CPUC opens quarterly ICA workshop as IOUs report on accuracy, updates and portals

The California Public Utilities Commission on a WebEx webinar opened the first quarterly investor-owned-utility led Integration Capacity Analysis workshop, describing the ICA as the tool that "quantifies the maximum amount of power that can be injected into or drawn from the distribution system while requiring minimal to no distribution mitigations, upgrades or operational restrictions," Commissioner Petra Hauck said.

The workshop, led by the three large investor-owned utilities (Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric), is part of the CPUC's high DER (distributed energy resources) track 1 phase 1 decision process. The decision established a cycle of biannual ICA reports and quarterly public workshops to improve ICA accuracy and to track remediation plans and timelines for known issues, the CPUC said. Raymond Breaux, a utilities engineer with the CPUC, opened the meeting and explained the procedural logistics for the webinar.

Why it matters: ICAs are used by developers and customers to assess whether a location needs distribution upgrades or can be fast-tracked for solar, storage or EV charging. Stakeholders and the Commission have repeatedly raised concerns about accuracy, missing or erroneous values and so-called "false zeros" on ICA maps that can block or delay projects. The CPUC directed the IOUs to publish biannual ICA reports describing known issues and remediation plans; the first of those biannual reports was published January 31, 2025, and utilities will host quarterly workshops to discuss progress.

Major themes at the workshop included methodology refinements, data-quality gaps (including missing meter connectivity and legacy records), computational limitations for long feeders, and interim portal enhancements to provide users more context while long-term tool upgrades are built. Each IOU presented its current methodology, what it has fixed since earlier reports, and its timeline for remediation and portal features.

Stakeholder input: Participants pressed utilities on (1) the scale of outstanding errors, (2) whether monthly publication of triggered updates meets the CPUC requirement, and (3) how ICA results should be treated in interconnection screening (Rule 21). Several stakeholders, including commenters who identified themselves as Skye and others in the workshop, asked for clearer quantification of how many feeders remain affected by false zeros and for firm timelines for remediation.

Next steps: The utilities will continue to publish ICA updates monthly while developing upgraded platforms and longer-term forecast-capable ICAs. The CPUC and utilities planned to continue this quarterly workshop series and noted the next workshop would occur in Q2 2025.

Ending: The workshop set out both near-term product improvements and longer-term platform work, while stakeholders and Commission staff pressed utilities for clearer measures of progress and customer-facing indicators of when circuit results are current and reliable.