Carlsbad is a coastal city in the North County region of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is 87 miles (140 km) south of downtown Los Angeles and 35 miles (56 km) north of downtown San Diego. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 114,746. Carlsbad is a popular tourist destination and home to many businesses in the golf industry.
Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles.
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Following the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon is now the only operational nuclear plant in California, as well as the state's largest single power station. It was the subject of controversy and protests during its construction, with nearly two thousand civil disobedience arrests in a two-week period in 1981.
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a permanently closed nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, on the Pacific coast, in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV. The plant was shut down in 2013 after defects were found in replacement steam generators; it is currently in the process of decommissioning. The 2.2 GW of electricity supply lost when the plant shut down was replaced with 1.8 GW of new natural-gas fired power plants and 250 MW of energy storage projects.
NRG Energy, Inc. is an American energy company, headquartered in Houston, Texas. It was formerly the wholesale arm of Northern States Power Company (NSP), which became Xcel Energy, but became independent in 2000. NRG Energy is involved in energy generation and retail electricity. Their portfolio includes natural gas generation, coal generation, oil generation, nuclear generation, wind generation, utility-scale generation, and distributed solar generation. NRG serves over 7 million retail customers in 24 US states including Texas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio; the District of Columbia, and eight provinces in Canada.
Otay Mesa is a community in the southern exclave of the city of San Diego, just north of the U.S.–Mexico border.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDGE) is a regulated public utility that provides natural gas and electricity to San Diego County and southern Orange County in southwestern California, United States. It is owned by Sempra, a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Diego.
San Diego–Tijuana is an international transborder agglomeration, straddling the border of the adjacent North American coastal cities of San Diego, California, United States, and Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The 2020 population of the region was 5,456,577, making it the largest bi-national conurbation shared between the United States and Mexico, and the second-largest shared between the US and another country. The conurbation consists of the San Diego metropolitan area, in the United States and the municipalities of Tijuana, Rosarito Beach (126,980), and Tecate (108,440) in Mexico. It is the third most populous region in the California–Baja California region, smaller only than the metropolitan areas of Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Path 46, also called West of Colorado River, Arizona-California West-of-the-River Path (WOR), is a set of fourteen high voltage alternating-current transmission lines that are located in southeast California and Nevada up to the Colorado River.
Wind power in California had initiative and early development during Governor Jerry Brown's first two terms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The state's wind power capacity has grown by nearly 350% since 2001, when it was less than 1,700 MW. In 2016, wind energy supplied about 6.9% of California's total electricity needs, or enough to power more than 1.3 million households. Most of California's wind generation is found in the Tehachapi area of Kern County, California, with some large projects in Solano, Contra Costa and Riverside counties as well. California is among the states with the largest amount of installed wind power capacity. In recent years, California has lagged behind other states when it comes to the installation of wind power. It was ranked 4th overall for wind power electrical generation at the end of 2016 behind Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma. As of 2019, California had 5,973 megawatts (MW) of wind power generating capacity installed.
Sunrise Powerlink is a high-voltage power transmission line by San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) in San Diego County, California and Imperial County, California. The project was approved by the United States Forest Service (USFS) in July 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in January 2009 and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in December 2008. SDG&E stated that the 117-mile (188 km) long 230/500 kilovolt power line would bring 1000 megawatts of renewable energy from the Imperial Valley to San Diego County. The cost of the project was estimated to be $1.9 billion for construction. SDG&E, which was to receive a guaranteed profit of over $1.4 billion from the construction of the line, claimed that the power line was necessary to support future growth of the San Diego region, and its economic benefits to the region would measure on the order of $100 million per year. However, the project has been called one of the most controversial projects ever proposed.
The Dickerson Generating Station is an 853 MW electric generating plant owned by NRG Energy, located approximately two miles west of Dickerson, Maryland, on the eastern banks of the Potomac River.
The Agua Hedionda Lagoon is a lagoon in Carlsbad, California, that is fed by the Agua Hedionda Creek. Stewardship of much of the lagoon is held by the Encina Power Station and its owner NRG Energy. In November 2000 the Agua Hedionda Lagoon was designated as a critical habitat for the tidewater goby.
The California Valley Solar Ranch (CVSR) is a 250 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power plant in the Carrizo Plain, northeast of California Valley. The project is owned by NRG Energy, and SunPower is the EPC contractor and technology provider. The project constructed on 1,966 acres (796 ha) of a 4,365-acre (1,766 ha) site of former grazing land. It is utilizing high-efficiency, crystalline PV panels designed and manufactured by SunPower. The project includes up to 88,000 SunPower solar tracking devices to hold PV panels that track the sun across the sky.
The Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant is a desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, north of the Encina Power Station. The San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA), the recipient of the fresh water produced by the plant, calls it "the nation’s largest, most technologically advanced and energy-efficient seawater desalination plant." Opened on December 14, 2015, the entire desalination project cost about $1 billion for the plant, pipelines, and upgrades to existing SDCWA facilities to use the water.
The 2011 Southwest blackout, also known as the Great Blackout of 2011, was a widespread power outage that affected the San Diego–Tijuana area, southern Orange County, Imperial Valley, Mexicali Valley, Coachella Valley, and parts of Arizona. It occurred on Thursday, September 8, 2011, beginning at about 3:38pm PDT, and was the largest power failure in California history.
The Centinela Solar Energy Project is a 170 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power plant located on 2,067 acres (836 ha) of previously disturbed private land southwest of El Centro, California. The project planned to provide at least 235 jobs, generate more than $30 million in tax revenue over its life-time, and deliver enough electricity to power about 82,500 homes. Imperial County gave a green-light to the solar power plant on December 27, 2011, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved the right-of-way over 19 acres for the connecting power line on public land.
The Russell City Energy Center (RCEC) is a 619-megawatt natural gas-fired power station, which began operating in August 2013. It is operated by Calpine, and is located in Hayward, California. It is named for Russell City and is built on that community's former landfill site.
The San Diego Climate Action Plan was adopted by the city of San Diego in December 2015. It is a local climate action plan whose rules are defined by the California global warming Solutions Act of 2006, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Through this plan, the city initially set goals of eliminating half of all greenhouse emissions and sourcing all energy from renewable sources by the year 2035. With a coalition of business owners, environmental advocates, and community leaders, Mayor Kevin Faulconer approved the Climate Action Plan. The Climate Action Plan consists of several policies to ensure the economic and environmental growth of the city of San Diego. It was referred to in The San Diego Union-Tribune as "the most aggressive climate action plan in California."
