California Has New Weapons to Battle Summer Blackouts: Battery Storage, Power From Record Rain

It’s a summertime sequence that’s become all too familiar in California: Extreme heat forces air conditioners into overdrive, which pushes the state’s power grid to the brink.

In August 2020, a major heat event fueled by the climate crisis forced some of the state’s first rotating power outages in decades, as the ongoing transition to green energy lagged behind demand. Last September, Californians narrowly avoided blackouts as a record-breaking heat wave broiled almost every corner of the state for days.