PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday

[Labster]

There's not too much to argue here, renewable plus storage is already in the same price range to deploy at utility scale as are fossil fuel plants. But it's not quite at the "obviously better" price range that would be required to get fast, widespread adoption.

There are issues in getting a city to fully support itself by a microgrid. There are the obvious stability problems of small systems, and the fact that solar/wind is peaky. But then there's just the physics of it. In Los Angeles, starting with the solar constant and multiplying by the theoretical max efficiency of solar cells, we get 1361 W/m³ * cos(33° north * τ/360° ) * 0.3 ≈ 340 W/m³ -- and that's before you add in things like the atmosphere or it not always being high noon. Just like how cities import food, they also need to import energy.

We could have offshore wind farms -- that's easy, right? No risk of major fire out there. Except the US Navy has declared the entire continental shelf off Southern California a no-go zone for wind energy.

Some things will help. As we move to electric cars, any car that is currently charging can also discharge back into the grid. Solar parking lots are a really good idea, especially given that it saves on heating and cooling. Solar freeways... those would drop in efficiency because they'd get dusty really fast. Seven months with no rain is not unusual here. I'd have to see numbers before saying if that was a good idea.