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 Beautiful Bill], or whatever it’s called, continued the investment tax credit for batteries through 2032. So, batteries are looking pretty good. 

BARBER:  What has the war on Iran shown us about the renewable energy market in the U.S. and in California specifically?  

SMELOFF: I  don’t think we’ve seen any immediate effects, but I think it reinforces the understanding that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, vulnerable to these international disruptions, so it makes sense to continue to develop renewable resources and to electrify the economy and particularly electric vehicles, so there’s less dependence on fossil fuels.  

BARBER:  Given China’s dominance in batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, et cetera, how have tariffs affected the renewable energy transition, if at all? 

SMELOFF:  I think the tariffs have created uncertainties. I think it’s a good thing to lessen the import of batteries and solar from China. But China does have a dominant position right now and differing from fossil fuels, once you put the battery in place or the solar panels in place, they can’t be taken back by China. They’re here, they’re installed, they’re working. I think there needs to be sort of a middle way in using the ability to import low-cost technology from China, but at the same time develop capacity capabilities here in the United States.   

BARBER:  How has the AI data center thing, for lack of a better word, impacted the renewable sector? 

SMELOFF:  I think generally it’s positive for the renewable sector. Many of the AI developers want to be able to brand themselves as being clean energy. In California, most of the AI development is going on in Silicon Valley in the South Bay area. The challenge really is that the Bay Area’s transmission system was built 50 years ago, longer, and it was not built for these loads. It’s going to require lots of upgrades to be able to accommodate the amount of load.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how much data center growth is going to occur. Right now, the Energy Commission says we expect about 4,000 megawatts of load from data centers by 2035. But if you look at the load, interconnection queue, there’s as much as 16,000. Now, some of them are phantom projects. They won’t show up or won’t get completed, but there’s a big range of potential load. The higher number, if it comes to fruition, is going to drive a lot more transmission development as well as renewable energy development. 

BARBER:  Are there any specific energy projects you are excited about? 

SMELOFF: This project in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, in the Westlands Water District, is certainly something to keep an eye on. It’s called the Valley Clean Infrastructure Project, VCIP. It’s being developed by a group called Golden State Clean Energy, in conjunction with the Westland Waters District. 

Twenty-one gigawatts. We haven’t seen anything in the United States on that scale. How that’s done, in a manner that’s compatible with community values, is going to be an interesting thing to keep an eye on.

BARBER: Twenty-one gigawatts … for folks who have no idea what that means, how much energy is that? 

SMELOFF: That would be a doubling of the solar energy that’s already online in California.