California is now producing so much solar energy that the state must increasingly ask solar farms to stop producing to prevent overloading the electric grid. In the last 12 months, power that would have fueled 518,000 California homes for a year has been curtailed or thrown away.
TL;DR - CA needs more storage to better enable renewables growth, but otherwise the article is a bit of a solar hit piece.
The article muddies the waters by trying to connect cost savings in neighboring states who buy CA excess solar as “lost” revenue for CA ratepayers.
In some cases, negative prices do count as a small loss in the budgets, but generally, just because CA excess solar is cheaper than NM fossil fueled power does not mean anyone is “losing”.
The article does mention Wall Street speculators profiting off of the energy market, which is a loss for ratepayers, but it’s a problem with existing forecasting models, not solar. If utility modeling was better than Wall Street, there would be no profit for outside investors.
This is partially very helpful. Thank you.