by Ed Maurer

© Jim Dublinsky, Sierra Club

California produced more renewable energy than it needed during 30 days in March and April 2024! This welcome achievement was made possible by a good supply of hydro, wind, and solar power, including America’s largest solar and battery storage (3,320 megawatt-hours of energy storage) facility in the high desert south of Mojave that came online in January.

Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson, who has been tracking green power generation, pointed out on X (Twitter) that renewable supplies exceeded demand for up to 6 hours per day, this excess power was used to charge batteries that smoothed out needs during peak periods.

With a lot of wind power coming online in coming years, Jacobson expects that our state will be entirely on renewables/battery storage round the clock by 2035, ten years ahead of schedule