2025-01-13
9 分钟NPR.
In 2008, Nancy Skinner was elected to the California State legislature.
So technically, my term began in 2009.
Nancy has witnessed the state's vision for clean energy firsthand.
Soon after she was elected, a bill was being considered to get more of their electricity than ever from renewables.
But that there was a problem.
When the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, there's no power.
Several people approached Nancy to raise this issue.
We're going to have to figure out how to store it.
And one way to store energy.
A battery.
Extra solar and wind electrons that aren't needed on the grid could flow into a battery.
The problem was, though, grid scale storage wasn't really a thing.
Nonetheless, Nancy was optimistic that that eventually it would happen if you created a market signal.
So she introduced a bill requiring utilities to purchase a certain percentage of battery storage when they bought electricity.
Nancy remembers pushback, that this was just pie in the sky.
This is not real.
Like another California pipe dream.
Still, in 2010, the bill passed, although nothing really happened.
Grid scale batteries remained a pie in the sky concept for years.