“Before the incorporation of all these renewables and other things, you have the load profile, and then you just turn power plants on and off to meet the load profile,” said Brian Tarroja, a researcher in the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California, Irvine. Some blamed California’s adoption of renewable energy for triggering the blackouts, but Tarroja said that’s an oversimplification. The real culprit is a lack of integration of these renewables and the difficulty of getting all that power where it needs to go. Another issue is that there’s no incentive for utilities to update. Read More