California this year has wasted enough renewable energy not connected to the grid to power more than 325,000 households—enough to provide all the household electricity needs for Anaheim, Irvine, and Riverside combined, or about 90 percent of San Francisco households.
Totally wasted.
Rooftops and fields throughout California have solar arrays that generate more power than can be used.
Local utilities and system operators disable those power sources from sending power to the grid, lest transmission and distribution lines have more power than can be used at that particular time.
Power lines require that the power supplied equals the power used. This is why “energy storage” is such a big deal. If the power supplied doesn’t exactly equal the power used, power lines can sag, which has the potential to start fires in trees and other vegetation.
Lack of Storage
Part of the issue is that California installed more solar than can be stored. The other factor is that other power sources are not so easily curtailed.Enough Power for 325,000 Households
One megawatt of power equals 1,000 kilowatts of power. A “megawatt-hour” is one megawatt of energy used or created for one hour. A “kilowatt-hour” is one kilowatt of power used or created for a one-hour period.All the wasted power so far this year equates to 677,890,000 kilowatt-hours.
It means the average number of kilowatt-hours curtailed, or wasted because it was generated but not used, so far this year has averaged 181,577,679 kilowatt-hours per month.
For comparison, Anaheim has about 101,000 households, Irvine has 98,000 households and Riverside has 91,000 households. The entire city of San Francisco has about 362,000 households.
If politicians and other policymakers keep pushing solar power before we learn to store all that energy, California is just going to end up wasting more generated electricity not being sent to the power grid.