Author: Ed Smeloff, GridLab Expert
California’s electric grid stands at an important crossroads. For decades gas-powered steam plants located along the Pacific Ocean served as a reliable electricity backstop. These ocean-cooled power plants built in the 1950s, like the Ormond Beach Generating Station north of Los Angeles, possessed the capability to ramp up in advance of extreme heat waves. Due to the damage these plants inflict on the ocean environment, the state has slowly phased out these power plants. Ormond Beach and two other coastal plants are scheduled to shut down permanently at the end of this year.
The retirement of these gas plants will save marine life, yet the need for massive amounts of electricity to weather climate-driven grid events remains. This was evident during the intense early October heat wave when record 100 degree temperatures hit San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange County. The CAISO was forced to alert power plants to stay on line and delay planned maintenance for several days. State grid operators slowly ramped up the Ormond Beach plant, calling on the backup Strategic Reliability Reserve, a supply of capacity established in 2022 to avoid blackouts.
In a previous grid emergency in July of 2021, the Bootleg wildfire in southeast Oregon forced the derating of the three major transmission lines that allows California to share power with the Pacific Northwest. Derating these critical lines required the CAISO to fire up almost all of its gas-fired power plants (including Ormond Beach) for several evenings while increasing imports from the Southwest.
Extreme temperatures frequently spike and continue for hours after the sun sets during the summer and fall. Compounding the risks of regular heat waves is the escalating threat of catastrophic wildfires. When massive blazes erupt, they can force the emergency derate or outright tripping of major transmission lines during critical peak hours. Distant out-of-state generation plants that use these lines are curtailed by smoke and fire. This is when rapid response resources can provide the most value to the grid.
California now possesses an unprecedented amount of controllable loads and resources, including millions of electric vehicles (EVs), all-electric buildings, and distributed battery storage that did not exist a decade ago. With advanced metering infrastructure, automated device controls, and declining communication costs, these resources can charge, discharge, or shift use to flatten grid demand. Flexible load can integrate new demand and avoid expensive generation and delivery investments; left unmanaged, the cost to serve this new load will exacerbate rate pressures.
GridLab recently published “Unlocking California’s Flexible Load,” demonstrating how California can leverage demand-side resources to make the grid more reliable and resilient. California must continue to scale up distributed energy resources (DERs), behind-the-meter battery storage, and advanced virtual power plants (VPPs). Flexible resources shave daily peak loads, provide local voltage support, absorb excess midday solar generation, and inject power back into the grid precisely when transmission lines have been derated by wildfire smoke or extreme heat.
As California transitions from reliance on the Strategic Reliability Reserve toward more integrated, forward-looking resource and transmission planning, it should prioritize a diverse portfolio of cost-effective, low-carbon reliability resources. Backstop reliability resources must be flexible, distributed, and multi-purpose clean resources. By building a more agile grid capable of withstanding both extreme heat storms and wildfire-triggered transmission outages that last for hours, California can secure a resilient, decarbonized future without compromising reliability.