To rapidly decarbonize the power system, California has made a big push to develop renewable energy to get rid of more expensive and polluting fossil-fuel power plants. From 2010 to 2020, California’s share of solar and wind power generation increased from 3.4% to 22.7%. By 2030, California is expected to add 16.9 gigawatts of solar and 8.2 gigawatts of wind to meet rising energy demand and avoid brownouts during heat waves.
However, as California's installed renewable energy capacity increases, so does the time it takes to curtail wind and solar. Since 2014, the average duration of wind and light abandonment in California has increased from 2.5 hours to 9.5 hours. California has lost 1,860 GWh of wind and solar power so far in 2022, enough to power more than 200,000 homes for a year.
Long-duration, multi-day energy storage can leverage these forgoed clean energy sources to meet California’s electricity demand load, helping to address California’s famous “duck curve,” where net electricity demand declines during peak solar production, and then nets electricity demand at sunset. The demand for electricity is increasing rapidly. California has made significant strides in bringing long-duration and multi-day energy storage technologies to market, approving $126 million in incentives for the first time to demonstrate new long-duration energy storage technologies.