California ALJ Proposes 4-year Phase-In of Capped Competition
February 11, 2010
California's retail power market would open up over four years under a proposed ALJ ruling filed Tuesday. The proposal is on implementation issues for SB 695 that made the PUC raise the cap on direct access (DA, the California term for competition) to its highest historical level, letting C&Is shop for power.
The ALJ largely adopted a compromise proposal from utilities, DA backers and consumer advocates on the roll-out.
The shopping cap will be raised by 8,354 mw, with 3,946 mw available in Southern California Edison's territory, an identical amount in Pacific Gas & Electric's and just 462 mw available in San Diego Gas & Electric's. All told, that's less than 10 million mwh of annual use across the state and just 6% of the entire load served -- lower even than annual variations due to weather and the economy.
The proposal would introduce shopping to half the new cap amount on April 11 and would add another 20% each at the beginning of 2011 and 2012. The last 10% of the load under the cap would open at the start of 2013.
Thus the first wave of consumers could shop April 11 -- and through June 30 they wouldn't have to file six-month notice to their utility that that they plan on taking service from another provider.
The plan includes a requirement that former DA customers who go back to the utility have to stay with the incumbent for three years. Future applicability of that would be taken up in later proceedings.
The ALJ isn't offering existing eligible DA customers a special set-aside but opening up the market equally to all customers.
Utilities will have to indicate on their public website whether notices of intent to switch are being accepted or the cap space for the year has been filled and they aren't.
SCE argued that residential customers who previously took service from retailers would be eligible to shop again but the ALJ shot that notion down, quoting the language of SB 695 that said residential shopping is suspended until the legislature lifts that ban.
The only residential customers who will be able to return are those that have given a six months notice already.
The proposal can't appear on the PUC's agenda for at least 30 days and the commission could decide to postpone it, though the commission is under a legislative deadline to start reopening the market by April 11.
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