To Victoria Hilton, 76, who lives in the Heavenly Oaks Mobile Home Park in the mountain community of Guatay in East San Diego County, the power shutoffs felt like an eternity.
She lost power for two days. She used battery-powered lamps to read at night and bathed in tepid water because her water heater couldn’t operate.
The Sweetwater Authority learned of and greenlighted the design of a floating solar array on its reservoir all in the same day. The swiftness of the approval after considering only a single company put some members of its governing board and the public ill at ease.
San Diego Gas & Electric broke ground on the Clairemont microgrid Tuesday, one of four projects the utility has planned at its existing substations.
Once finished, the Clairemont microgrid will be able to provide backup power to San Diego Fire Station 36, the Balboa Branch Library and local schools such as Lafayette Elementary, Sequoia Elementary, Innovation and CPMA Middle Schools and Madison High School.
Microgrids are small-scale grids that can operate independent of or parallel to the larger regional grid to keep critical facilities powered during unexpected outages.
Each microgrid project is paired with energy storage, with the four projects bringing an additional 39 megawatts of battery capacity to the region. SDG&E currently has 95 MW of utility-owned energy storage online, with another 200+ MW in development.
The president of California’s utility regulator warned a top power company Monday that power outages to prevent equipment from sparking wildfires should only be used as a last resort.
“We need specifics on where you have improved, where you are lagging and where you are focusing your resources,” California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer told representatives of San Diego Gas & Electric. “Utilities will be judged by outcome, not by plans.”
San Diego Community Power (SDCP), the local government agency created to speed up the transition to renewable energy, will officially start serving its first customers in less than two weeks.
The launch is the culmination of years of debate over whether governments can be trusted to purchase electricity on behalf of homes and businesses, or if that responsibility should stay with San Diego Gas & Electric, the region’s private utility.
A battery storage demonstration project already providing a carbon-free source of electricity to California’s grid is about to be tested to see how well it can work on microgrids.
Located on a bluff at a San Diego Gas & Electric substation in Bonita, the energy storage project uses vanadium redox flow battery technology that stores electricity when the grid has excess supply and then discharges the energy when the power system needs it.
Earlier this year, the city of San Diego filed a lawsuit against San Diego Gas & Electric in a dispute over the utility’s underground infrastructure obstructing the construction of a $1.4 billion water recycling project.
Now, a second and separate lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a San Diego resident claiming an agreement between the city and SDG&E to help get the project started is illegal.
Anyone who’s driven past the Encina Power Station, a coastal Carlsbad landmark since the 1950s, can’t miss the changes in recent weeks.
Demolition of the old power plant is finally underway. Scaffolding lines the seaward side of the boxy concrete building, and there’s more at the top of its distinctive 400-foot-tall smokestack.
As essential service providers, utilities are responsible for helping to ensure the health and well-being of our communities. The weight of that responsibility has gotten heavier as climate change and the pandemic take its toll on our beautiful state and the people who live here.
San Diego Gas & Electric residential customers will see their electricity bills reduced by $32.28 in both August and September thanks to a climate credit program. Designed to fight climate change, the California Climate Credit will come from a state program that requires power plants, natural gas providers and other large industries that emit greenhouse gases to buy carbon pollution permits. The credit on customers’ bills is their share of the payments from the state’s program.
