“Despite its energy conservation efforts, California remains in deficit”

PSpending summer in California is a good way to anticipate what awaits us this winter in terms of energy sobriety. The Californian electrical network supervisor (California ISO) announced the color on the antennas this Monday, September 5: cool his house and run his machines during the day but not in the evening, leave the curtains closed, then, when evening comes, crank up the air conditioning above 25 degrees, use fans and no longer charge your electric car between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.

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In the Golden State, the cold is never intense, but the heat can be. For this first weekend of September, extended Monday 5 by Labor Day (Labor Day), the thermometer blithely exceeded 40 degrees in the Los Angeles area, plunged into an extreme heat wave. Result: peaks in electricity consumption to run the air conditioning. The California ISO expects an even busier Tuesday, September 6 with the return to school, perhaps a historic peak in consumption and cuts in the network. It won’t be the first time. In 2020, already, nearly 200,000 homes had been without electricity.

The phenomenon is still surprising for a state that prides itself on being the leading economy in the United States and a flagship of technology, a pioneer in the fight against global warming. For now, we have to recognize that it is above all a laboratory for the difficult times that await us. If it is thus necessary to use its machines during the day, it is because electricity is much more abundant when the sun is shining. In the Mojave Desert, east of Los Angeles, are installed gigantic parks of solar panels, among the largest in the world. California alone produces a third of American solar electricity. In the state’s electricity mix, solar represents more than a quarter of its production, twice as much as wind power and more than its large dams.

Consume when the weather is nice

The homeland of Apple, Google and Hollywood can be proud of being the American pioneer of renewable energies, which again represent a third of its production and almost half of its installed capacity. But that’s only part of the story. Despite its efforts to save energy, the region remains in deficit. It imports almost a third of what it consumes, on the one hand hydroelectricity from the northern states, and on the other hand gas or coal from the southern states. Moreover, its significant storage capacity, thanks to its dams, is nevertheless insufficient, especially in periods of prolonged drought, to compensate for the intermittency of solar production. It is therefore necessary to consume when the weather is nice.

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