The article kind of jumbles the paper it's reporting on, the paper's headline might be better (or linking the paper directly):
"No blackouts or cost increases due to 100 % clean, renewable electricity powering California for parts of 98 days"
This paper uses data from the world's 5th-largest economy to show no blackouts occurred when wind-water-solar electricity supply exceeded 100 % of demand on California's main grid for a record 98 of 116 days from late winter to early summer, 2024, for an average of 4.84 (and maximum 10.1) hours/day
Why are the live statistics so different than the conclusions in the paper?
Here you can see that CA power is more than double the cost of PJM, Southwest, and Midcontinent power. Whenever I look at it, CA is still be burning a huge amount of natural gas, especially overnight.
Comments
The article kind of jumbles the paper it's reporting on, the paper's headline might be better (or linking the paper directly):
"No blackouts or cost increases due to 100 % clean, renewable electricity powering California for parts of 98 days"
Why are the live statistics so different than the conclusions in the paper?
Here you can see that CA power is more than double the cost of PJM, Southwest, and Midcontinent power. Whenever I look at it, CA is still be burning a huge amount of natural gas, especially overnight.
https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso
The paper is about short periods of a day when renewables are meeting more than 100% of demand.
If that broke the grid then there would be little future in building out wind and solar beyond a small fraction of energy.
The paper demonstrates it's not a problem, so further progress to making all of the grid's energy clean can continue.