There are a lot of factors in-play that make realtime grid balancing harder. You can have more capacity on paper but have things trip offline due to faults, overloads, unexpected maintenance, etc. Just because you have the capacity on paper doesn't mean that you can always start that capacity up, route the power on enough transmission lines, etc. There are multiple wildfires and it's a very hot day right now, which can create adverse conditions.
I definitely suggest Practical Engineering's power grid series for a better explanation about how this stuff works, but grid balancing is certainly nontrivial.
Edit: You can actually see realtime transmission outage data via OASIS (http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis/logon.do), under the Transmission -> Transmission Outages tab. There are other tabs in OASIS that show related grid factors too.
That article seems to have been written with a strong bias built in - at no point do they even acknowledge that peaks have to be accounted for, the rising electric vehicle demand, the planned closure of many older plants, or the fact that even in 2017 we were having problems meeting demand at times…
They also don’t cite any credible sources for their claims that CA is headed to a power glut.
Many people don’t get the vast amount of planning and slack inherent in these systems.
If a power plant takes ten years from beginning to first megawatt, you need to be approving plants ten years before the one they’ll replace goes offline.
I definitely suggest Practical Engineering's power grid series for a better explanation about how this stuff works, but grid balancing is certainly nontrivial.
Edit: You can actually see realtime transmission outage data via OASIS (http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis/logon.do), under the Transmission -> Transmission Outages tab. There are other tabs in OASIS that show related grid factors too.