Clean Energy Finance Forum

Now, in states from New York to California, the focus of the conversation has moved from: How can utilities weather the shift toward distributed energy without suffering big losses? to: How can utilities, their customers and the electric grid as a whole best harness the benefits of distributed energy resources?

Early this month, three community-choice aggregators and one municipal utility serving much of California’s San Francisco Bay Area launched a 30-megawatt distributed energy storage-plus-solar solicitation. It breaks ground on multiple fronts.

Though Vivint sales representatives knock on “millions of doors a year,” CEO David Bywater said on the company’s Q3 earnings call that recent power outages have pushed many potential customers to reconsider renewables and storage.

In a nutshell, the state needs utilities that partner with communities to maximize local resilience and self-sufficiency, and whose financial fortunes are tied to their performance in that pursuit.

Bill Johnson is a utility executive, not a climate scientist. That didn’t stop the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) CEO from wading into California’s complex climate conditions. Noting that Northern California’s wildfire risk has grown exponentially in recent years, Johnson placed much of the blame on climate change, not PG&E’s compromised electricity grid.