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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

> rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes.

No the reason that California doesn't have capacity outages is because we've executed steadily on the most ambitious battery energy storage project in the nation, and now have over 8GW of said batteries. And because the CPUC regime despite the vocal whining of a few impacted industries has also walked a fine line giving us a huge installed base of rooftop solar.

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Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026.

If 8GW over several is the most ambitious, what's 160GW in five years?

https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/04/22/5%20CEO%20Update...

Meanwhile rates in Texas have risen a good bit...to $0.14-15/kWh.

Yes, I give TX full credit here. However, you'll note that Texas uses way more grid electricity than California, so in terms of load served from battery California is far ahead and will remain that way for several years barring changes in strategy.

Yes, but not having capacity outages is a very low bar in the developed world, whereas the prices Californians pay for electricity is much higher than most places.

Two separate problems. PG&E is guaranteed a return on capital, so the prices are just going to be what they are until the state unwinds that bad deal. It doesn't have much to do with anything else.

The two "problems" are related in that California's not having capacity outages does very little to offset the fact that whoever decided how to provide electricity for Calfornia did a bad job.

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