Tag Archives: natural gas

Victory for mobilehome park residents and owners

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The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorized the continuance for the next 10 years of the program that converts ownership of privately-held utility systems in mobilehome parks to that of investor-owned energy utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Gas. Of the 400,000 mobilehome spaces in California, over 300,000 are currently served by “master metered” systems that are owned and maintained by the park owner.

Most of these systems were built more than 40 years ago, although many have been replaced periodically. This program aims to transfer all of these systems to standard utility service. Due to the age of these systems, some engineered to only last a dozen years initially because these parks were intended as “transitional” land uses, concerns about safety have been paramount. This program will bring these systems up to the standards of other California ratepayers.

Along with improved safety, residents will gain greater access to energy efficiency and other energy management programs that they already fund at the utilities, and smoother billing. Residents also will have access to time of use rates that has been precluded by the intervening master meter. Park owners will avoid the increasing complexity of billing, system maintenance and safety inspections and filings, and future costs of system replacement. In addition, park owners have been inadequately compensated through utility rates for maintaining those systems, and have resistance in recovering related costs through rents.

I have been working with one of my clients, Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association (WMA) since 1997 to achieve this goal. The momentum finally shifted in 2014 when we convinced the utilities that making these investments could be profitable. First athree-year pilot program was authorized, and this recent decision builds on that.

 

The Business Roundtable takes the wrong lesson from California’s energy costs

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solar-panel-price-drop-global-solar-installations-bnef

The California Business Roundtable authored an article in the San Francisco Chronicle claiming that the we only need to look to California’s energy prices to see what would happen with the “Green New Deal” proposed by the Congressional Democrats.

That article has several errors and is misleading in others aspects. First, California’s electricity rates are high because of the renewable contracts signed nearly a decade ago when renewables were just evolving and much higher cost. California’s investment was part of the reason that solar and wind costs are now lower than existing coals plants (new study shows 75% of coal plants are uneconomic) and competitive with natural gas. Batteries that increase renewable operations have almost become cost effective. It also claims that reliability has “gone down” when in fact we still have a large reserve margin. The California Independent System Operator in fact found a 23% reserve margin when the target is only 17%. We also have the ability to install batteries quickly to solve that issue. PG&E is installing over 500 MW of batteries right now to replace a large natural gas plant.

For the rest of the U.S., consumers will benefit from these lower costs today. Californians have paid too much for their power to date, due to mismanagement by PG&E and the other utilities, but elsewhere will be able to avoid these foibles.

(Graphic: BNEF)