Insight
Adams: Batteries cannot sustain multi-day grid reliability without dispatchable generators
“Well, you can have enough batteries if you have enough land to do a day or so, but it's the recharging of the batteries the next day that gets you in trouble. That's the same thing the state experienced during the last heat waves the last summer. They said we …”
Disclosure
Adams: LADWP plans to convert all in-basin generating stations to green hydrogen
“But our plan now is to move all those generating stations into green hydrogen, so we can have dispatchable power locally, but it burns clean.”
Opinion
Adams: Paying retail rates for rooftop solar subsidizes owners at others' expense
“We still pay a retail rate for energy that people produce off the roof going back in the grid. So that means that some people are able to reduce their energy bill, but they're still taking advantage of the infrastructure. As the people who own solar on the roo…”
Disclosure
Adams: LADWP to transition Intermountain Power Project to 100% green hydrogen
“That plan now is to transition that gas plant from an initial blend of gas and about 30% green hydrogen. That's green hydrogen created by electrolysis and stored locally. Using those local water source, excess renewables, and there's ability to store it in sal…”
Assertion Supported
Adams: LA's clean energy transition will cost between $60B and $80B
“So if you've seen the LA 100 studies, you've seen it's got a 60 to eighty billion dollar price tag, which over time is not unreasonable.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: NREL studies prove LADWP can reach 100% clean energy by 2035
“Somebody could say it's an aspirational challenge, and it's not. I mean, it's something that we actually know through our studies with NREL. It's possible.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: LA requires 2,500 to 3,000 MW of in-basin dispatchable generation
“One of the interesting things about the NREL study that Stephen referenced was that in that study, it did say that we actually had to have a certain amount of in-basin generation So we know we need a lot of storage for energy. We need a lot of solar, a lot of …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Adams: Scaling hydrogen in Southern California transportation will drive down prices
“I think that as we generate this idea of a hydrogen economy in Southern California, looking at as fuels for maybe for heavy trucking, the studies for airline fuels, shipping fuels, and other things like that, will ideally get some economy to scale and start to…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Adams: Current technologies cannot achieve LA's 2035 clean energy transition goals
“Because we're not going to do this by ourselves, and I doubt we're going to do it with the technologies that we know currently alone. We're going to have to have some new technologies that come of age and are ready to be part of the future”
Assertion Partly supported
Adams: LADWP currently averages 40% to 46% renewable electricity generation
“Yeah, we're a little over 40% now on, on average. You know, there are days that we're probably in the high seventies percents, and days in the summer we're in the teens. So on average, 40, 45, 46%.”
Assertion Partly supported
Adams: Fossil fuels met 5,000 MW of LADWP's 6,200 MW peak demand
“Our peak day was a little over 6200 megawatts. At, On that day, we're burning 5000 megawatts, so that 6200 was a fossil fuel”
Assertion Partly supported
Adams: California curtailed 80,000 MWh of solar in April 2022
“California itself, I think, gosh, it was a, I want to say a year ago, April they turn off 80,000 megawatt hours of solar because there's nowhere for the energy to go.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: LADWP has 1,700 MW solar and 1,300 MW wind out-of-basin
“We currently have, About 1700 megawatts or so of out of basin solar capacity and about 1300 plus megawatts of wind capacity.”
Disclosure
Adams: LADWP must add 4,000 MW solar, 3,000 MW wind by 2035
“We need about 5700 megawatts of wind. A part of solar and about 4300 megawatts of wind. So that's a lot, but you know, there's a, what a 3000 megawatt increase on wind and a 4000 megawatt increase on solar that we need to build ideally by 20, 35.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: Rooftop solar is bottlenecked because 64% of LA residents are renters
“The challenge in LA is about 63, 64% of the people don't own their roofs.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: LADWP runs the nation's largest feed-in tariff program at 450MW
“Then we also have a feed-in tariff program about a 450 megawatt feed-in tariff program. It's the biggest one in the country. We're going to increase it, but we're still working on getting subscription in there. We're not quite at 200 megawatts.”
Assertion Partly supported
Adams: LADWP contracts $1B in water and $1.2B in power annually
“We're contracting, I'll tell you right now, we're contracting over a billion dollars a year in capital on water, another billion dollars of capital, probably 1,000,000,002 on capital on power.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: LADWP operates 3,400 MW of in-basin natural gas generation
“Right now we have about 3400 megawatts of in-basin energy generation. Those are for gas plants.”
Assertion Supported
Adams: Gulf Coast has safely transported hydrogen via pipelines for decades
“And becoming cost-effective, and at the same time, there's a social challenge to get people to understand what this element is that we're talking about, and that is okay to use, and that, you know, hydrogen's been used in the Gulf Coast states, pumped for hund…”
Assertion Supported
Adams: Over 70,000 rooftops in Los Angeles are solar-powered
“We've got a little over 70,000 rooftops in LA that are currently solar powered.”
