Governor Gavin Newsom Celebrates Storage Milestone, Confirms California’s Power Outages Are Not Over Yet

California officials on Thursday celebrated a milestone in their quest to achieve a 100 percent clean electric grid by 2045: the installation of more than 10,000 megawatts of battery storage.

“Battery storage is fundamental,” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said at a news conference next to a battery storage and solar facility in rural Yolo County in the western Sacramento Valley.

“In fact, the excess generation has gone to other states and obviously gone to more battery storage,” the governor added.

With a total battery storage of 10,379 megawatts, the state has increased battery capacity by 1,250 percent since 2019 — up from 770 megawatts — according to Newsom’s office.

Meanwhile, energy discharge from battery storage to the grid exceeded 6,000 megawatts for the first time ever last week, his office noted. At that time, batteries were the largest source of power to the grid.

When a reporter asked whether this feat could spell the end of California’s blackouts, Newsom quickly turned to Texas, describing the Lonestar State’s blackout problems as “severe” due to the unpredictable nature of oil and gas and extreme weather conditions.

“This is our largest energy resource in California – significantly larger than the last remaining nuclear power plant in the state of California,” Newsom said.

“So no, this does not announce today that blackouts are part of our past, but we want to do everything we can to mitigate that,” the governor added, characterizing each September as a “point of concern .”

“But storage saved us last year,” he added. “It will be a big part of the future solution.”