text: Costly renewable energy policies are already set to raise California power costs by $5 billion or 33 percent due to expensive and unreliable wind and solar energy. However, that may be only half of the additional cost, since the"California Public Utilities Commission has called on utilities and private companies to install about $5 billion worth of batteries and other forms of energy storage to help the state power grid cope with the erratic power supplied by wind and solar energy."