California has the US State on the forefront of renewable energy adoption for decades. Recently, lawmakers have installed policies that require future homes being built to include rooftop solar panels. Their state’s renewable energy portfolio requirement that half of all electricity to come from “carbon-free sources by the year 2030.” It is noted that they will likely reach this goal as early as the year 2020 by current estimates. It is peculiar however that as more and more renewable sources of electricity generated, there is not a readily identifiable decrease in overall energy cost for the consumer.   According to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 

“if solar provides 30-percent of the grid’s demands and wind supplies 10 percent, the prices for power from those sources will fall 39 percent in New York by 2030, and 27 percent in California” 

If lowering consumer cost is the goal, public policy must be enacted which slowly introduces the proper proportions of renewable energy methods, allowing for the proper capital investment by energy production companies to stay in line with the maximal storage methods available on the market. States must find ways to purchase and maintain large sums of batteries or storage options so that when the “sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing” they’ll be able to keep the fluctuation of retail-priced energy sources at a steady rate.