Blackouts Loom in California as Electricity Prices Are ‘Absolutely Exploding’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
From The Daily Signal:
Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California: soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability—and both trends bode ill for the state’s low- and middle-income consumers.
Last week, the state’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, issued a “flex alert” that asked the state’s consumers to reduce their power use “to reduce stress on the grid and avoid power outages.”
The California Independent System Operator’s warning of impending electricity shortages heralds another blackout-riddled summer at the same time California’s electricity prices are skyrocketing.
In 2020, California’s electricity prices jumped by 7.5%, making it the biggest price increase of any state in the country last year and nearly seven times the increase that was seen in the United States as a whole.
According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the all-sector price of electricity in California last year jumped to 18.15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which means that Californians are now paying about 70% more for their electricity than the U.S. average all-sector rate of 10.66 cents per kWh. Even more worrisome: California’s electricity rates are expected to soar over the next decade. (More on that in a moment.)
The surging cost of electricity will increase the energy burden being borne by low- and middle-income Californians. High energy costs have a particularly regressive effect in California, which has the highest poverty rate—and some of the highest electricity prices—in the country. In 2020, California’s all-sector electricity prices were the third-highest in the continental U.S., behind only Rhode Island (18.55 cents per kWh) and Connecticut (19.19 cents per kWh.)
Before going further, let me state the obvious: California policymakers are providing a case study in how not to manage an electric grid. Furthermore, that case study shows what could happen if policymakers at the state and federal levels decide to follow California’s radical decarbonization mandates, which include a requirement for 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045 and an economy-wide goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.
Even though the state’s tattered electric grid can barely meet existing demand—and more rolling blackouts are almost certain this summer—California continues to pile bad policy on top of bad policy.
The state has banned the future sale of cars powered by internal combustion engines, which will result in dramatic increases in electricity demand and will require, according to a recent report by the California Energy Commission, the installation of 1.2 million new electric vehicle charging stations by 2030.
Bans on natural gas will further increase electricity demand. Cheered on by the Sierra Club, which is getting tens of millions of dollars from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, about 46 California communities have banned the use of natural gas in homes and businesses.
Making the whole thing even more absurd is that California is pledging to achieve these goals while closing the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which by itself produces nearly 10% of all the juice consumed in California.
The state’s surging energy costs demonstrate the regressive nature of decarbonization policies and how renewable energy mandates drive up the price of power. California’s electricity prices are “absolutely exploding,” says Mark Nelson, an energy analyst and the managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund, who used that phrase on a recent episode of “The Power Hungry Podcast.”
He added that the electricity price hikes are happening before the state’s utilities have incurred all of the costs of the deadly wildfires that swept the state, trimming millions of trees to prevent future wildfires, and adding all the mandated renewable energy capacity, transmission lines, and new battery storage that the state will need to meet its climate goals. Further, the costs do not include all of the costs that will be incurred after the proposed shuttering of Diablo Canyon in 2025.
Last week’s power conservation requests are likely the first of many to come. On May 27, California Independent System Operator CEO Elliot Mainzer warned that if the state is hit with another hot summer like the one that required rolling blackouts that left more than 800,000 homes and businesses without power over two days last August, “our numbers tell us the grid will be stressed again.”
That warning followed a May 12 California Independent System Operator press release that warned that “reliability risks remain” and the state will likely need “voluntary” electricity conservation this summer to avoid a repeat of last year’s blackouts.
The spectre of more blackouts is yet more bad news for California’s beleaguered consumers. Between 2010 and 2020, the state’s electricity prices jumped by 39.5%, which was the biggest increase of any state in the U.S. Even more worrisome: California’s electricity rates will soar over the next decade.
In a report issued in February, the California Public Utility Commission warned that the state’s energy costs are growing far faster than the rate of inflation, and that “energy bills will become less affordable over time.”
What’s driving up prices? The report says that “electrification goals and wildlife mitigation plans are among the near-term needs … that place upward pressure on rates and bills.”
The report projected that residents living in hotter regions (that is, those who can’t afford to live close to the coast) who get their electricity from San Diego Gas & Electric could see their monthly power bills increase by 47% between now and 2030. When future gasoline price increases are included, overall energy costs for that same consumer are projected to increase by 60%.
Furthermore, the California Public Utility Commission expects residential ratepayers in San Diego Gas & Electric’s service territory will be paying close to 45 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2030. For reference, that is more than three times the current average price of residential electricity.
Meanwhile, the state’s renewable plans are being thwarted by rural Californians who don’t want wind and solar projects in their neighborhoods. California has added essentially no new wind capacity since 2013.
The latest rejection of Big Wind happened on Tuesday when the Shasta County Planning Commission unanimously rejected a permit for Fountain Wind, a project that proposed to put 216 megawatts of wind capacity (and about 71 turbines) in a mountainous area west of the town of Burney.
The project met fierce resistance. According to David Benda, a reporter for the Redding Record Searchlight, “The 5-0 vote capped a marathon meeting that went nearly 10 hours and ended just before 11 p.m. The unanimous vote was met with cheers.”
As I have previously reported, the backlash against Big Wind goes far beyond California. It can be seen throughout Europe and from Maine to Hawaii. Since 2015, more than 300 communities in the U.S. have rejected or restricted wind projects.
In addition to the raging land-use conflicts, California policymakers are facing a growing backlash from California’s Latino population, which is the largest in the country.
As I reported last year, the state’s Latino leaders have sued the state over its housing, energy, and climate regulations. Jennifer Hernandez, the lead lawyer for The Two Hundred, a coalition of Latino leaders, told me those regulations are “incredibly regressive” and are bringing “Appalachia economics” to California’s “non-coastal elites.”
Robert Apodaca, the founder of United Latinos Vote, a nonprofit group, told me recently that the ongoing electricity price hikes in the state “will be crippling for low- and middle-income Californians, particularly for those who live in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. They are going to really feel the heat, in more ways than one.”
The punchline here is clear: The blackouts and high electricity prices that are plaguing California provide a neon-lit warning sign about the electric reliability and energy affordability crises that loom if policymakers attempt to decarbonize our economy too quickly.
Natural gas generation fortunately still supplies about half of California’s electricity, with nuclear, bio and hydro adding another fifth. The Mickey Mouse wind and solar generators brought less than a quarter of California’s electricity last year, despite the hype.
It will be fun and games living in California when Biden and Newsom have succeeded in getting rid of most of the only reliable power they have.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
They are known as ‘brownouts’ in California and are usually done on a rolling basis across a power company’s area so that no-one is inconvenienced for too long and food safety is maintained. It is a consequence of jamming too many people into a very desirable State without thought of planning for the resources to be in place first that the new inhabitants will need to live. Same problem exists with potable water supplies.
It is not a new problem. It existed in the 1930s and even before that in some locations in the State.
Wind has only seem marginal increases since 2013 though solar has been ramping fast since then.
Good luck with the ever increasing power prices in CA, if you can get power that is, thanks to unreliables.
The brown outs and price increases will likely achieve what anti development zealots have been trying to achieve for the last 40 years, reduce the population. Don’t know about the last 2 years but prior to that it was mostly working class people who were leaving. Most government effort to help lower the cost of living for low income residents seem ineffective and futile. However if the objective is gentrification where only the wealthy can afford to stay, they have exactly to policies in place that they need.
And that’s a place in the world where you don’t really need much energy for heating!
God help u up here in the North of England.
Pete Yarnell, and even worse in northern Canada! For some reason, ecozealots haven’t figured out that windmills and solar are useless when it’s -30 to -40, and 2 feet of snow on the solar panels
Their peak demand is for air conditioning which has soared due to a spell of warm weather there.
Peter, I asked my friends in LA what the weather is like in winter. “Cooler. We sometimes have to put on a sweater” was the reply.
It gets a little bit colder when you go north of San Francisco, especially in winter, or up in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
All the foolishness of renewables is writ big on the wall. The general population are beginning to see the real downside of the greening of energy supplies in the near term and long term futures. The politicos and policy makers are standing with their noses an inch from the wall and cannot see the big picture and do not want to see it as it would be as Gore would say an “inconvenient truth”. The eco-environmental industry are either: willfully blinded by their ideology or blinded by the prospect of a treasure trove of golden obscene profits. We expect politician’s, for the most part, to be self serving and corrupt, however the greatest failure of all are the corrupt opportunistic faux scientists and the Media in all forms for their deliberate lies.
Meanwhile our MPs of all parties are implementing the same policy on our entire country, just a few years behind.
It is not going to end well.
It’s often said that all the nutcases in the US end up falling down into the bottom left hand corner of the country. And the majority of these seem to be working for their electricity generating industry.
No doubt the wealthy in California already have their back-up generators in-place to keep the swimming pools cool etc. This is the mentality of the third world where the rich and the petty despots have their own generators and the majority of their populace must enjoy rolling black-outs.
However, Californian electricity is still far cheaper than in the UK for wealthier people. They are starting to install OCGTs as the best back-up for non-reliable generation; as must the UK soon.
Yes, what we have is government interfering with the energy markets. Cos reasons.
As Rush Limbaugh pointed out decades ago, the Left has a static view of the world. They believe they can do whatever they want to the people, and the people will soldier on. You know, like they can raise taxes and nothing will happen. Or raise minimum wage to $15 and hour (“Why not $25 an hour?” – Rush).
Government interference in the energy markets must eventually lead to decentralization of electricity generation, with all its benefits of scale – lower cost and better pollution control.
Those who can afford it will first install home emergency generators, like Generac. As time goes on, and supply problems get absurd, small scale generators serving small groups will spring up. Instead of utilities with millions of customers, utilities with a hundred customers.
The UK will soon be in the same mess as California thanks to the idiot Johnson’s plan to do Net Zero with offshore wind power. Anyone with any common sense can see that this is doomed to ignominious failure.
“Anyone with any common sense can see that this is doomed to ignominious failure.”
Par for the course with a Johnson decision
The rise and fall of civilization cycle in action?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/24/collapse-of-civilization-part-2/
I wonder when the Californian legislators are going to ban the earth from turning?
Give them time and they will……
Another one for the pot:
Emily Gosden writing in The Times today quotes Julian Leslie, head of networks National Grid ESO as saying that the forecast increase in constraint costs would be driven primarily by new off-shore and on-shore windfarms in Scotland. She reports that Leslie said that the building of new wind farms was still a net benefit as they would have to be constrained on only the windiest of days. . He is reported as saying that wind farms would reduce wholesale energy prices and that this should outweigh the rising constraint costs.
The column finishes: ” paying some constraint costs wold be part of operating a cost-efficient network because it would not make sense to build cables that could carry all the electricity from wind farms for the ‘ small percentage of the time where they are all generating maximum output”‘ . An interesting closing frankness you may agree.
And this entire issue of urgent and rapid decarbonization to zero and net-zero emissions is resting on a platform of nothing more than scary climate models. Dire forecasts. Climate emergencies and existential crises…all imminent.
There is nothing practical that can be done for the increasing energy needs that doesn’t require carbon-based fuels at some point. Wind and solar farms, Nuclear installations. Electric vehicles. Even CO2 capture and storage. All of these need the fuels that will not be there if this zero decarbonization stupidity continues.
Who with more than three active braincells and not brainwashed by one of the many strands of modern fascio-marxism did not see this coming? All these ideas are not based in science and credible engineering of any kind so why does anyone expect silly bird killing windmills and cadmium filled eco horror solar cells to do what the liars claim? What we have had are cowards for leaders obsessed with their twitter account based ratings, simply pontificating and throwing largess around at the most outlandish claims and pretentions as long as they are couched in the correct woke language.
Stand back a minute and just take all of it in, the whole rotten lot of it, not just climate hysteria but all the rest of the Critical Theory based attacks on society, When you hear about Critical Race Theory” that also comes from Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School in the 1930’s exported to the US when Hitler was feeling their collars. Their plan has always been to wage war from within a society by attacking all of the pillars of the society and haven’t they done well! The result of anti science and woke engineering in this case in California in the USA is plain to see.
None of these “plans” “deals” or “initiatives” are intended to have a useful outcome. There are no intended outcomes except for chaos and in chaos the marxists will thrive offering themselves as the only solution to the very problems they caused and seize control. Individually all of the claims and initiatives sound like lunacy until you understand that the destruction of the State is the endgame, not any consequences that may arise from that. Calling maths racist indeed everything racist ( including climate as racist) if the left does not like agree or understand it. Understand that and then you can understand what is really going on.
We use so much time dissecting absurd claims about the climate when their whole point of them is to wear us down so we just give up. As for those with soft brains, well schools are turning them out in increasing numbers, people taught what to think not how to think and that to question is a crime.
What is so important to take from all of this is that it is all about tearing down the old regardless of its merits and replacing it with anything because the important thing for the marxists (aided and abetted by their useful idiots) is not to end up with better. The point is to end up with chaos because only in a space filled with chaos can the marxist evil take over and then just watch who is first against the wall…all of the agitators and the tribalists and the eco warriors. Did you think the real and dangerous people who crave real power want that lot around when they finally take over?
In order to turn a crisis into a farce, owners of “green” electric vehicles are being asked not to charge their cars during times of peak demand. Presumably there’s just about enough electricity available to keep the petrol pumps running.
Already! When <5% have elec cars. So 10% will turn the lights out!
“To keep the petrol pumps running”
I have distant (nearly 60 years ago) memories of my father pulling into a rural garage to fill up his Austin Cambridge, and the petrol being dispensed from a hand wound pump! The garage is still there, and surprisingly still selling fuel, but with electric pumps now. Which reminds me – I must pop down the road and fill up my jerry can…
“18.15 cents per kilowatt-hour” which is about 13p per kWh. Or almost exactly the same as the 13.3p I currently pay from my supplier.