A new type of public power is growing in California, and raising alarms

[Pedestrian]

By David R. Baker
May 26, 2018 Updated: May 27, 2018 5:00am

Eight years ago, Marin County created a new kind of public power agency in California — over the strenuous objections of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The county and most of its cities started buying electricity together on behalf of their residents, a role traditionally filled by utility companies. PG&E considered the move so alarming that it threatened to stop delivering electricity to the county, until state regulators warned the company to back off.

Today, the system that Marin and its cities used, known as community choice aggregation, has spread across the state, serving 12 percent of the state’s electricity demand and growing fast. Local governments have embraced it as a way exert more control over their electricity supply and set their own rates while using a higher mix of renewable power than the traditional utilities provide.

Fourteen community choice systems are up and running, and another three — including one in the East Bay — will serve their first customers in June . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business...n-12946634.php

[SLO]

Is this just choice of providers? I know Texas has been doing that for quite a while. The kwh rates were lower for sure.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by SLO

Is this just choice of providers? I know Texas has been doing that for quite a while. The kwh rates were lower for sure.

Not really. Yours is the capitalist way. Ours is the socialist way: The local government (city, county) collectively acts as the buying entity and contracts for the cheapest--or perhaps the greenest--power it can get and then offers that power to its citizens. I am not sure whether what it offers is the only choice they then have or whether they can also chose the traditional corporate provider (PG&E in the case of most of Northern CA).

But the essence of this is substituting a local government for a corporation as the local "electric company" except that, unlike traditonal municipal power providers, in this case the government entity doesn't generate any power. It just buys it from preferred sources (which preference can be on whatever basis they choose: price, best for the environment or whatever.).

San Francisco, for example, has long wanted to kick PG&E out and form a municpal utility but the citizens have been reluctant to put bureaucrats in charge of building/buying/owning/running power plants which has huge up front costs and is a rather irrevocable step. This gets around that step. There are now quite a few "merchant" electicity generators in CA who generate power and sell it wholesale (but generally not retail) to whoever wants to buy it. Some now have giant solar farms in the Southern California deserts or wind turbine farms in the mountain passes but others use natural gas.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Francisco, for example, has long wanted to kick PG&E out and form a municpal utility but the citizens have been reluctant to put bureaucrats in charge of building/buying/owning/running power plants which has huge up front costs and is a rather irrevocable step.

I've always wondered why San Francisco never had its own municipal power company. Basically, PG&E has had a monopoly of providing electricity in California from Bakersfield all the way to the Oregon border. Where are the anti-trust laws??

Even in the LA area, aside from the LADWP of course, cities smaller than San Francisco (Burbank, Pasadena) have their own non-profit, municipal utilities. And I think Long Beach does not have its own municipal utility, which surprises me too (they use SCE), because they're a pretty big city. And I used to think San Diego Gas & Electric was a municipally owned utility, but I learned recently that they're private/for-profit.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I've always wondered why San Francisco never had its own municipal power company. Basically, PG&E has had a monopoly of providing electricity in California from Bakersfield all the way to the Oregon border. Where are the anti-trust laws??

Electric utilities are intensively regulated rather than being subject to anti-trust because 100 years ago in the hayday of antitrust it was considered impractical to have competition in that sphere.

Even in the LA area, aside from the LADWP of course, cities smaller than San Francisco (Burbank, Pasadena) have their own non-profit, municipal utilities. And I think Long Beach does not have its own municipal utility, which surprises me too (they use SCE), because they're a pretty big city. And I used to think San Diego Gas & Electric was a municipally owned utility, but I learned recently that they're private/for-profit.

The recent history of public power in SF is largely to be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanPowerSF