Enough sun falls on the earth’s surface in one hour to provide enough power to service all the world’s economies for one year. There is enough solar capacity in the U.S. to power 23 million homes.
Solar farms are doubling in size every three years, and the cost of silicon-based cells is falling steadily. These cells are also getting more efficient: over 70 years, efficacy has gone from 6% to 24% -- just short of the theoretical limit of 29%.
There is a real problem with this success and the resultant abundance of solar power. California’s solar arrays produce so much excess power during summer days that some of it is sent to other states, but much of it is wasted. Limited capacity in transmission lines both in-state and out-of-state force California’s solar operators to lose a lot of this precious green energy. In 2024, that excess power could have serviced all the homes in San Francisco for a year.
One problem is that California has an imbalance of solar and wind production. As a percentage of electricity, solar output is now 31%, but wind contributes only 8%. Wind speeds generally pick up at night after the sun has set, just when extra power is needed.
Currently, that power is provided by natural gas turbines and one giant nuclear power plant, which, unwisely, state leaders have decided to phase out. I learned from one source that California’s solar and wind production led to natural gas use “dropping 40% during the 116-day period and 25% during the entire year.”
More storage of excess power is the obvious solution, and California, in addition to Texas, are leaders in energy storage. By the end of 2024, California’s solar and wind industry had installed 16,300 megawatts of battery storage. About 52,000 megawatts is needed for the state to reach its goal of 100% renewables by 2045.
Instead of sending their solar power back into the grid, many homeowners are now choosing to store their surplus. EnergySage reports that a growing number of their customers are “opting to buy external storage along with solar panels. In the first half of 2024, 34% of panel buyers in the U.S. also bought storage with that figure rising to 70% in California.”
California now has 187 battery storage facilities around the state that can save 16,300 megawatts of electricity. The one at Moss Landing is the world’s largest and the site, significantly enough, was built on the same land as a decommissioned natural gas power plant. When it went online in 2019, it consisted of 256 Tesla Megapacks with a capacity of 730 megawatt-hours of green electricity.
As we have found, even with cellphones, lithium-ion batteries tend to overheat, and last month at Moss Landing some of the ship container-size pods caught fire. Highway 1 was closed for three days, 1,200 people were evacuated, and toxic heavy metals spread over the area.
In response to community fears, there is now legislation to restrict the placement of these facilities and a delay in the approval of new sites. Officials from Pacific Gas and Electric stated that no delay was necessary and explained that only facilities like the one at Moss Landing have lithium-ion batteries containing nickel, manganese and cobalt. The newer facilities use lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that are far less liable to catch fire and are far less dangerous to the environment.
Some say, incorrectly, that California’s high electricity prices are due to its heavy reliance on green energy. PG&E is one of the most plague-ridden and inefficient utilities in the nation. Its transformers, for example, have been the cause of some of the state’s wildfires and it is in constant litigation because of its negligence.
Stanford environmental engineer Mark Jacobson and his associates have studied the relationship between green energy and electricity prices, and they found that "states with higher shares of renewable energy tend to see lower electricity prices. In fact, 10 of the 11 U.S. states with higher fractions of their demand powered by renewables have among the lowest U.S. electricity prices."
According to Jacobsen, "the spot price of electricity in California dropped by over 50% during the period of interest between 2023 and 2024, indicating it was easier to match demand with supply with the increase in renewables and batteries in 2024.”
Gier was raised by back-to-the-earth parents who would have loved a solar array and a wind turbine. Read his other columns at nfgier.com. Email him at ngier006@gmail.com.
