The state Senate Thursday approved two bills that would lessen the risk of a repeat of the disastrous Aliso Canyon natural gas leak that disrupted life and fouled the air in the San Fernando Valley over a four-month period.

“Aliso Canyon is a wake-up call,” said Senator Fran Pavley. “We need to ensure this will not happen again.”

SB 887, approved on a bipartisan, 26-7 vote, establishes a framework for reforming state oversight of the wells at California’s 14 natural gas storage facilities. Among other things, it would set minimum standards for well inspections and testing; mandate continuous monitoring to detect leaks; direct state oil and gas regulators to incorporate best practices into its regulations; and require an assessment of risks to determine safe setback distances between new storage wells and existing homes.

The bill requires the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources to begin annual testing of the integrity of all natural gas storage wells by Jan. 1, 2018, and to regularly conduct follow-up tests thereafter.

Acknowledging there are some operational differences between facilities operated by natural gas utilities such as SoCal Gas and those owned by independent operators, Pavley pledged to continue to work with the industry to fine-tune the bill to respect those differences.

Equally important as ensuring safety at gas storage fields is taking action to better diversify the state’s energy supply to prevent it from becoming overly reliant on a single fuel source such as natural gas.

That is the goal of SB 886. It would encourage energy providers and consumers to increase the use of energy storage systems, such as batteries, that would store power generated by renewable resources so that it would be available at all times.

Because renewable resources generate intermittent power – wind turbines can’t generate power when the air is still and solar panels don’t produce electricity at night – better storage systems are necessary to ensure the consistent reliability of California’s electrical grid.

“Increasing storage capacity allows renewable energy to be used 24/7. That’s incredibly important,” said Senator Pavley. “When we run out of one fuel source, we shouldn’t be held hostage.”

SB 886, which was approved on a vote of 21-11, would encourage the procurement of energy storage systems in a number of ways, including requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to determine appropriate storage targets for all investor-owned utilities and energy service providers to be achieved by 2030. It also requires utilities to propose new incentive programs to encourage customers to install energy storage systems.

Senator Pavley noted that the Aliso Canyon disaster – which disabled the state’s largest natural gas storage facility – demonstrates how electrical power for 21 million Southern Californians can be put at risk when the system is overly reliant on a single source of fuel or energy storage.

Both bills now advance to the Assembly for consideration.