Curtailments are at their highest in California during the spring, when the sun is strong enough to generate a lot of solar power but mild weather keeps air-conditioning use, and thus electricity demand, in check.
There are a few ways to do that. California can continue to push buildings, vehicles, and industrial operations to electrify, creating more demand to soak up what is now surplus solar. It can support the construction of interstate transmission lines that would allow it to export more power to states with less solar generation.
The state can also build lots and lots of batteries to store extra solar produced during the day for use in the evening. In fact, it’s already doing that. It has installed more utility-scale storage than any other state, and the sector has grown rapidly in recent years: California had a total of 13.2 GW of utility-scale storage online as of last month, far more than the nearly 8 GW it had at the end of 2023.
