Last Friday, California’s Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency, calling for the immediate creation of a new demand response program to address serious expected energy shortages over the coming months.

The program will pay large industrial energy users to reduce power usage or deploy backup generation or energy storage during grid emergencies, much like other existing demand response programs in the state. The aim is to avoid a repeat of last August’s energy crisis, which left hundreds of thousands of Californians without electricity on several days. 

In response to the Governor’s declaration, Voltus immediately launched Operation Golden Bear. The goal? Enroll as many megawatts as possible across all California demand response programs as quickly as possible, to help prevent blackouts and protect communities across California as the summer heats up. We’re leveraging resources across all of our teams, pivoting priorities and working around the clock to provide California with the grid capacity that we know is nothing short of absolutely necessary.

Our work at Voltus is driven by the notion of Doing Well by Doing Good. We built the company with the mission to create a cleaner, more flexible, more resilient energy grid – the grid that’s necessary in an era of ever-worsening climate change. This mission requires us to be alert and agile, to respond quickly to the needs of the grid at any given moment. What that means right now is doing everything we can to support California and ensure that the state does not face a repeat of last summer’s devastating grid crisis.

We know that distributed energy resources (DERs) and demand-side flexibility work to provide system stability and prevent grid failures. During last summer’s energy crisis in California, and this winter’s energy crisis in Texas, Voltus engaged our customers to provide hundreds of megawatts of load reduction, helping to flatten the demand curve and provide real-time grid relief. It’s our job at Voltus to mobilize DERs and help the grid realize the benefits of these resources whenever they’re needed. We wouldn’t be Doing Good otherwise.  

The current situation in California demands our attention. It’s all hands on deck, so, let’s get to work. 

Matt Plante, President

Ariele Ladabaum, Marketing Associate