when our rates are more expensive, then that actually helps reduce customers’ energy bills. And it could be so economically attractive that they’re actually making money,” she said.

Pacific Gas and Electric, which serves 5.5 million electric customers in Northern California, said it is aggressively looking to build what it calls a robust vehicle-to-grid-integration. It has partnerships with BMW of North America, Ford Motor Company and General Motors exploring bidirectional charging.

The utility last year launched the nation’s first bidirectional charging pilot available to residential customers, offering up to 1,000 customers $2,500 for enrolling and up to an additional $2,175, depending on their participation.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also is conducting a pilot project using a small fleet of its Nissan Leafs. The utility hopes the technology will eventually provide power during peak load times. 

“Five years is definitely within reach,” said José María Paz, the utility’s project manager for vehicle-to-grid integration. “Technology is advancing quite fast.”

School buses are a test case

The electric school buses at the Cajon Valley Union School District in San Diego County are among a number of school district pilot projects in California. Experts see school buses as a good option for two-way charging because they have set routes and are often parked during peak load times between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Nationally, Nuvve has about 350 school buses connected to its platform.

At the Cajon Valley district, eight electric buses sent 767 kilowatt hours of power back to the grid during the heat wave between Aug. 17 and Sept. 9, according to Nuvve.

Working with Nuvve, the buses power up when energy is less expensive, said Tysen Brodwolf, the district’s transportation director. Brodwolf said there are still several quirks, including the chargers not communicating properly with the grid or someone improperly plugging in a bus.

“But we’re getting there every day,” Brodwolf said. “We’re working through all those bumps and obviously, when you take on a pilot project, you have to take that into consideration that things aren’t necessarily going to go smoothly.”

How California’s electric cars can feed the grid and help avoid brownouts is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.