The California Energy Commission has proposed a $1-million award to consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics to develop a plan for decommissioning certain natural gas infrastructure in the state. E3 will identify where gas infrastructure decommissioning is "plausible, economically …
The California Independent System Operator's Western Energy Imbalance Market continued its growth this week, adding two more utilities and expanding its footprint into New Mexico.
Pacific Gas & Electric is looking for potential buyers for its Hamilton Branch hydropower facilities, the company said in an April 1 news release. The facilities include a small powerhouse and the Mountain Meadows Reservoir, as well as the 4.8-MW Hamilton Branch Powerhouse on Lake Almano…
The Turlock Irrigation District, the Balancing Authority of Northern California, and the Western Area Power Administration's Sierra Nevada Region began participating in the California Independent System Operator's Western Energy Imbalance Market on March 25, one week ahead of schedule.
Southern California Edison launched its third Disadvantaged Communities Green Tariff and Community Solar Green Tariff request for offers. SCE is soliciting energy from solar projects located in disadvantaged communities as specifically defined in the RFO document. Procurement for the DAC-GT …
Southern California Edison, operator of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, on March 15 released a strategic plan for relocating the shuttered plant's spent nuclear fuel and launched a national coalition to pressure the federal government to find a permanent repository for waste store…
Pacific Gas & Electric selected Grass Valley, California-based BoxPower to design and install a standalone power system in Briceburg, California, to help mitigate fire risk in the area. The remote grid will support PG&E in its wildfire-mitigation and energy-resilience efforts in the …
MCE on March 10 released details of its forthcoming 2021 Open Season procurement process, through which the community choice aggregator is soliciting bids for Portfolio Content Category 1 renewable energy and front-of-the-meter, stand-alone energy storage. For the first time, MCE is encourag…
The California Energy Commission on March 3 proposed $15 million in funding for five entities to further develop their clean-energy technology projects. Examples of projects include production of transparent solar-power-generating windows; manufacture of a solid-state heat engine; and produc…
The California Public Utilities Commission on Feb. 19 proposed seven new public-safety power shut-off guidelines for utilities to follow during potential or actual shut-offs.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Feb. 22 that its Office of Enforcement is examining wholesale natural gas and electricity market activity during the recent extreme cold weather to determine if any market participants engaged in market manipulation or other violations. If the OE…
Pacific Gas & Electric is extending its existing COVID-19 customer protections through June 30. The protections were set to expire on April 16, but the utility made the announcement based on a Feb. 11 California Public Utilities Commission meeting during which the CPUC approved a decisio…
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week appointed a group of energy industry professionals to leadership positions at the California Public Utilities Commission, California Energy Commission and California Independent System Operator.
Four hydrogen fuel technologies to be used in transportation will be provided with $1.3 million in funding by Southern California Gas Co., the company stated in a Feb. 8 news release. The utility will fund fuel-cell marine vessels, hydrogen refueling stations at ports, and fuel-cell locomoti…
A wildfire victim trust fund established during the Pacific Gas & Electric bankruptcy proceeding is more than $1 billion short of its intended value due to fluctuations in PG&E's stock price, the fund's trustee told fire victims.
El Paso Electric has signed an implementation agreement with the California Independent System Operator to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market in 2023, CAISO said. The agreement extends the real-time balancing market to 12 Western states. EPE is a regional utility providing generation, …
General Motors on Jan. 28 committed to setting targets to become carbon-neutral in its operations by 2040. This includes a plan to cease production of tailpipe-emitting light-duty vehicles by 2035, the company said in a news release. GM worked with Environmental Defense Fund to develop a vis…
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is investigating a fire that started at Calpine's Geysers geothermal facility in Sonoma County Jan. 18.
Hundreds of thousands of customers across California on Jan. 18 and 19 had their power proactively cut in response to strong Santa Ana winds and red-flag warnings issued by the National Weather Service.
The California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission extended the application deadline for the Zero-Emission Drayage Truck and Infrastructure Pilot Project to Feb. 15. The entities eligible for the $44.1 million in available funding include local air districts, California-…
Southern California Edison on Jan. 15 said it was considering a public-safety power shut-off to 66,500 customer accounts over the next 48 hours. Power was shut off to about 8,700 customer accounts as of mid-day on Jan. 15. This included 1,600 accounts in Los Angeles County, 2,597 in Riversid…
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Dec. 30 reappointed Marybel Batjer as president of the California Public Utilities Commission. Her second term ends Jan. 1, 2027. Batjer was originally appointed as CPUC president on July 12, 2019, by Newsom and was sworn in on Aug. 16 of that year. The position requires…
San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison said they might be forced to conduct public-safety power shut-offs over the holiday. SDG&E on Dec. 22 notified 31,000 customers that they might experience a PSPS after the National Weather Service issued a red-flag warning in SD…
East Bay Community Energy plans to purchase 100-percent clean electricity for its customers by 2030, the community choice aggregator's representatives said on Dec. 18. EBCE to date has contracted for more than 500 MW from wind, solar and energy storage resources, and in 2021 expects to contr…
Southern California Edison signed long-term contracts for 590 MW of battery energy storage, the company announced Dec. 7. The four projects are designed "to further enhance the region's electric system reliability needs," according to SCE.
The U.S. clean-energy sector in November restored fewer than 8,000 jobs, leaving more than 446,000, or 13 percent of the sector's workforce, unemployed, according to a Dec. 8 analysis from BW Research, the American Council on Renewable Energy, Environmental Entrepreneurs and E4TheFuture. Job…
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly resigned Nov. 30 after being charged with honest-services wire fraud by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The federal complaint alleges that Kelly engaged in a long-running bribery scheme and corrupt partnership with W…
Silicon Valley Clean Energy has directed $14 million toward accelerating electric-vehicle adoption in 2020, including $8 million of its own funding and $6 million from the California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project. New EV charging stations will be installed across the 13 cities that…
PG&E Corp. said Nov. 18 that current CMS Energy Corp./Consumers Energy President and CEO Patricia "Patti" Poppe has been named CEO of PG&E and made a member of its board of directors. Poppe will take over from current PG&E Corp. CEO William Smith on Jan. 4, according to a news re…
California Independent System Operator Board of Governors member David Olsen will retire effective Nov. 30, the ISO said in a news release. Olsen, a resident of Ventura, was first appointed to the board in April 2012 and served as chair from February 2018 to October 2020. Gov. Gavin Newsom r…
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Nov. 10 voted to ban the use of natural gas in new buildings, but included an exception process that will allow natural gas piping and equipment under certain circumstances.
Southern California Gas Co. on Oct. 29 said that it has begun dispensing California-produced renewable natural gas at many of the natural-gas fueling stations it operates across the state. This is a first for the utility, which now sources its RNG from Calgren Dairy Fuels. It had been provid…
Peninsula Clean Energy will expand to the City of Los Banos, the community choice aggregator announced Oct. 29. Participating residential and business accounts will have electricity rates roughly 5 percent lower than those of Pacific Gas & Electric, and their power will be sourced from t…
Canadian Solar on Oct. 19 closed a supply contract and long-term service agreement for battery storage with Goldman Sachs Renewable Power.
Clean Power Alliance on Oct. 21 announced the release of its 2020 clean-energy request for offers. The community choice aggregator is soliciting offers for long-term power-purchase agreements focused on long-duration storage projects of up to 12 hours, as well as "structured products to deli…
A group of eight California community choice aggregators on Oct. 16 issued a request for offers for up to 500 MW of long-duration energy storage. The Joint CCAs, which include Central and Northern California providers that together serve nearly 3 million accounts, seek minimum 10-year contra…
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection took possession of Pacific Gas & Electric electrical equipment as part of the investigation of the Zogg Fire in Shasta County, PG&E said in an Oct. 9 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The fire began on Sep…
San Diego Gas & Electric plans to operate only zero-emission vehicles by 2040, representatives of the investor-owned utility said Sept. 30. SDG&E will try to electrify 100 percent of its light-duty fleet vehicles by 2030 and its entire fleet by 2040. Currently, 17 percent of SDG&…
The Arizona Corporation Commission at its Sept. 22 meeting extended Arizona's suspension on electric and natural gas utility disconnections due to nonpayment through Dec. 31 for investor-owned utilities. The moratorium had been scheduled to end Oct. 15, but data indicates that tens of thousa…
Battery and fuel-cell electric truck manufacturer Nikola Motor Co. of Phoenix on Sept. 20 announced that founder Trevor Milton voluntarily stepped down as executive chairman of the publicly traded company's board of directors. Stephen Girsky, former vice chairman of General Motors, was immed…
Southern California Edison's equipment is being examined in relation to the Bobcat Fire in the Angeles National Forest, which was first reported on Sunday, Sept. 6, at 12:21 p.m., the utility said.
PG&E Corp. Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jason Wells left his position Sept. 14 to become CFO of another utility, the company said. His resignation does not involve any disagreement on any matter related to PG&E Corp.'s operations, policies or practices, PG&…
A Sept. 6 fire at a Southern California generation plant contributed to a loss of energy available to the California Independent System Operator at a critical juncture during the recent heat wave.
Rachel Peterson is the new acting executive director at the California Public Utilities Commission, replacing Alice Stebbins, who says she will sue the commission over her dismissal (see CEM No. 1606). Peterson joined the CPUC in 2011 and most recently served as deputy executive director for…
The California Climate Investments program spent about $1 billion on greenhouse gas-reduction projects in the first six-month period of this year, up from about $914 million in the first six-month period of 2019, the California Air Resources Board said in a news release this week.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District announced that Paul Lau will succeed Arlen Orchard as its CEO and general manager effective Oct. 3. Lau has been chief grid strategy and operations officer for SMUD since 2015 and originally joined the municipal utility in 1982 as an electrical engin…
As more than 1 million acres in Northern California continue to burn due to what the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is calling a "lightning siege," a controversial bill is moving through the state Legislature that would extend and expand a utility bill surcharge for fu…
Finite Carbon announced Aug. 24 that it is launching the web-based CORE Carbon platform in late 2020 that will allow landowners with 40 to 5,000 acres to see a real-time value assessment of how much income their forestland might generate in the voluntary carbon market. Once enrolled at no co…
The chemical makeup of energy storage batteries worldwide is moving from lithium-manganese-cobalt oxide to lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, which is poised to have a 30-percent global market share by 2030, up from 10 percent in 2015, according to Wood Mackenzie analysts. Batteries in conventi…
The California Independent System Operator late on Aug. 14 declared a Stage 3 Electrical Emergency due to high heat levels and increased electricity demand. The ISO said the emergency initiates rolling power outages throughout the state.
