California is conducting what may be the most ambitious
electricity customer empowerment experiment ever done anywhere; whether it will
work remains very much in doubt.
The state is the national leader in both utility-scale solar and distributed solar capacities
and fourth in the nation in wind capacity. Yet
California’s dominant investor-owned utilities (IOUs) procured zero new MW of
renewable energy capacity in 2017. And a preliminary plan released in January
by state regulators proposes almost no 2018 procurement.
