Full Title: Consumer and Retail Choice, the Role of the Utility, and an Evolving Regulatory Framework
Author(s): California Public Utilities Commission
Publisher(s):
Publication Date: May 1, 2017
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Description (excerpt):
California’s electric sector is undergoing unprecedented change, brought about by a sequence of innovations in technology as well as many incremental policy actions taken in several different decision- making arenas. Between rooftop solar, Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) and Direct Access providers (ESPs), as much as 25%1 of Investor Owned Utility (IOU) retail electric load will be effectively unbundled and served by a non-IOU source or provider sometime later this year. This share is set to grow quickly over the coming decade with some estimates that over 85% of retail load served by sources other than the IOUs by the middle of the 2020s2 . All this is to say that California may well be on the path towards a competitive market for consumer electric services, but is moving in that direction without a coherent plan to deal with all the associated challenges that competition poses, ranging from renewable procurement rules to reliability requirements and consumer protection.
In many ways, these changes are a function of California’s success implementing world leading policies like the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), the California Solar Initiative (CSI), and the Energy Storage Mandate. Through these policies, California’s regulatory bodies and its IOUs have integrated renewable energy into the electric grid at massive scale, both at the transmission level through independently- owned large-scale projects and the distribution level through rooftop solar. This experience has empowered customers to choose new energy options and enabled new market entrants like Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) to serve customers with innovative solutions. Though these changes have been largely positive so far, the consequence of fast-scaling competition is that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and California Energy Commission (CEC) must now look at long held assumptions in their regulatory frameworks and examine the role of the electric utility at the center of this system, tasked with the primary responsibility for providing power and other services to all consumers within a geographic service area.