California has already postponed and even canceled plans to build new natural-gas-fired power plants in favor of distributed energy. But it hasn’t proposed to replace an existing power plant with them — until now.
Early this month, the California Public Utilities Commission issued a resolution that would direct utility Pacific Gas & Electric to open competitive solicitations for DERs — energystorage mostly, but with room for other carbon-neutral “preferred resources” like demand response — to cover the grid capacity and voltage needs now being served by three Northern California natural-gas-fired power plants.
