The Sonoma County district attorney's office on April 6 charged Pacific Gas & Electric with five felonies and 28 misdemeanors for "recklessly" causing the 2019 Kincade Fire, which burned for 15 days and destroyed 374 structures.
Placing solar panels atop the Golden State's water canals has the potential to help the state meet its 2030 climate and air-quality targets as well as reduce evaporation, saving billions of gallons of water annually, a team of University of California researchers found.
The Electric Power Research Institute on April 2 released a study designed to help the industry better determine the value of grid investments to enhance resilience against future threats.
Adventist Health and ENGIE North America said April 1 that they have completed a solar and microgrid project in Paradise, California.
The Los Angeles City Council on April 7 voted unanimously to approve a resolution to support any state effort to close the city's Playa del Rey underground natural gas storage facility, owned and operated by Southern California Gas Co. [20-0002-S22].
California is a good example of how focused policy can shape and accelerate electric-vehicle deployment, and more state and regional governments could drive up EV usage by following the Golden State's lead, panelists said during a roundtable on EV adoption.
The Lithium Valley Commission in Imperial Valley is asking investors to take a balanced approach that will focus on the needs of local residents when extraction and production of the metal begins.
Southern California Gas Co. said March 23 that it has made a commitment to have zero-emission operations and energy delivery by 2045, but the utility will face many challenges in getting there.
Pacific Gas & Electric on March 22 asked its felony probation judge to remove proposed tree-management requirements that would reduce wildfire risk, but could increase the size and number of public-safety power shut-offs in the utility's territory.
Pacific Gas & Electric said it has exceeded California's renewables portfolio standard target, which requires energy providers to deliver 33 percent renewable energy by the end of 2020.
California legislators are considering bills related to resource adequacy, wildfire prevention and mitigation, offshore wind, and green hydrogen.
An independent electric transmission company is proposing to construct a transmission line designed to increase the amount of renewable energy delivered from southwest Nevada to California.
Temperatures and grid operations have been back to normal for weeks, but the effects of the Texas energy crisis continue to ripple out across the Lone Star State.
Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) on March 8 introduced seven bills aimed at reforming the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and either preventing or improving handling of future disasters in the state.
Clean Power Alliance said it is well positioned with respect to its carbon-free renewables contracts, with some projects having started operations in the recent quarter.
Pacific Gas & Electric is proposing to take saws to gray pine trees that lean toward the utility's power lines in certain high-fire-threat areas in the state. A gray pine in Shasta County is suspected to have contacted a PG&E-operated line and started the Zogg Fire that killed four p…
NRG has sold 4.8 GW of its fossil fuel-based generating assets, including two California natural gas-fired plants, to Generation Bridge, an affiliate of ArcLight Capital Partners.
A coalition of companies intend to develop a bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, or BECCS, project in California's Central Valley.
The Renewable Hydrogen Alliance appointed Michelle Detwiler as its new executive director, the organization said in a March 12 news release.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced on March 12 that Tracey LeBeau will act as interim administrator and CEO of the Western Area Power Administration while the department looks for a permanent replacement for Mark Gabriel.
Two weeks after blackouts left millions of Texans without power, heat and, in many cases, water for days during a severe statewide cold spell, public officials at every level of government, along with utilities, economists and grid experts, continue to assess the fallout.
March is the fifth consecutive month that both the snowpack and precipitation in the state have measured below normal levels, the California Department of Water Resources said following its third manual snow survey of the water year.
Certain utilities and regulators in the United States do not analyze the economic costs associated with long-duration power outages in their service territories, according to a new research report.
California has an abundance of renewable power, but not all of it is earmarked to meet the state's renewables portfolio standard, a situation that will likely require oversupplied investor-owned utilities to sell off surplus renewable-energy credits, according to an "early release" edition o…
The recent power outages during freezing weather in Texas led to multiple deaths and billions of dollars in damages, though grid managers assert that had they not responded as they did the outcome would have been even worse. The situation illustrates people's dependence on the electric power…
Victims of 2017 and 2018 wildfires attributed to Pacific Gas & Electric equipment filed a lawsuit against former executives of the company. Separately, PG&E was served with a search warrant over the 2019 Kincade Fire.
Millions of customers across the central and south-central United States lost electricity and heat this week amid freezing weather due to a blast of cold air from the Arctic that coincided with historic generation losses across thermal and renewable assets, system operators reported.
The California Independent System Operator scaled back its summer 2021 readiness plan in response to stakeholders who said the ISO had packed too many items into the proposal.
The costs of producing green hydrogen are projected to decline through 2030, but a number of operational, policy and regulatory issues still need to be addressed to bring the technology to scale, experts say.
Eight Northern and Central California community choice aggregators formed a new joint-powers authority to combine their purchasing power for procuring new power contracts from clean energy sources.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup is considering requiring Pacific Gas & Electric to estimate the number of trees—both healthy and unhealthy—that could fall into the utility's power lines during a storm.
Innovative projects aiming to decarbonize transportation and industrial processes using hydrogen got a combined funding boost of more than $23 million from public and private investments in new technology this week.
In its latest forecast update, the California Department of Water Resources said roughly an inch of snow-water equivalent had been added to the state snowpack since Feb. 1, as of Feb. 10.
Communication, collaboration and candor are critical to keeping grids balanced and lights on across the West in coming years, and meeting the challenges this presents will be easier if the West is working together.
Electricity grid experts are not brimming with confidence about the reliability of California's energy system, judging by comments at a panel discussion this week.
Regional collaboration and coordination will be key if California and the rest of the West are to maintain a reliable electricity grid in the face of many changes swirling in the region, the head of California's grid operator said.
The Southwest Power Pool launched its new energy imbalance services market this week with some key Western utilities participating. But at least one new member—Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association—says the move is a placeholder until it joins a regional transmission organization.
Coordinated planning among different types of load-serving entities with an array of available resources will be key to meeting California's reliability and decarbonization goals, speakers said during a Jan. 29 panel discussion.
The California Department of Water Resources said it will receive another $308 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as reimbursement for expenses associated with reconstruction of spillways and emergency-response requests for the 2017 Oroville Dam spillways incident.
Delivering reliable electricity in California this summer will require "deliberate and ongoing collaboration" among the state's energy regulatory bodies, particularly as more battery storage is installed in the Golden State, an advisor with the California Independent System Operator said.
Anxiety around firm power has been a key theme as the Western energy transition causes dramatic changes for California and Southwest utilities. The closure of coal-fired power plants and an increase in the percentage of renewable resources and energy storage in utility portfolios have helped…
PacifiCorp customers in Oregon and California have finished paying $200 million in surcharges that were collected during the past nine years to help fund the restoration of the lower Klamath River and the removal of four dams.
Texas-based software company SolarWinds Corp. revealed on Jan. 13 that a hack alleged to be of Russian origin occurred much earlier than initially understood, dating back to September 2019. Following its in-depth investigation, the company discovered that malicious actors had unobstructed ac…
San Diego Gas & Electric commenced testing its vanadium redox flow battery for use as part of a zero-emission microgrid, the company said Jan. 22.
Increasing electrification could reduce U.S. energy system costs by nearly $800 billion through reduction of fuel and operational expenditures in the building, transportation and industrial sectors, but overall savings will depend heavily on the pace of technological developments, according …
Tackling climate change, clearing the path for more renewables and integrating new technologies into a rapidly changing electric grid are the primary hopes for California energy leaders as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris take office.
Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed in part to two new felony probation conditions that could result in larger public-safety power shut-offs in its territory.
The Silicon Valley Clean Energy board of directors on Jan. 21 approved the community choice aggregator's Building Decarbonization Joint Action Plan, which it says "defines a set of prioritized actions for the agency and its members to reduce carbon pollution from buildings."
Industry groups are pressing the incoming Biden administration to support the clean-energy sector in its plan to recover from the economic downturn wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's new proposed 2021-2022 budget includes billions of dollars to mitigate wildfires, address climate change, and accelerate adoption and usage of electric vehicles in the state.
