In this article from Lost Coast Outpost’s EcoNews Report, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), interviews Redwood Coast Energy Authority’s (RCEA) Richard Engel, Director of Power Resources, and Matt Simmons, EPIC’s climate attorney. They discuss how batteries fit into the RCEA’s strategy to phase out fossil fuels.
The piece underscores that achieving 100% renewable energy will require large-scale battery storage to capture energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind. It highlights public concern following a fire at the Moss Landing battery facility in Monterey County.
In response to such safety and technical uncertainties, RCEA and Schatz Energy Research Center hosted a free public workshop in Arcata on July 23, examining how utility-scale battery storage operates, its role in California’s energy transition, and considerations around safety, scale, and benefits. The slides and video recording from the Community Conversation: Battery Energy Storage workshop can be found on our Events page.
As people have been putting up grid-connected home solar systems on their homes, they want to, in some cases, be able to just minimize how much energy they’re exporting to the grid because under the current net metering rules, you don’t get as generous of a payback for putting that power into the grid as you used to. There’s more of a financial argument now for adding energy storage to those grid-connected home solar systems.
-Richard Engel, Director of Power Resources