Lit (: light // a lit window at dusk)
Businesses compete to battle California’s blackouts.
Green companies vie not just to
generate power but also to store and manage it.(vie: compete to)
Depending on whom you ask, California is a leader in clean energy or a cautionary tale.
Power outages in August promoted stern critiques from Republicans. “In California”, Donald Trump tweeted, “Democrat shave intentionally implemented rolling
blackouts– forcing Americans in the dark.” In addition to provoking outage and derision, however, the episode is also likely to inspire investment.
(clean energy: green energy.
Cautionary tale: strike a cautionary note/ warning.
stern: serious, ~measure, ~face.
blackout:
power cut, rotating outages, power blackout. )
The Golden State has long been America’s main testing ground for green companies. California buy half of all electric cars sold in America. Theirs is the country’s largest solar market. As California deals with heatwaves, fires and a goal of carbon-free
electricity by 2045, the need for reliable grid is becoming ever more obvious.For years firms
competed to generate clean power in California.Now a growing number are vying to store and manage it, too.
(TheGolden State: The Golden Flower, California)
August’s blackouts have many causes, including poor planning, an unexpected lack of capacity and sweltering heat in not just California but nearby state from which it sometimes imports power. Long before the outages, however,electricity operators were anxious about capacity. California’s solar panels become less useful in the evening, when demand peaks.In November state regulators mandated that utilities procure an additional 3.3 gigawatts (GW) of capacity,including giant batteries that charge when energy is abundant and can sell electricity back to the grid.
(swelter heat: be uncomfortably heat, suffer from intense heat.
mandate:verb/noun: a document giving an official instruction or command, commission,mandatory, assign under a mandate, make mandatory, assign authority to.
procure:verb: get by special effort, pander.
Grid:national grid, state grid)
Too few such projects have come online to cope with the surge in demand for air-conditioning in the scorching summer.But more are sprouting across the state. On August 19thLs Power, an electricity firm backed by privatequality,unveileda250-megawatt(MW) storage project on San Diego, the largest of its kind in America. In July the county of Monterey said Vista Energy, a Texan power company,could build as much as 1.2GW of storage.
(toofew: synonyms: insufficient, not enough.
comeonline: to become active/operating.
surge:a sudden and great increase, increase, spring up.
scorch,scorching: extremely hot.
sprout:develop fast(adj/adv).
unveil:reveal, present. )
The rooftop solar industry stands to benefit from a new California’s mandate that requires
new homes to install panels on their roofs this year. Sunrun, the market leader, is increasingly residential installations with batteries. In July, for instance, the company said it had won contracts with energy suppliers in Bay area to install 13MW of residential solar and batteries.These could supply power to
resident in a blackout or feed power into grid to help to meet peak demand.Sunrun is so confident in its future that it had bid $3.2bn for Vivint solar,its main rival.
(stand to: used to be a military term, means soldiers are ready to take an action,ready for sth.
Bid: offer a price for sth, it a good bid. )
Other way to stave off outages is to curb demand. Enel, a European power company, has contracts with local utilities to work with large commercial and industrial clients. When demand rises, Enel pays customers to reduce
energy consumption, easing demand on the grid. A company called OhmConnect offers something similar for homeowners.
(stave off: avert/pause)
Even as such offerings scale up, the need for reliability means
that fossil fuels will not disappear just yet. On September 1stCalifornia’s regulators will vote on weather to delay the retirement of four natural-gas plants in light of the outages. The state remains intent on decarbonizing its power system over the next 25 years. But process may not move in the straight line.
(scaleup: increase.
In light of: in the light of: according, regarding, seeing something is happening. )
