If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening in California’s solar market in the slightest bit over the past 10 years, you’re somewhat familiar with the term community choice aggregation (CCA). Since Marion County launched the first CCA program in California in 2010, the adaptation from several other counties soon followed. There are now 19 CCA programs, serving more than 10 million customers in California, while dozens of other communities are considering adopting a CCA program in the near future. California is not the only state developing community choice energy in the U.S. but is far advanced with the number of programs that have already been established.
Click here to see an interactive map of where in California community choice is operational or being developed.
Since the CCA programs were first implemented, they have had an exponential impact on the renewable energy market. One of the biggest goals for community choice is the acceleration of the renewable market and so far, the programs have made good on the commitment to invest in new renewable energy throughout California. Results from CCAS in 2018 alone include:
Community choice energy is just another piece of the complex puzzle of a market that is consistently changing and evolving. At Energy Toolbase, we do our best to accommodate all these changes and provide accurate analysis for solar developers to provide to their customers. To learn more about how Energy Toolbase can accommodate CCA programs watch our latest webinar ‘Modeling solar and energy storage on CCAs’ below or visit www.energytoolbase.com to sign up for a free 14-day trial.
What is Community Choice Energy?
So what is community choice and how does it fit into the already complex electricity puzzle? It’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Even those who have been in the industry since the first CCA program was created, still have a lack of understanding of what CCAs are and what they’re intended to do. Community choice aggregation is a local, not-for-profit program that buys and can generate electricity for residential and commercial customers. In California, it was enabled by state law in 2002 and affirmed in 2012 with the SB790 which strengthened community choice energy and established an investor-owned utility (IOU) code of conduct. Even though the initial law instructed IOU’s to fully cooperate with community choice energy, there was still a lot of obstruction, which is why the strengthened law was put into place. Community choice energy is in collaboration with the IOUs in each state where these programs are created. The three main IOU’s in California, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) manage the delivery of electricity, the metering and the billing while the community choice agency is solely responsible for procurement, or the generation, side of the equation. You can choose to be a bundled customer with the utility or to be a customer of the CCA. No customers are forced to be in a CCA program.How is Community Choice Governed?
There are two main governance modes for CCAs. A program can either be a single jurisdiction, where a city or a county wants to pursue their own CCA agency and not in partnership with any other jurisdiction or a joint powers authority, where jurisdictions join together. With that, there are several requirements that must be met before a city/county can pursue their own CCA program including:- A city or county must pass an ordinance to initiate a community choice agency
- Must provide service to all customers in the city and/or county
- Must allow customers to opt-out and become bundled with the utility
- Must file an implementation plan to the public utilities commission (PUC) prior to launching service
- Exit fees: the fee that a CCA customer must pay to the utility in the particular region to offset the costs of the investments utilities have made. This is included in the customers’ monthly bill
- Must comply with the state’s mandates
Why Community Choice Energy?
Cities and counties pursue community choice for a variety of reasons but the main one being that it gives customers a choice in their energy provider other than the big investor-owned utilities. Some additional benefits include:- Local economic benefits and job opportunities
- Energy democracy
- Competitive and more stable rates
- Local control
- Greenhouse gas reductions/local air quality
- Resilience and building capacity in a community
- Serving community needs
- More than 90 million dollars of estimated on-bill savings across all CCA programs
- 1,300+ megawatts of new solar PV
- 360 megawatt-hours of new energy storage
- Over 4,000 new jobs supported
- On track for 1,000 MW in 2019
Where to Next?
There are quite a few CCA programs that are in the process of emerging and expected to launch between 2020-2021. Some of those programs include:- Desert Community Energy (Coachella Valley – Center and Eastern Riverside County)
- Western Community Energy (Western Riverside County)
- Butte County Community Choice
- Hanford Community Choice (Kings County)
- San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay
- City of San Diego
- San Diego County – North Coastal Cities
- Central Coast Power (Santa Barbara County)
- City of Corona
- City of Hermosa Beach
- City of Industry