California’s second-largest investor-owned utility Pacific Gas & Electric has warned customers of a challenging summer ahead, beginning with a record-breaking heatwave expected in some parts of the state this week.

Southern California Edison (SCE), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities, procured 1,360MW of battery energy storage during last year, according to an annual sustainability report for 2020 just published by parent company Edison International.

Commissioned at the start of this year, the Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System in California is a landmark project for the industry in having competed against natural gas to provide peaking capacity for the grid. Andy Colthorpe finds out the project’s backstory.

A company that pairs available energy capacity with the needs of electric utilities is preparing to put 288MW of flexible power onto the California grid in time for the summer peak in electricity demand that threatens energy security across the state each year.

Renewable energy asset management software group Power Factors will add a 100MW battery energy storage system (BESS) to its recently-launched battery storage performance management platform.

Experts, technology providers and energy system stakeholders discuss how the need for long-duration energy storage can be met, in this panel discussion from the Energy Storage Summit USA hosted earlier this year by our publisher Solar Media.

Here are three interesting new California projects using solar and storage storage we’ve learned about in the past few days that combine technologies and applications to maximise the benefits of battery storage and solar.

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) has tabled plans to mitigate a potential shortfall of electricity through the rapid procurement of new capacity over the next five years, 90% of which must be non-emitting firm resources.

Standalone battery energy storage can potentially offer better value to the US electricity system than pairing batteries directly with solar or wind generation, but the pros and cons of each approach vary greatly from project to project.

Smart software and artificial intelligence can forecast everything from how much electricity will be generated and when it will be generated, to the right strategies for putting that electricity into different market opportunities. Energy-Storage.news speaks with Matt Penfold, VP of business development for digital at Fluence, about how the company has added 1.5GW to its portfolio of renewables and storage under management in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).