{"id":5383,"date":"2025-10-15T04:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5383\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T04:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:59:11","slug":"newsom-vetoes-bills-that-could-have-saved-californians-550m-per-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5383\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsom vetoes bills that could have saved Californians $550M per year"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August 2020, thousands of Californians endured rolling blackouts due to extreme heat that stressed the state\u2019s energy grid. Since then, efforts to prevent energy shut-offs like these have intensified, particularly in the face of increasing extreme weather events resulting from climate change. But one viable, growing solution just took a major hit after Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a> vetoed a number of bills that would have expanded California\u2019s ability to grow its virtual power plant system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Virtual power plants, or\u00a0VPPs,\u00a0are exactly what they sound like. Instead of drawing power from a traditional power plant that exists in a static location, VPPs generate power across a variety of sources from various locations, including rooftop solar panels, home batteries and smart thermostats. Public utilities and private companies manage these energy resources, and consumers can get compensation for participating and sending energy back to the grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of residents and commercial businesses in California already have power sources like solar panels and home batteries. But putting them to use as part of a VPP \u2014 by participating in a program like Sunrun CalReady<\/a> or Tesla California VPP<\/a> \u2014 has been slow going. Efforts to expand these programs, which could potentially cut costs for customers and prevent blackouts, ground to a halt earlier this month when Newsom vetoed three energy-related bills with significant bipartisan legislative support. The bills \u2014 Assembly Bill 44<\/a>, Assembly Bill 740<\/a>, and Senate Bill 541 <\/a>\u2014 would each have expanded the state\u2019s abilities to build up VPPs by requiring the California Energy Commission to create a plan to do so, further study how much these home energy resources could add to grid capacity, and better forecast how much energy the state needs. All were throttled, mostly citing potential fiscal<\/a> impacts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Critics of Newsom\u2019s decision blame the potential hits these bills could have had on utility companies\u2019\u00a0profits \u2014 PG&E\u00a0has made sizable donations to Newsom going back as far as 1998. Newsom did sign into law several policies that would regulate cost increases from PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric in September, as energy prices continue to rise across the state. The average California consumer pays around\u00a0twice the U.S. average<\/a> for electricity, and costs are projected to continue growing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI support efforts to realize the potential of these energy resources,\u201d the governor wrote in his\u00a0veto<\/a>\u00a0but cited concerns about adding to the California Energy Commission\u2019s ongoing deficit. When asked for more information about alternative ways the governor plans to help scale VPPs and how the administration plans to replace the potential bill\u2011savings benefits from VPPs, Newsom\u2019s office responded via email, \u201cThe Governor\u2019s veto message speaks for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blow to this narrow subset of the energy market comes after several years of proven promise. One market analysis<\/a> showed that a fully implemented VPP system \u2014 an estimated 7,500 megawatts \u2014 by 2035 could save Californians $550 million per year. Furthermore, participants in the program could earn up to $1,000 each year, many of whom are already adopting the energy-saving technologies and have multiple devices enrolled. That system could generate about 15% of peak demand \u2014 five times the current capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re missing all these opportunities to build a more reliable grid to save people money,\u201d said Ryan Schleeter, spokesperson for the Climate Center, a nonprofit organization focused on climate solutions. \u201cAnd those things down the line have a real impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

One test event<\/a> last summer showed the real impact VPPs can have on the grid. On July 29, chosen for the peak summer season, between 7\u00a0and 9 p.m., more than 100,000 residential batteries added 535 megawats of output, mostly from Sunrun batteries and Tesla Powerwalls as part of California\u2019s Demand Side Grid Support Program. That\u2019s comparable to a midsize power plant<\/a> or a large hydro dam powering hundreds of thousands of homes, while reducing the overall load on the grid.<\/p>\n

The Demand Side Grid Support Program, with more than 265,000 participants with the ability to generate 515 megawatts of capacity, is one of the largest virtual power plants in the world. At least 300,000 more California households are in other virtual power plant programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In August 2020, thousands of Californians endured rolling blackouts due to extreme heat that stressed the state\u2019s energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,3099,3100],"class_list":{"0":"post-5383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-sfgcalifornia","12":"tag-sfgpolitics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}