California Poised To Hit 50 Percent Renewable Target a Full Decade Ahead of Schedule (cleantechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: Every year, the California Energy Commission releases its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) report, which gives details about the mix of energy experienced by all utilities within the state during the preceding 12 months. The report for this year, released in November, shows that all three of the state's investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric -- are projected to derive 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. That is a full decade ahead of schedule. PG&E reports it used 32.9% renewable energy in the past year. The figure for SoCal Edison was 28.2%. San Diego Gas & Electric led the pack with 43.2% renewable energy. Now that the 50% goal is within reach, California is looking ahead to its next milestone -- 80% renewables by 2050. "Once we get to about 50 percent, we're going to start to run into new challenges -- the second 50 percent will be trickier than the first 50 percent," Brown notes. Part of the challenge will be balancing the grid using new technologies to avoid the need for fossil fueled "peaker plants" to provide additional electricity when demand is high.

Comments

Nuclear is stupid. why can't people learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

BATTERIES! distributed. and a modern grid.
Pumped water, Flywheels: kinetic batteries.
Chemical Batteries.
Heat Mass Batteries.
Hybrid: flow batteries (which lose the least of any storage)
Alternative fuels: waste burning: biogas & trash.

ALL THE ABOVE IS CHEAPER!

Nuclear is crazy expensive all around. It is the worst for handling peak power needs-- it does not turn on/off, it runs all the time at high or low wasting a great deal of power.
Obama approved 2 new nuclear plants and with about a 10 year timespan we are far from completion and I believe 1 of the plants is a dead project now after 100s of millions spent. COST: 1 billion each. not including fuel, which is not in great supply. No, I don't care about the next generation nuclear which has been hyped as 5 years away for 20 years but nobody is building these cheap magical solutions to nuclear concerns. Seems better to invest that wasted effort into Fusion.

Re: Price

[LynnwoodRooster]

Solar and wind plants do not last 100 years, and they also have a significant environmental impact on the land they use and, in the case of wind turbines, down-wind.