California’s Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants. Here’s What’s on the Horizon. – Zolair Energy Solutions Limited

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Battery, Electric Car, Electric Fleet

May 5, 2026

By Claire Barber

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California’s Battery Array Is as Powerful as 12 Nuclear Power Plants. Here’s What’s on the Horizon.

SAN FRANCISCO—As families settled into their evening routines in late March, cooking dinner on electric stoves and flipping on their TV for the newest binge watch, the state’s energy grid was working hard.

For the first time, California discharged just over 12,000 megawatts, equivalent to 12 large nuclear plants, of energy from its battery arrays. That’s enough to meet over 40 percent of the state’s energy demand.

California’s grid is in a continued state of transition. While more than more than 60 percent of the state’s electricity generation came from carbon-free sources last year, momentum toward bridging the last gap is fraught, as President Trump takes aim at offshore wind, orders oil pipelines to reopen and retires renewable energy tax credits.

Ed Smeloff, an energy consultant with GridLab and expert in transmission planning in California, closely follows grid statistics week by week. Inside Climate News talked with Smeloff  to discuss if California’s energy transition can weather the storm. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CLAIRE BARBER:  Can you give me a lay of the land of how California’s renewable energy market has been performing recently? What are the changes?

ED SMELOFF:   The most remarkable change in the California energy market has been the very rapid addition of grid-connected batteries and the use of those batteries to provide peak demand capacity. California is transitioning fairly quickly from using primarily natural gas resources to now using batteries. The batteries are [used] during the peak period, which is in the evening, typically around seven o’clock, producing as much as 40 percent of the peak capacity requirements. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement in a short period of time.

BARBER: What more does California need to bring online?

SMELOFF:  We’re expecting a considerable amount of load growth over the next decade through 2035. It’ll be driven by a combination of factors, electrification of transportation, electric vehicles, heat pumps, electrification of buildings. More [immediately] we’re looking at the addition of large-scale data centers, mostly in the Bay Area. So to meet those loads and stay on course to meet the policy goal of a hundred percent clean energy by 2045, California’s going to have to add a significant amount of additional batteries, and it is going to have to add the clean energy generators that can be used to charge the batteries.

BARBER:  Does the renewable sector have enough momentum to push through attacks from the Trump administration?

SMELOFF:  The bill that was passed by Congress last year eliminated or phased out the tax credits that were available to wind and solar. The way it’s structured is that any project that is not completed by the end of 2030 will not be eligible for the tax credits, which is as much as 30 percent of the capital cost. So that is a significant blow going forward, but there’s still significant momentum for new projects to be completed and interconnected and start producing power before 2030.

BARBER:  Is there an assumed slowdown come 2030 in the renewable energy sector?

SMELOFF:   Right now we’re seeing the momentum at least through 2032 in California for procurement of new resources. We’re also going to see some wind resources that are already being developed coming in from Wyoming over the TransWest Express transmission line that’ll be completed in 2030. So then the issue becomes what happens post 2032? There’s a lot of uncertainty about that, including what the federal administration policy is going to be going forward after this administration.

BARBER:  Are certain parts of the renewable energy sector—batteries, wind, solar—any more resilient to these attacks  than others?

SMELOFF:   I would say that the offshore wind projects that California has envisioned are the most vulnerable projects because they do require federal support and they’re complex projects that require developing the ports where the projects can be assembled and taken out to sea, as well as, new high-voltage transmission lines to take them from the North Coast and the Central Coast into the bulk power grid. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty there.

Solar is doing very well just because of the magnitude of the solar industry internationally and in the United States. Solar has become the least-cost new resource, so there’s still a lot of momentum.

BARBER:  What about battery arrays?

SMELOFF:  Interestingly, the Trump administration has been supportive of batteries and the [One Big...