'Solar glut' isn't a solar problem. It's transmission, battery problem

Nov. 30, 2024 3 AM PT

To the editor: Every month, California throws away enough solar and wind energy to power half a million homes — not because we don’t need it, but because our system is designed to waste it. While Sacramento celebrates expanded solar capacity, we’re forcing solar panels to “nap” during their most productive hours while keeping expensive gas plants running. (“Solar power glut boosts California electric bills. Other states reap the benefits,” Nov. 24)

The problem is structural. Our regulated monopoly utilities are incentivized to build infrastructure where it maximizes their returns, not where the grid needs it most.

The solution? Start by reining in utilities’ blank-check spending on questionable upgrades. Then transform the California Independent System Operator into a forward-looking grid operator where every watt of clean energy reaches its destination.

California revolutionized wholesale electricity markets after the 2000s crisis; we shouldn’t wait for another crisis to fix transmission. Currently, these costs simply pass through the system with no incentive for efficiency, since neither utilities nor grid operators earn rewards for optimization.

While artificial intelligence can help manage the grid, without meaningful transmission reforms at the state level, even the smartest technology becomes window dressing. We need a market that rewards efficiency over waste, not one that rubber-stamps natural gas investments while solar and wind sit idle.

Until we align our grid operators’ incentives with our clean energy goals, we’ll keep paying premium prices for dirty power while our solar panels take their expensive naps.

Jalal Awan, San Francisco

The writer is an analyst at the Utility Reform Network.

To the editor: California ratepayers spend hundreds of millions annually keeping gas power plants online that operate only sporadically. That’s because our grid needs surplus energy sources available when demand surges — much like keeping extra fire trucks ready for emergencies.

The fact that a small amount of solar energy doesn’t make it to the grid on cool spring days isn’t alarming. All energy sources face curtailment, including gas plants that sit idle the vast majority of the year.

What matters is having enough clean energy available to meet energy needs on hot summer days, and solar is vital for this.

But California still has work to do. Sometimes we have no other option but to curtail solar power while fossil fuels are still being used elsewhere in the state simply because we lack the transmission lines to move clean energy where it’s needed.

The solution for both affordability and reliability isn’t to slow solar development; it’s to accelerate transmission construction and battery storage to match our clean energy buildout.

Melissa Romero, Sacramento

The writer is deputy legislative director of California Environmental Voters.

To the editor: As a longtime subscriber and homeowner with rooftop solar since 2005 (and batteries since 2019), I read with interest your article on solar curtailment, which made it sound like solar power is over-developed.

It seems to me the criticism is really about solar farms, and mostly due to inadequate grid and storage development, not rooftop solar that generally keeps production local.

What we really need to do is to promote more storage, including batteries for homes, grid-smart storage in electric vehicle batteries and pumped water storage, an old technology that already supplies more than 90% of existing grid storage (yet is hardly mentioned in the press). Science magazine had a great article about it last January.

Rooftop solar with batteries also has kept my home working smoothly through multiple public safety power shutoffs by Southern California Edison — including one over a previous Thanksgiving Day when we had 12 guests.

The world needs more solar and wind power replacing fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the utilities are compelled to find profits for themselves and their shareholders and move toward renewables only when they are forced to or they find a way to make money.

Jed Fuhrman, Topanga

To the editor: Let’s get creative! There are options for using excess renewable electricity.

Data centers are crying for power (yes, battery storage will be necessary for night-time use).

Also, the excess power from solar can be used to operate desalination plants along the coast. These could produce more potable water, solving a major cost inhibitor of that energy-intensive process and the long-running battle for water between the farmers and urban areas.

With that, there might be no need to build expensive new infrastructure through the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta to transport more water from Northern California to Southern California. What are we waiting for?

David Bach, Sacramento

To the editor: It is not a bad thing to have excess solar power from rooftop solar. Rooftop solar produces energy where it is used and reduces the need for centralized power generation and long-distance transport.

That is a problem only for power utilities, which have been working extra hard to kill rooftop solar so they can keep their profits.

Rooftop solar saves massive amounts of new land from being eaten up by solar farms. It’s ecologically more sound to put solar panels on roofs and not on massive land-eating farms.

Hannes Ziegler, Redlands

To the editor: California’s financial losses from solar power underscore the idiocy of capitalism.

We pay neighboring states to take our solar-generated electricity. This, in turn, leads to higher electricity costs for Californians while enriching middlemen through arbitrage, and lowering electricity rates in the neighboring states.

Those states can then benefit financially by shutting down their own solar installations, while keeping coal and gas plants operating.

In a more rational system, all utilities would be publicly owned, as would an extensive array of electric vehicle chargers. During times of excess solar power production, instead of paying other states to take our electricity, Californians could have free access to all state chargers for electric cars, buses, and trucks—- another incentive to go electric.

Banks, hedge-fund middlemen and other money leeches would have to find something socially useful to do.

David Klein, Northridge

To the editor: So, our brilliant California legislators have allowed renewable energy to become yet another corporate robbery of its citizens.

The most economic approach to renewable energy — rooftop solar — has been de-incentivized in favor of huge solar farms that cover sensitive desert habitat and must have their energy sold out of state at a loss to Californians.

This is corporate welfare. It’s time to wake up and get reasonable. These corporations — not just energy producers — need to be reined in. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision must be overturned.

No profit-oriented corporation is going to take human welfare into account.

Betsy Rothstein, Long Beach