Tag Archive for: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

Long-Duration Energy Storage Makes Progress but Regulation Lags Technology

/in , , /by /pv magazineby Eric Wesoff

If you were building an electrical grid from scratch (with no regard to regulations or finance), then long-duration energy storage would be a requisite. It just makes sense — store energy when it’s cheap and/or abundant, and discharge when the price is high, or the energy is needed by the grid. Use it to load-shift, peak-shift and smooth; to replace fossil-fuel-fired peaker plants; and to integrate intermittent renewable resources onto the grid.

Long-duration storage fits in with what utilities, independent system operators, and regional transmission operators understand. “Most utilities seem to want much longer-duration storage systems, with 6 to 12 hours discharge, to do serious load-shaping over the day,” suggests an analyst at a U.S. energy think tank. Some of these expectations are being driven by the performance of pumped hydro, once the only source of grid-connected storage.

Economically viable long-duration energy storage could accelerate solar and wind penetration, grid resiliency, and serve to stabilize volatile energy prices. But, long-duration energy storage will not become pervasive until regulators adapt to the capabilities of the technology.

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Los Angeles May Store Water Under an Owens Valley Lake Drained to Fill its Faucets

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Louis Sahagun
LONE PINE, Calif. — Quick shifts in climate have prompted Los Angeles to consider an unlikely place to bank some of its Sierra Nevada snowmelt: beneath dry Owens Lake, which the city drained starting in 1913 to fill the L.A. Aqueduct and supply a thirsty metropolis.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has launched studies of ambitious plans to store water in the lake’s underground aquifer so that it could be pumped up in summer months and drought years to create pools of water to limit the dust sweeping across the vast lakebed’s salt flats.

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Los Angeles Still Has A Feed-In Tariff. And It’s Growing

/in , /by /PV Magazineby Christian Roselund

It’s odd to be writing about an active feed-in tariff (FiT) in 2019. The policy which accelerated Germany into a 7 GW+ market annually and kick-started the global solar market had its heyday nearly a decade ago, with feed-in tariffs being introduced across Europe and Asia. This led to spectacular market growth but also dramatic crashes when the ambition of the market created exceeded these policies’ political support.

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Mayor Garcetti Pushes Out Top DWP Executive After FBI Raids

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby David Zahniser, Dakota Smith, Emily Alpert Reyes

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Tuesday sought to reassure the public in the wake of FBI raids at the Department of Water and Power headquarters, announcing that he had pushed out the agency’s top executive months ahead of his planned departure. Garcetti’s announcement came as activists called for more forceful action at the DWP, which has been reeling from a scandal over the city’s response to a disastrous rollout of customer billing software at the utility. “It’s very clear to me that, given the events of the last 24 hours, we need to have a utility that people can trust and leadership they can trust,” Garcetti said in an interview.

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Owens Lake: Former Toxic Dust Bowl Transformed Into Environmental Success

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Louis Sahagan

Fearsome gusts of desert wind routinely kicked up swirling clouds of choking dust over Owens Lake on the east side of the Sierra Nevada after 1913, when its treasured snowmelt and spring water was first diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. It was not until 2001, and under a court order, that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began transforming the lake’s grim heritage, flooding portions where toxic, powder-fine dust exceeded federal pollution standards. In what is now hailed as an astonishing environmental success, nature quickly responded.

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