Tag Archives: Southern California Edison

The Cal ISO-PacifiCorp deal — Getting more green energy on the grid

Posted: February 12th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The best way to integrate wind and solar energy onto the electric grid — without creating big spikes that require the frequent firing-up of natural gas peaker plants to even things out – is to spread out the renewables over as wide a geographic area as possible.

So, in the case of California, if the wind’s not blowing in the San Gorgonio Pass, it might be nice and breezy up north in the Alta pass; ditto for sun in east Riverside versus San Bernardino or Kern counties.

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages the main grid in the state, is taking this concept a step further. The agency on Tuesday announced a memorandum of understanding with PacifiCorps, a utilitythat serves customers in Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, to create something called an Energy Imbalancing Market or EIM.

PacifiCorp is owned by MidAmerican American Energy Holdings Company, owned by Warren Buffett.

So what the EIM will do is allow the ISO, at times of peak demand, to tap into PacifiCorp’s renewable resources, which include more than 2,000 megawatts of wind energy, much of it located in Wyoming.

“This opportunity is something that will resonate through the West where we are on this constant march to integrate renewables into the system while maintaining best rates,” said Steve Berberich, Cal ISO’s CEO, during a press call Tuesday morning. ”We can ultimately share resources efficiently over a much wider footprint.”

The way things work now is that the ISO has a super-charged system that balances energy supply and demand every five minutes, picking energy sources at lowest cost to meet energy needs on the grid. But, beyond the ISO grid, utilities such as Southern California Edison still have to maintain regional balances between supply and demand with manual systems.

The EIM will allow other utilities, such as PacifiCorp, to tap into the five-minute market to even out times of over- or undersupply and ease stress on local utilities.

Widening the footprint from which ISO can draw power should also lower costs. If wind or solar power is available from Wyoming to fill a gap in peak power demand here, that could mean less need to fire up natural gas peaker plants, which are an extremely expensive source of backup power.

The system will run both ways, so any excess renewable power in California could be sold out of state.

Exactly if or how this will affect our energy bills has yet to be determined. Berberich said the cost to set up the EIM will be a “modest” $2.1 million, but projections on savings are still being calculated.

The MOU announced Tuesday is the first step in what could be a lengthy process. The ISO has scheduled a meeting for stakeholders to gather public input on Feb. 27 and the ISO board will also have to give its OK to move forward with the EIM, tentatively at its March meeting.

The system will likely not be online and working until 2014, so it’s not going to be an easy solution to filling in Southern California’s energy needs this summer if the San Onofre nuclear power plant stays off-line as it seems more and more likely it will.

Certainly there will be problems to iron out, unintended consequences to be manged, but the potential is exciting and enormous. A regional EIM covering the Western states could be possible in the future, making integration of wind and solar less of a problem across the region.

You can follow the implementation of the EIM, and daily supply and demand balancing  on the grid with the ISO’s new free smart phone app, ISO Today,

 

A bird’s-eye view of the Sentinel power plant

Posted: August 17th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , ,
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Competitive Power Ventures, the Maryland company building the natural-gas powered Sentinel power plant in North Palm Springs started following me on Twitter this week, so I followed them right back.

The company’s latest tweet links to its web page for the 800-megawatt peaker plant, where you can see a series of aerial shots of the site, showing how the plant has risen from the desert sands.

The first shot was taken almost a year ago, September 2011

Sentinel Site May 2012

The most recent was taken in July.

Sentinel Site July 2012

Looks pretty near complete to me.  It’s amazing how small things can look from the air. Those smoke stacks are supposed to be 90 feet tall.

A recent court ruling on the validity of the air emission credits CPV bought from the South Coast Air Quality Management District has not stopped construction, though the plant cannot go online until the Environmental Protection Agency revises a rule allowing the credits.

My most recent communication from an EPA official indicated the agency is working on the revised rule. To meet the terms of its power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison, CPV must have the plant online no later than August 2013, a company official siad.

 

The $64,000 question: Is climate change causing extreme weather?

Posted: July 10th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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With temperatures hitting triple digits across the country, backed up by unprecedented storms like the one that hit the East Coast last month — my 91-year-old father in Bethesda lost power and spent a few days in hotels, when he wasn’t volunteering for the Red Cross, helping to set up cooling centers — the question on many people’s minds is whether and to what extent our increasingly extreme weather can be linked to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

And, in articles appearing on a range of websites, the answers range from cautious — we need more research — to unqualified.

In an article on the Environmental Protection website – not to be confused with the EPA — Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison acknowledges the extreme weather but says further study is needed to see if it’s really outside of normal variations.

But he says heat waves like the current one will become more common on a warmer planet as we continue to add greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.
 
“I think it’s a harbinger of what’s to come under greenhouse warming,” says Vavrus. “Virtually all climate models simulate more intense and frequent heat waves as the climate warms, and most of the world has experienced increases in extreme heat during the past several decades.”

Just how unusual are the current heat spikes and other extreme weather events?

“For the last 40 years of global warming, there is nothing comparable in the instrumental record since about 1880,” said Jack Williams, director of the Nelson Institute Center. “To find comparable analogs for the amount of warming expected for this century under standard greenhouse gas emission scenarios, you have to go back to the climate changes accompanying the last deglaciation, about 20,000 years ago.”

Writing on The Washington Post website,  enviro-energy reporter Brad Plumer cites the the National Climatic Data Center’s “State of the Climate” report for June 2012.

The last 12 months in the mainland United States, it notes, were the warmest on record. What’s notable, however, is that every single one of the last 13 months were in the top third for their historical distribution (i.e., April 2012 was in the top third for warmest Aprils, etc).

“The odds of this occurring randomly,” notes NCDC, “is 1 in 1,594,323.”

The National Climatic Data Center says the past 12 months in the continental United States are the warmest on record.

 Plumer also cites a recent article by Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein, who talked with a dozen climate scientists on what’s going on. The verdict, as summarized in the article’s title, is ”This US summer is ‘what global warming looks like’”

“What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters.”

The summer heat wave in the Coachella Valley may not have broken any records yet, but it’s still worrisome given concerns about power supplies in the wake of the ongoing closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Clemente, which I wrote about last month.

So for those who want to monitor how the grid is doing, the California Independent System Operator, aka CAISO, has daily supply and demand figures on its website.

Right now we’re staying ahead of the curve, but usage is going up with the heat. Today’s forecast peak demand is 41,930 megawatts, while tomorrow’s is intended to shoot up to 43,797 megawatts.  Peak supplies, more than 50,000 megawatts, are still well ahead of demand.

Southern California Edison also has a Outage Center with an interactive map where you can see who’s lost power and the status of repairs. As I type, we have an isolated outage in Rancho Mirage, affecting one person.

But the really big, unanswered question behind all the articles and information, is how much longer are law-makers in Washington, D.C. going to sit around playing politics with a national plan for climate change, reducing greenhouse emissions and promoting renewable energy?

Extreme weather is a signal that the world is approaching a tipping point where even more radical and swift climate change could overtake us. The problem, of course, is that we probably won’t know if we’ve tipped until it’s too late. 

 

No nuke for So Cal Edison, at least for now

Posted: June 7th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , ,
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Southern California Edison’s problem-plagued San Onofre nuclear plant near San Clemente will stay offline through the summer as the utility continues to work on a solution to the plant’s faulty tubes, which carry radioactive water.

When at full operation, the plant provides 19 percent of Edison’s power, according an article on the Los Angeles Times website. In the meantime, a post on the BusinessWeek website says,  Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, which also gets power from the plant, will be paying $2.5 million a month to buy power from two older generating plants that have been brought out of moth balls to make up the shortfall.

Edison officials say the utility should be able to make it through the summer without any power shortages, excepting for extreme circumstances.

The plant has been closed since January, when extraordinary wear on the tubes was discovered.  Before reopening, must pass muster with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has told Edison it must find out exactly what is causing wear and tear on the tubes.

Stressing safety over timelines, Ted Craver, CEO of Edison International, So Cal Edison’s parent company, projected that the earliest the utility might be able to submit a restart plan to the commission is the end of July, and it could then take another month for the NRC to rule on the plan.

The commission has set June 18 for a hearing on the findings from the plant so far.

The question not answered in the articles, or by Edison in a press release sent out Friday, is whether and how much of that extra $2.5 million per month will be passed on to rate payers. 

Meanwhile, my colleague Kate McGinty, who covers public safety, said with daily triple-digit weather, she’s already noticing an uptick in power outages in the valley, although Edison International officials said any outages here are in all likelihood not related to San Onofre.

Either way, batten down your air conditioners, campers, it’s going to be a bumpy summer.

Climate change — it’s the science . . .

Posted: June 6th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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When talking about climate change, the question that almost invariably comes up is — how do we know that the current warming of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans is the result of human activity and not just a natural cycle?

This is a valid question and not often well discussed, so I have to hand it to the Union of Concerned Scientists  (motto: Independent science, practical solutions) who have lived up to their name with a new book, “Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living.” The book  — and an interactive website the group has launched  – sets readers a challenge of cutting their personal greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and lays out a range of well-documented, science-based options for achieving the reductions by making changes in their everyday lives.

But before diving into the reductions, the UCS lays out the science behind global warming and how we do know it’s not just Mother Nature having a hot flash.

First, there’s glacial ice, which contains air bubbles that provide perfect snapshots of the air and what’s in it from prehistoric times forward. Scientists drill down into glaciers, extracting cores that they can then study. Looking at the ice cores, scientists have found that over the past 800,000 years, carbon dioxide levels have never been anywhere near as high as they are today.

Next up is ”climate fingerprinting,” which involves looking at carbon molecules and changes in the atmosphere to figure out where the carbon came from.

The carbon molecules in carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels have a slightly different composition than the carbon in carbon dioxide from any other source, and scientists have found that the largest part of the increased carbon dioxide in the air comes from burning fossil fuels.

On top of that, the earth’s current warming patterns also confirm the human activity link. If the temperature increases were coming from the sun, we would see the atmosphere warming from the top down, which is not what’s happening. Instead, what scientists are finding is a warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper atmosphere — showing that the greenhouse gases are locking in the heat, as expected.

This, along with other evidence — melting glaciers, rising seas, etc. — makes for a pretty airtight case, one might say. As an increasing number of scientists point out, the only ones still debating the science of climate change appear to be U.S. lawmakers – and that denial is putting us and the rest of the world at increasing risk.

A case in point, as scientists have recently announced that carbon levels in the Arctic had cracked the critical 400 parts per million level – 350 ppm is considered the level we should be shooting for to stabilize the climate — law makers in North Carolina are considering a giant leap backward.

After the state’s coastal commission produced a report predicting a possible 39-inch rise in sea levels off the state’s coast by the end of the century, developers and officials from North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties banded together to attack the scientific models the commission had used.  Preparing for the impacts of a three-foot rise in sea levels would, it appears, put a serious crimp on resort and other commercial development in the region.

So far, the group has been successful in pressuring the commission to lower its predictions for sea-level rise by more than half, down to about 15 inches. It is also supporting a proposed law that would limit the coastal commission to calculating future sea level rises based only on historical data going back to 1900 and outdated, linear projections.

The law has not been introduced, just circulated, according to an article in the Raleigh News & Observer, but environmental officials and groups are warning of unintended consequences if it were to be passed.

The restriction could undermine  . . .  the ability of transportation and emergency-management planners to address rising waters.
The N.C. Coastal Federation, the region’s largest environmental group, said the bill could hurt local governments in winning federal planning grants. Insurance rates could go up, it says.
Relying solely on historical trends, the group said, is like “being told to make investment decisions strictly on past performance and not being able to consider market trends and research.”

Scott Huler, a North Carolina resident, has a jim-dandy rant on the whole thing on the Scientific American website.

Update: Unfortunately, the Emissions Time Bomb did not make it to Rancho Mirage on Thursday – due to some damage it sustained at a recent event. My apologies to anyone who went looking for it after reading the section below.

So, if you’re looking for a local dose of practical climate science, you can head over to Rancho Mirage City Hall between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Thursday, when the folks from EcoMotion will be inflating their Emissions Time Bomb — a 32-foot-tall, true-to-scale balloon showing what one ton of carbon dioxide looks like. 

EcoMotion's Emission Time Bomb in an appearance at the Camelot Theatre in Palm Springs in May. You can see it Thursday moring at Rancho Mirage City Hall.

EcoMotion, the Irvine-based consulting firm that has been working on greenhouse gas inventories of a number of valley cities, estimates that every valley residents puts about 9 tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year.

The time bomb is coming to Rancho Mirage as a highlight of a City Council study session on Mayor Scott Hines’ proposal for the city to form a community choice aggregation-type municipal utility, under which residents could stay with Southern California Edison or opt in to getting their power from possibly lower cost, independent power providers using renewable power.

More science, more practical solutions. It’s what we need now, desperately.

Energy efficiency — DOE has 57 apps for that

Posted: May 29th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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When it comes to energy efficiency, experts will tell you that better, greener technology only gets you so far. You have to get people to change their behavior, that is use less electricity, which is a lot more difficult.

One approach that has been embraced by the federal government and utilities runs on the proposition that if you can show people the connection between their energy use and their electric bills, they might be motivated to change. This is the basic principle behind smart meters and the more detailed information they offer on ratepayers’ energy use.

Building on that, earlier this year,  with prodding from the federal government, California’s three main utilities launched an initiative called the Green Button, a literal green button available on their websites. A quick click of the button and ratepayers could download detailed, raw data on their electricity use in a file form that could be easily input and shared with energy efficiency applications.

To kick start the market for Green Button apps, the Department of Energy has held an Apps for Energy competition, challenging developers to come up with mobile and tablet apps that use the downloadable data to engage people and motivate them to cut their energy use. And to make it serious, the DOE offered some sizable cash prizes, from $4,000 to $30,000 for the top overall winner.

The competition has two parts, one where the entries were judged by an expert panel, and another where the public gets to weigh in and vote for their favorites.

The department received 57 apps, and last week announced five top winners in the judged competition, in two categories — overall, which appears to be apps developed by startups or working developers, and students. 

The top winner overall — for the $30,000 prize – is an app called Leafully, which promotes energy efficiency by translating your energy use into the amount of trees that would be needed to offset your energy use. Using the Green Button data, the app allows folks to track their energy use and set goals — for example, cutting your kilowatts enough to save 10 trees.

The top winner in the student category – scoring a $15,000 prize – is called wotz, developed by a team of students at UC Irvine. This one is really fun, encouraging people to play, explore and challenge themselves with different interactive interpretations of their Green Button data.

Voting in the public competition is still open and runs through the end of the day May 31 – this Thursday. The top winner there gets $8,000.

So far, the leader, way ahead with 3,135 votes, is an app called iEnergy, developed by Interlink Network Systems.  It provides information linking energy use and electric bills and allows you to monitor your top kilowatt-guzzling appliances.

One thing that surfaces in many of the apps is that while we usually focus on reducing our peak usage, it is baseline energy use — the underlying power buzz for appliances and electronics that run even when we’re not home — that makes up a significant part of our bills.

Other takeaways from the competition, as pointed out in a column by Phil Carson, editor of the Intelligent Utility website, are –

  • Application developers are motivated by challenges, competition and money
  • If incentives work for app developers, they’ll work for utility customers
  • Utilities should focus on the youngest customers with these apps and value propositions, and make energy management cool; then have happy users spread the word.

 That last point could be critical. As one of the developers in the iEnergy video says, the earlier in life people start changing their energy habits, the more likely those changes are to become engrained, permanent behavior. 

So check out the apps and vote for your favorites.  Which ones do you think would get you to change your energy use?

And as a quick footnote here — I hate to keep harping on Southern California Edison – but while writing this blog post, I went on the Edison website — cause I’m an Edison customer — to look for the Green Button. It’s not easy to find. You have to have an online account and then you have to go to the Usage screen — the last of the three screens available on customers’ individual account pages.

This would not be so bad if Edison had posted some basic information, with a link easily visible on the website’s home page, telling customers how to get to the Green Button for their accounts.  Not there, even if you put “Green Button” into the website’s search engine.

Maybe as part of the national energy efficiency drive, we need utilities, as well as ratepayers, to change their behavior.

 Anybody got an app for that?

Solar impulses — from roof tops to around the world

Posted: May 25th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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One of the challenges of writing about net metering, as I have been doing the last few days, is trying to figure out why the issue has become so fiercely controversial.

On the face of it, the idea behind net metering seems pretty much a matter of common sense. People or businesses or even schools with solar panels on their roofs will not, to varying extents, be using all the power they generate, which can then go back into the grid and be used elsewhere. If you’re feeding power into the grid, you should get some kind of fair and reasonable compensation for it. 

The more power going into the grid from rooftops, the less need the utilities might have for other sources of power – like fossil fuel-burning power plants.

A February 2012 study from UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment also points to additional benefits arising from the local generation of power that is the foundation of rooftop solar and net metering.

“. . . on-site solar generation has substantial benefits for the electric grid. By producing energy on-site, transmission and distribution losses, wear and tear on utility equipment, and vulnerability to fuel cost increases are all reduced.”

Yet, since California passed its first net metering law back in 1995, any advance or expansion of the program has always been a battle against utility opposition. In the first law, for example, the cap on the amount of power the utilities would have to accept from net metering was set at .1 percent.

A bit bewildered by all this, I asked Southern California Edison officials why it seems in principle the company opposed net metering. 

Now, I have to say that usually, the media folks at Edison are straightforward and as helpful as they can be, working for a major private utility; we know each other and have cordial, professional relationships.

But on the net metering issue, I ran into the proverbial brick wall. Questions were either not answered at all or answered with statements so broad and vague as to be virtually meaningless.

Thursday morning, as soon as the California Public Utilities Commission voted on the net metering issue – expanding the program cap and ordering a study of economic impacts – I was on the phone to my contacts at Edison asking for a comment. I joked around, saying, “You knew I was going to call.”

That was around 11-11:30 a.m., and I told them I had a 5 p.m. deadline. It took them all day to send me a five-line statement – at 5:25 p.m. — that did not even mention the main issue of the net metering cap while making only the most general remarks on the need to analyze all the impacts of the program.

From a reporter’s point of view, this is totally bush league behavior. As a major corporation with a large media department, Edison must have known the decision was coming and should have had a press release with some kind of reasonably substantive statement ready to go the minute the vote was taken and a point person ready to handle media calls.

 The Solar Energy Industries Association sent out a statement by email within minutes of the vote, and I was quickly able to contact the group’s West Coast representative on her cell phone.

Clearly something bigger is going on here.

 At this point, it seems germane to point out that of California’s three private utilities, Edison has so far lagged behind the other two – Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric – in the amount of net metered power it is getting onto the grid.

One of Edison’s filings on the net metering issue incuded a chart showing that as of June 30, 2011, the utility had reached 1.06 percent of its 5 percent net metering cap, compared to 2.36 percent for PG&E and 2.2 percent for SDG&E.

My question to Edison about this was one of the ones that went unanswered, along with my request for more recent figures.

I did ask some other solar folks for their thoughts on these figures as well. Most answered off the record, pointing to things like the cultural differences between Northern and Southern California. We have all those tech folks in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area who are generally more environmentally aware and more likely to try out new technology. Same with San Diego.  I don’t know that I completely buy that — particularly in the Coachella Valley where we have Edison’s summer electric bills as a major incentive.

Another possibility might be how long it takes the company to set up net metering accounts. In recent weeks I’ve heard from two local residents who installed solar and had to wait months for Edison to sort out their net metering accounts.

Ed Trost of Palm Springs installed his solar system last summer and, he reported, by September, he still wasn’t on net metering.

“We were able to generate some free electricity and not get credit,” he told me.

My own personal and no doubt way oversimplified theory is that Edison and the other utilities struggle with small rooftop solar because, while publically they must appear supportive,  it’s something they can’t control and it’s cutting into their business. They’re still trying to figure out a way to make money off it and so far, they haven’t.

That said, large utilities have a tendency not to give up and should never be underestimated. They got the power.

* * * * * * * *

And before everyone takes off for Memorial Day, here is something totally cool and inspiring – a solar-powered airplane flying around the world.

A picture of the Solar Impulse. a completely solar-powered plane, from the project's website. Madrid was the first stop on the Swiss plane's round-the-world flight.

Called the Solar Impulse, the plane is the product of a Swiss team led by Bernard Piccard, who made the first around-the-world balloon flight, and Andre Borschberg, an engineer and management expert.

The plane has a wing span of 63.4 meters — 208 feet –  covered in 12,000 solar cells. Its next stop is a solar plant near Rabat in Morocco. Needless to say, you can follow the trip online, either on the Solar Impulse website or Twitter feed.

The team’s statement of principles is worth reading.

The ultimate goal of Solar Impulse, beyond the adventure of flying a solar airplane round the world, or rather thanks to it, is to express a humanistic vision which devotes a major place to the pioneering spirit, to the questing mind and to innovation in our everyday lives. For this purpose, we want to bring together and give a voice to all those who share our beliefs –  that the survival of our planet depends on sustainable development; that nature can be protected without fanatical environmentalism; that individual initiative cannot be dissociated from social responsibility; that ethical values and respect for the environment must prevail in the worlds of commerce, finance and politics;  that respect is not an outdated moral precept; and that spirituality does not necessarily entail dogmatism.

God speed, ladies and gentlemen. Have a sustainable weekend.

 

 

Smart meter update: the PG&E opt-out and Edison energy-tracking delays

Posted: January 11th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The California Public Utilities Commission was supposed to be voting on Thursday on whether to approve a smart meter opt-out plan for Pacific Gas & Electric customers — but I just learned, the vote has been pushed back to Feb. 1.

That probably means there’s still tinkering on what the final opt-out plan will be. And while the PG&E decision will only affect its Northern California customers, here in the southland, both Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric are paying close attention.  Whatever the PUC decides for PG&E will likely be the model for the opt-out plans they will have to formulate in the near future.

The PUC already ordered all three utilities to create delay-installation lists for any customers who don’t want the new meters.

So where are we now? A quick recap –  PG&E’s original proposal, submitted last March, would have had customers paying upfront charges of $135-$270 to have the radio technology on their smart meters turned off, plus $14-$20 a month extra.

But, responding to criticism from consumer groups, PUC President Michael Peevey, in a proposed decision released in November, pared down and leveled those costs to $90 up front and $15 per month, with low-income customers paying no upfront costs and $5 extra per month. That’s the plan the commissionwas supposed to be voting on Thursday, but it looks like Peevey and company want to take another look at the final decision in light of continued lobbying from both advocates and utilities.

If you’re a total techno-geek like me, you get a blow-by-blow on the situation by looking at all the filings on the PG&E opt-out plan on the PUC website by clicking here.

In one surprising move, in a Dec. 19 filing, PG&E bowed to customers who have said they want their analog meters back and asked the PUC to include that choice in the opt-out plan.

On the other hand, consumer advocates are pushing hard on the issue of who should pay for opt-out, whether the utilities will be allowed to shift all the costs to ratepayers or whether PG&E shareholders should pick up at least part of the tab. 

The PUC’s own Division of Ratepayer Advocates challenged a PG&E assertion that it has ample documentation of what the costs of the opt-out will be and so shouldn’t have to file an extra application to the PUC on the costs it will be able to bill to ratepayers.

“None of these documents has even been formally entered into the record,” the DRA argues in its own Dec. 19 filing. “No party has been afforded any opportunity to submit even comments on any of PG&E’s cost estimates—let alone to challenge them through cross-examination or by offering expert testimony on reasonable costs to implement an opt-out program. The only opportunity parties have had to address PG&E’s cost estimates has been in response to the Proposed Decision. And as these comments clearly show, there are in fact many ‘significant disputes’ about the appropriate costs to impose for the opt-out option. Finally, the PD made no findings of fact and reached no conclusions of law about the reasonableness of PG&E’s cost estimates – the only relevant conclusion states that thereare ‘significant cost uncertainties associated with providing an opt-out option.’”

The Utilities Reform Network, or TURN, wants PG&E shareholders to pick up at least part of the costs. Its argument, in a Dec. 12 filing, is that PG&E should take some financial responsibility for deploying the meters before gauging customer’s willingness to have them installed and before the utility was sure the meters would function properly.

The utilities, “ jumped the gun,” said Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for TURN.  ”Why did they rush to put meters in over customers objections when they weren’t ready for prime time.  It was a rush to make an investment they could book profits from regardless whether there were any benefits for customers.”

“We would like to see that some of the costs of the opt-out come out of shareholders pockets not customers,” she said. ”We think customers have already paid an arm and a leg for these meters.”

In the meantime, on the local front, another issue on smart meters is the delay in the roll-out of energy use-tracking services that were promised to consumers when Edison started installing the meters in the Coachella Valley in November 2010. Then Ken Devore, director of Edison’s smart meter program, told me by spring 2011 customers would be able to go online to monitor their hourly energy use so they could see when they were using the most power, which appliances were chewing up kilowatts, etc.

More than a year later, the only information we are getting on energy use is the monthly totals available on our bills. I’m working on an article on this, and the impact of smart meters on folks’ electric bills.

You can share your stories with me at k.kaufmann@thedesertsun.com

Smart meter update: The PG&E opt-out plan

Posted: November 28th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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In what may likely be seen as a precedent-setting decision, the California Public Utilities Commission last week issued a ruling on Pacific Gas & Electric’s smart meter opt-out plan.

In a nut shell, PG&E customers who don’t want a wireless meter will have two options. If they already have a new meter installed, they will be able to request that wireless functions be turned off. If they have delayed smart meter installation, they will now have to have a new meter installed, also with no wireless functions.

The PUC chose the wireless-off option because it is the least expensive of the alternatives available for customers who didn’t want the wireless meters.  According to a rundown of the decision on GreenTech Media, turning off the wireless will only cost PG&E about $402 per meter versus $613 per meter for meters that are hardwired.

The other key provisions of the ruling come on cost to customers and the new pricing plans and consumer information that were billed as the main benefits of the wireless meters.

Going wireless will cost customers $90 upfront plus $15 per month. That’s considerably less than the fees PG&E originally proposed — either $270 upfront and $14 per month or $135 upfront and $20 per month.

Low-income or elderly customers who are on special rate plans would have the upfront fee waived and pay only $5 per month for a wireless-off meter.

Without the wireless functions, PG&E won’t be able to track hourly electric use of some customers, which in turn means it may not be able to charge them time-of-use rates and other pricing options aimed at reducing power use at peak times. 

To provide the utility with some flexibility here, the ruling says by Jan. 1, 2014, PG&E will have to have meters that allow it to collect at least some of that hourly use data manually — so it looks like some meter readers will have to stay on the job.

PG&E has estimated that 148,500 customers will ask for the opt-out. But the GreenTech Media report noted that an opt-out plan in Maine, with upfront fees of $20-$40 and monthly charges of $10-$12.50, drew 10 percent fewer customers than had been expected. 

The PUC has yet to rule on opt-out plans for Southern California Edison or San Diego Gas & Electric, but this ruling might be a template for them.

The PG&E ruling still has to go through a public comment period, ending Dec. 12.  To submit a comment, you can contact the Public Advisor’s office.

A final vote on the opt-out plan is tentatively scheduled for the commission’s Jan. 12 meeting.

 

The battle of the bills

Posted: August 1st, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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We know the Coachella Valley has some of the highest summer electric bills in the state, a fact of life in the region that ratepayers — particularly Southern California Edison customers – tend to carp about more than celebrate.

But now we have the opportunity to turn those blistering bills into bragging rights — SunRun, a solar leasing firm based in San Francisco, is running a Battle of the Bills to find the highest home electric bill in California. The grand prize winner gets a free 20-year solar lease with the company. Runners-up can win $1,000 or $500 discounts off a lease.

The catch here is that the contest is based on bills for this past, unseasonably cool June, which did not break any local records on the electric bill front. 

Still, consider the competition — Pacific Gas & Electric territory up north, San Diego Gas & Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Pasadena Water and Power, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. We  still should be able to kick some serious butt — bill-wise.

The contest is open to homeowners only — sorry apartment dwellers — and of course, you’ll have to show them the bill.   The deadline to submit your bill online is 11:59 p.m. Aug. 12.

Obviously, this a smart marketing move by SunRun, one of a growing army of solar leasing companies that has been capturing an increasingly large slice of the residential solar market.  The value proposition here is that customers can get a solar system installed on their homes for almost nothing upfront. The leasing company owns and maintains the system and the customer gets the power at long-term low rates.

Figures from the California Public Utilities Commission show that as of July 20, 34 percent of all new solar installations applying for the state rebates were third-party owned, which means either a lease or power purchase agreement. In Edison territory, the third-party installations are running even higher — 46 percent. 

Those figures at least partially explain why state rebate rates are falling faster than expected.  Rebates on leased systems in general go to the leasing companies, such as SunRun, so more leases mean less money for rebates for homeowners who buy their own systems.

The solar rebate for Edison customers now is $1.10 per watt, down from $1.55.

These are just a few of the figures I’ve gathered so far for an article for this weekend on how leasing and falling rebates are affecting the valley’s solar market and installers. I’m also interested in talking with residents about their decisions to go solar, either buying or leasing a system.

In the meantime, it’s triple-digits  and muggy out there, and we’ve got piles of electrons zipping around the valley, keeping our air conditioners running and our bills high.

So come on, Coachella Valley – we can do this!  Get out those June bills and show the rest of the state what it really means to sweat out a summer.