President Trump “Can’t Put the Genie Back in the Bottle” on EVs, Microgrids, Storage: CEC Director

Hochschild expects that such clean energy advances will continue in California and the U.S., and hopes to bolster them with the Electric Innovation Initiative awards, which identify innovative leaders and models that can be scaled.

The initiative, now in its second year, connects award winners with partners who can help them accelerate deployment of their technology. Project developers and companies can apply for the initiative’s 2026 awards by June 3.

Last year’s winners include Electrify America’s battery storage systems, the City of Atlanta’s EV readiness ordinance, Zum’s vehicle-to-grid school bus program and Gradient’s window heat pump technology.

Vehicle-to-grid school buses serve as mobile microgrids

Under Zum’s vehicle-to-grid school bus program in Oakland, Calif.,  Zum and Oakland Unified School District deployed 74 bidirectional buses– serving as mobile microgrids–that send energy from the bus batteries to  Pacific Gas & Electric’s grid. The buses provide 2.1 GWh/year to the grid, which helps out the utility and reduces diesel pollution in a community that has poor air quality.

Under the program, after transporting students, the school district plugs in the buses and feeds power to the grid–supporting grid reliability–and gets paid for it, said Hochschild.

The buses are charged with grid power at night and run a route in the morning and afternoon, leaving about 50-140 kWh in the electric bus battery.

“They're back and plugged in at 4 p.m, and that’s when the grid needs power, particularly in July, August and September,” Hochschild said.

At night, when there’s extra energy on the grid, the buses are charged.

A quarter of California car sales are EVs

California has the highest number of EVs on the road, adding 1,200 a day, about 25% of vehicle sales, Hochschild said. That’s not the only electrification gain. About 80% of new buildings are all-electric to meet the requirements of Title 24 of the CEC’s building code.

Microgrids play an important role in California, particularly in rural areas that experience outages, he said. This is often true for tribes.

“I think the best use case for microgrids is on these concentrated and particularly remote sites that lose power frequently. That's where they really make the most economic sense,” he said.

The first microgrid that CEC helped fund was the Blue Lake Rancheria microgrid, which helped save lives during public safety power shutoffs in 2019. The tribe opened its doors to the broader community, allowing people to charge their medical devices.

“Blue Lake Rancheria has been a wild success. It has kept the lights on. That really is the template,” Hochschild said. The CEC has spent $165 million to support tribal energy sovereignty by deploying solar microgrids and EV charging.

Funding on hold for tribal microgrid project

One innovative tribal project is the Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty project (TERAS), which aims to create a resilience network of solar microgrids for four tribes in an outage-prone region.

The project was funded with $87.6 million from the federal Department of Energy, but the Trump administration put funding on hold.

“We're hopeful some of that funding can get unlocked,” Hochschild said.

Existing solar systems–along with solar microgrids and EVs–can help insulate California from the effects of high oil prices, he noted.

How solar helps insulate residents and businesses from high oil prices

“The cost of solar is in building the infrastructure. But once you install that

solar, sunshine is free. So it does protect us from the vulnerability we face

to these global fossil fuel markets and the volatility that we've seen.”

However, for new solar projects, high gasoline prices boost the cost of transporting solar panels.

Because of high oil prices, gasoline prices in the state are now as high as $6/gallon, making EVs more attractive.

“You can make a case that President Trump's war on Iran is really undermining his war on electric vehicles and his war on renewables,” he said.

Trump has tried to undermine wind and solar projects, but federal judges recently blocked those efforts. And in five cases, federal judges have halted the Trump administration’s efforts to kill offshore wind projects.

Citizens should vote through their purchases

Citizens can vote with their purchases, choosing EVs, heat pumps and other sources of clean energy, he said.

“You have a chance to vote about how you live and which energy sources you want to elevate. This is a nice feature of decarbonization and climate solutions,” he said.

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