Pacific Gas & Electric on Sept. 13 said it has reached an $11-billion settlement to resolve the majority of its subrogation wildfire liabilities, but the utility's overall reorganization plan is drawing heavy fire.
U.S. District Judge James Donato on Sept. 10 laid out a process to determine how much money Pacific Gas & Electric owes victims of the 2017 and 2018 wildfires, one day after the investor-owned utility submitted a reorganization plan that sets aside nearly $18 billion for wildfire-related…
The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power on Sept. 10 approved power-purchase agreements that will move forward development of a sprawling new desert solar facility with up to 375 MW of solar and 1,200 MWh of energy storage in Kern County.
Governments throughout the greater San Diego are holding discussions and taking votes toward offering customers energy via the community choice aggregation model, but environmental and labor interests are already leveling criticism at the plan.
California's Central Coast is rivaling San Diego for community choice aggregation activity, with several cities now approved to join Monterey Bay Community Power.
East Bay Community Energy launched a request-for-information process designed to help it identify options for procuring new incremental capacity to provide the community choice aggregator with resource adequacy and/or peak energy.
Two more California cities moved closer to passing building codes prioritizing all-electric new construction, as a wave of building-decarbonization activity sweeps over the state.
Higher output from hydroelectric, wind and solar resources pushed down the cost of serving wholesale load in the California Independent System Operator area by 11 percent in the second quarter, compared with the second quarter of last year, CAISO's Department of Market Monitoring said.
Legislation that would have allowed bankrupt utility Pacific Gas & Electric to sell "wildfire victim recovery bonds" is on hold for now, but its backers promise it will return next year.
The existing Western Energy Imbalance Market is set to grow with the announcement that a couple of new members intend to join in April 2021, but a proposal for a similar regional balancing market by the Southwest Power Pool is also drawing interest.
A San Diego-based activist organization on Aug. 30 filed suit against Southern California Edison, Holtec International and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, seeking to halt the continued storage of spent nuclear fuel on-site at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The s…
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Aug. 27 deferred the release of documents containing information about Pacific Gas & Electric's electric transmission line that failed outside Paradise, California, in 2018, starting the Camp Fire.
Operators of the Western Energy Imbalance Market are working on two large and complicated issues for the expanding regional market: whether increasing levels of "wheel-throughs" should be compensated, and how to mitigate market power that could be exercised during times of tight supply.
Battery storage would help reduce electricity demand charges most effectively for commercial customers with solar power systems and narrow, "peaky" loads, according to a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Menlo Park City Council at an Aug. 27 meeting moved closer to adopting updated building codes that would phase out natural gas and require electric space and water heating exclusively in order to meet the city's greenhouse gas targets.
Southern California Edison said it expects the transfer of spent nuclear fuel into dry-cask storage at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station to be complete by mid-2020.
Pacific Gas & Electric is pushing for legislation that would allow it to sell billions of dollars in tax-exempt bonds to compensate wildfire victims, but those with other plans for PG&E oppose the bill and are intensifying their attacks on the utility.
Pacific Gas & Electric stock lost a reported $1.3 billion or more in market value in one day this week, after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Aug. 16 allowed a group of victims of the 2017 Tubbs Fire to pursue a jury trial.
Tacoma Power has signed an implementation agreement with the California Independent System Operator to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market, targeting 2022 for going live.
The Energy Imbalance Market Governing Body is due to vote Aug. 28 on the nomination of former public-power executive Anita Decker to a 10-month term on the body.
Oregon energy regulator Letha Tawney said her visit to the ignition site of the devastating Camp Fire near the town of Paradise in Northern California convinced her that the old ways won't work anymore.
Pacific Gas & Electric intends to file a reorganization plan by Sept. 9, the company told a bankruptcy court on Aug. 12 as the court heard testimony from competing factions in the case.
Thousands of new electric-vehicle charging stations are planned to be built in San Mateo County in the next four years, to be funded through a partnership between Peninsula Clean Energy and the California Energy Commission.
Hydrogen fueling stations are popping up throughout California, but the vehicles they fuel are not arriving in the state fast enough, according to a July report published by the California Air Resources Board.
San Jose Clean Energy signed its first long-term power-purchase agreement Aug. 7 with Houston-based EDP Renewables North America for 100 MW of solar capacity and 10 MW of battery storage.
Pacific Gas & Electric attorneys in an Aug. 6 court filing objected to a reorganization proposal outlined by a group of insurance companies that hold claims connected to the Northern California wildfires, saying that introducing competing plans into its bankruptcy process would be a “nee…
Two investment funds with stakes in Pacific Gas & Electric proposed a $15-billion backstop funding plan they said would allow the company to emerge from bankruptcy in time to access a newly created wildfire fund.
The California Independent System Operator is taking comments through Aug. 13 on a hybrid resource market initiative aimed at dealing with multiple technologies from a single resource.
California’s utilities and elected officials are mobilizing a new approach to electricity and wildfire planning to deal with what Gov. Gavin Newsom called “a new reality,” including public-safety power shut-offs.
Attorneys representing Pacific Gas & Electric disputed news media reports that the utility delayed work on its transmission system despite knowing that its infrastructure could spark wildfires, telling a district judge in a July 31 court filing that PG&E welcomes the public attention…
Pacific Gas & Electric has renegotiated three power-purchase agreements and two energy storage agreements, according to a July 31 filing to the court overseeing the company’s bankruptcy proceeding.
The City of Calistoga is moving forward with developing a microgrid, but rather than designing it for disaster response, as many California communities plan to do, it will be used for citywide resilience.
The Glendale City Council on July 23 approved a plan to keep an aging natural gas plant partially operational while incorporating a hefty amount of additional renewable energy resources into the city’s energy supply.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on July 24 preserved Pacific Gas & Electric’s control over its reorganization process for two additional weeks, allowing the company, state regulators and representatives for Gov. Gavin Newsom time to figure out how they will handle competing restruct…
The California Independent System Operator has its eye on a number of issues as the 2019 summer season unfolds, including new renewables peaks and ongoing requests from market participants for the ISO to deal with possible market power when the system is tight on supply.
California faces a quandary as natural gas-fired power plants that are critical for maintaining reliability are not making adequate energy-market profits, setting up a situation where generation becomes uneconomic even when needed—a dynamic of which natural gas-related interests are well aware.
The California Office of Emergency Services on July 22 filed an appeal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the state’s reimbursement costs for the Oroville Dam spillway collapse.
Lawyers for Pacific Gas & Electric accused a group of its bondholders of attempting to “hijack” its bankruptcy by proposing a reorganization plan for the company.
The recent passage of sweeping new utility wildfire liability legislation—which some say favors shareholders over ratepayers—marks the first time that ratepayer dollars have been specifically allotted to pay for future wildfires, guaranteeing that retail rates will rise, panelists at an indu…
Southern California Edison said July 15 it intends to resume spent nuclear fuel transfer operations at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, following “rigorous regulatory, internal and third-party readiness and operational reviews.”
Community choice aggregators across California are moving to surpass state renewables mandates and address other pressing issues such as grid decarbonization and climate, shifting energy procurement from investor-owned utilities in relatively rapid fashion.
New buildings constructed in the city of Berkeley must be all-electric after the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance at its July 16 meeting to address building decarbonization.
Southern California Edison in June asked renewable natural gas developers to provide solutions on how the investor-owned utility could replace 7 percent of its natural gas power generation with the energy resource.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 12 signed into law legislation creating a fund to pay wildfire liability costs that was lauded by lawmakers as a step forward, but drew criticism from some quarters as a hastily approved utility “bailout.”
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali allowed Pacific Gas & Electric to set aside $50 million as liability insurance for CEO Bill Johnson, company executives and its new crop of board directors, despite expressing mixed feelings about the proposal at a July 9 hearing.
The federal judge overseeing Pacific Gas & Electric’s criminal probation ordered the utility to respond to media reports that it was aware of problems with its transmission lines but didn’t fix them.
The caricature of the California Forty-Niner is of a wizened, scruffy guy with a catchphrase of “There’s gold in them thar hills.” And indeed there is a new gold rush across California’s hills and plains, where wind turbines and solar panels can be sited in order to extract gold from them th…
A formidable jump in the price of natural gas in the California Independent System Operator territory in the first quarter drove up the cost to serve wholesale load by 43 percent compared with the first quarter last year, CAISO’s market monitor said in a new report.
Investor-owned utilities in a series of July 1 filings urged the California Public Utilities Commission to take a cautious approach in its effort to reduce customer service disconnections for nonpayment, noting that certain proposals could lead to increased bills for their customers.
The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power is considering a contract for a new Kern County project that, if approved, would be the largest solar-plus-battery-storage project in the United States. The proposed 200-MW Eland Solar & Storage Center is a two-phase project that intends to…
