San Francisco officials review Clean Power SF progress as negotiations with PG&E continue

A joint meeting of the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on April 23 focused on the city—s Clean Power SF community choice aggregation program and negotiations over the service agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric Company and a private energy service provider. Staff outlined remaining business terms, cost tradeoffs and the risk allocation that must be resolved before a final contract can be presented.

Staff presentations by Barbara Hale, assistant general manager for Power, and Ed Harrington, SFPUC general manager, said the implementation plan was submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on March 3, that PG&E filed comments April 2 and staff replied April 9, and that CPUC certification is expected in early May (the statute allows the CPUC until June 3). Hale summarized three parallel tracks for Clean Power SF: CPUC certification of the implementation plan, negotiation of the PG&E service agreement, and finalizing the energy services contract with the selected bidder.

Hale and Harrington emphasized that costs outside pure generation—particularly the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA)—follow customers who leave PG&E and are an important program expense. "The PCIA charges are expected to be approximately $15 a megawatt hour for our customer base," Hale said, and staff estimated that PCIA would amount to about $60,000,000 a year out of roughly $350,000,000 in program customer revenues. Harrington provided the staff—s view of the market costs: "PG&E generation rate — about $80 per megawatt hour— and the PCIA is about worth about $15 of that total," he said.

The discussion turned to renewable energy credits (RECs) after a CPUC decision allowed some unbundled RECs to count toward RPS compliance. Hale explained the distinction between bundled RECs and unbundled ("green") RECs and described the…