![]() ![]() That electricity was wasted, and there was no way to store it for later, when grid operators desperately needed it. Grid operators "curtailed," or turned away, more than 2000 megawatt hours of electricity that solar generators could have delivered, enough to power a small city. ![]() Yet earlier on that same day, there was so much solar power available that the grid couldn't take it all. The alert worked People stopped using so much power, and the grid survived. ![]() The sun was going down, solar generation was disappearing, and the remaining power plants, many of them burning gas, couldn't keep up with demand. "Everybody in the state of California, I believe, got a text message at 5:30 in the evening to turn off their appliances," Kuzmich says. She says energy storage facilities like these will be increasingly vital as California starts to rely more on energy from wind and solar, which produce electricity on their own schedules, unbothered by the demands of consumers.Ĭalifornians learned this during a heat wave this past summer. "It's a water battery!" says Neena Kuzmich, Deputy Director of Engineering for the water authority. Dan Charles for NPR Neena Kuzmich, deputy director of engineering for the San Diego County Water Authority, has been working on plans for pumped energy storage at the San Vicente reservoir. ![]()
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