California’s energy past is on a collision course with its future.

Think of major oil-producing U.S. states, and Texas, Alaska, or North Dakota probably come to mind. Although its position relative to other states has been falling for 20 years, California remains the seventh largest oil-producing state, with 162 million barrels of crude coming up in 2018, translating to tax revenue and jobs.

At the same time, California leads the nation in solar rooftops and electric vehicles on the road by a wide margin, and ranks fifth in installed wind capacity. Clean energy is the state’s future. By law, California must have 100 percent carbon-free electricity

In this Greentech Media series, we’re asking people with jobs in cleantech — from installing solar panels, to permitting wind projects, to promoting building energy efficiency software — to tell us what they really do all day.

We hope this series can serve as a source of information and inspiration for recent graduates, cleantech professionals planning their careers or anyone who wants to transition into the industry. We also hope it makes cleantech opportunities more visible and accessible to those groups, including women and people of color, who are underrepresented in our growing industry.

What do people in energy storage business development do?

2019 was the biggest year

Utility National Grid on Friday released results of the second phase of an extended solar interconnection study that has entangled nearly 1 gigawatt of projects in Massachusetts over the last year, and stymied development for some.

Over 300 megawatts of projects may move forward without additional costs, the utility said, while another 90 megawatts of distributed solar projects will require developers to shoulder some transmission-level investments in order to connect projects to the grid.

Those extra costs range from less than $1 million for a group of five projects up to a maximum of $75 million for another set of 12 projects that total 45.8 megawatts. National Grid estimated

Pacific Gas & Electric is on the cusp of ending its year-and-a-half stint in bankruptcy. But whether it can successfully rebuild its finances and make its power grid safer without drastically raising rates on millions of customers is far from clear.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission approved PG&E’s $58 billion bankruptcy plan. The unanimous vote came despite scores of public comments against allowing the company to emerge without greater government control over its safety practices. PG&E has been held criminally responsible for 84 deaths in the November 2018 Camp Fire, and is under criminal probation for its role in the deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion.

Critics

The U.S. Treasury Department released guidance Wednesday that offers onshore wind and solar projects more time to meet tax credit deadlines, an acknowledgement of the challenges brought by the coronavirus lockdown.

Wind was the big winner: onshore projects that started construction in 2016 and 2017 will now have five rather than four years to finish construction while still receiving their production tax credit (PTC) benefits.

Solar developers got some help too, with the IRS allowing equipment bought in 2019 to be delivered into October while still remaining qualified for the investment tax credit (ITC).

With the PTC set to step down, the

Cleve Hill, the U.K.'s largest-ever solar project, received its government planning approvals this week. The question is how the 350-megawatt development proceeds from here in a large-scale solar market that has all but died out.

Located in southeastern England, along the North Kent coast, Cleve Hill is under development by Hive Energy and Wirsol. The developers say they will not seek any government subsidy and will not participate in the contracts for difference (CFD) auction next year, as many had expected.

The project, which may include a substantial amount of battery storage, will be built near the existing grid infrastructure used by the London Array offshore wind farm, once

American Electric Power has secured enough state regulator approvals to move ahead with a 1,485-megawattt wind power project in Oklahoma — even if Texas regulators end up denying its plans. 

AEP announced on Wednesday that it has received approvals from Louisiana and Arkansas regulators that will allow its $2 billion North Central Wind project to move ahead. The wind farms being developed in Oklahoma by Invenergy and using GE wind turbines will supply 675 megawatts of power to AEP utility Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (PSO) and 810 megawatts more to its Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) utility.  

AEP, a major utility group based in Ohio, has already won approval