Market Signal: permitting stops being the California bottleneck
The California Energy Commission cleared Soda Mountain, 300MW of solar and 1.2GWh of storage.
California Energy Commission cleared Soda Mountain this week, 300MW of solar and 1.2GWh of battery storage, a $700 million project in San Bernardino County. It is the second use of the fast-track Opt-In Certification program, three weeks after FERC cleared Longroad's 500MW BESS interconnection with Southern California Edison.
The signal California's regulatory machinery is starting to move at the pace of build-out, not the pace of review. Permitting is no longer the bottleneck. The talent layer is. When permitting compresses, hiring becomes the new critical path.
Hiring Interconnection Specialists with CAISO and Southern California Edison transmission experience hold the queue. Project Managers, EPC Leads, and Commissioning Engineers need to be locked in before construction starts, not after.