Extreme heat events and wildfires remain a threat to grid reliability and can strain the grid for days or weeks. The Strategic Reliability Reserve (SRR) was developed in 2022 as part of Assembly Bill 205 (Committee on Budget, Chapter 61, Statutes of 2022) to expand the resources capable of managing or reducing net-peak demand during extreme events. The SRR provides funding to secure conventional generation, efficiency upgrades at existing natural gas plants, demand response, distributed generation, and long-duration storage. The SRR is consists of three programs, two of which are administered by the CEC and one is administered by the Department of Water Resources.
- Distributed Electricity Backup Assets Program - Incentivizes the construction of cleaner and more efficient distributed energy assets that would serve as on-call emergency supply or load reduction for the state's electrical grid during extreme events.
- Demand Side Grid Support Program - Will provide incentives to reduce customer net energy load during extreme events with upfront capacity commitments and per-unit reductions in net load.
- Electricity Supply Strategic Reliability Reserve Program - Being implemented by the Department of Water Resources to provide additional generation capacity to support grid reliability.