Southern California Edison in its video argues that its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, now shuttered for a year because of deep-running technical problems with its steam generators, is vital for the Southern California power grid.
Because the plant, when operating, provides thousands of megawatts of power at a steady rate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it can't be replaced by renewable power sources like wind and solar energy, officials say.
http://www.acehoffman.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-animation-shows-what-could-happen.html
The proposal is putting more $'s into solar rather than a nuke plant that has so many deficiencies that it's bound to fail and land us back here again. Now your concern is that at some points Edison MAY have to import power because the solar grid is only delivering 80% rather than 100% because of cloud cover? You do understand that Edison will be able to offset the costs of buying that power when they sell their excess power to the grid when the sun is out... and that the buyback will be offsets to the "push" that happens when others need power from Edison because we are generating so much? That the upside of investing in clean is that while it won't be at 100% all the time, it will be over-generating (more than our needs) and that is an opportunity to sell that power to those places that need it when we are over-generating, and buy back their power when their demand is lower... So, at 5PM in CT we sell them our oversupply until 8PM (high power use) and then at 8PM they have an oversupply and sell their oversupply back to us. And that's how the grid works....
cali has wind, sun, and water ...we don't need nuclear energy in our state... asia will not return to nuclear power after their tsunami disaster.... they will develop renewable technology while the states fall further behind the global competition because we can't get past our partisan divisions...
i knew a family that had one solar panel on their house in santa cruz - which is overcast 300 days/year...and they still sold power back to the utility company... renewable energies is a conservative stance...the individual home owner generating their own energy is a conservative and libertarian stance... the more self-efficient the individual citizen is the better off we are as a nation...