Tag Archives: SDG&E

Retail electricity rate reform will not solve California’s problems

Leave a reply

Meredith Fowlie wrote this blog on the proposal to drastically increase California utilities’ residential fixed charges at the Energy Institute at Haas blog. I posted this comment (with some additions and edits) in response.

First, infrastructure costs are responsive to changes in both demand and added generation. It’s just that those costs won’t change for a customer tomorrow–it will take a decade. Given how fast transmission retail rates have risen and have none of the added fixed costs listed here, the marginal cost must be substantially above the current average retail rates of 4 to 8 cents/kWh.

Further, if a customer is being charged a fixed cost for capacity that is being shared with other customers, e.g., distribution and transmission wires, they should be able to sell that capacity to other customers on a periodic basis. While many economists love auctions, the mechanism with the lowest ancillary transaction costs is a dealer market akin a grocery store which buys stocks of goods and then resells. (The New York Stock Exchange is a type of dealer market.) The most likely unit of sale would be in cents per kWh which is the same as today. In this case, the utility would be the dealer, just as today. So we are already in the same situation.

Airlines are another equally capital intensive industry. Yet no one pays a significant fixed charge (there are some membership clubs) and then just a small incremental charge for fuel and cocktails. Fares are based on a representative long run marginal cost of acquiring and maintaining the fleet. Airlines maintain a network just as utilities. Economies of scale matter in building an airline. The only difference is that utilities are able to monopolistically capture their customers and then appeal to state-sponsored regulators to impose prices.

Why are California’s utility rates 30 to 50% or more above the current direct costs of serving customers? The IOUs, and PG&E in particular, over procured renewables in the 2010-2012 period at exorbitant prices (averaging $120/MWH) in part in an attempt to block entry of CCAs. That squandered the opportunity to gain the economics benefits from learning by doing that led to the rapid decline in solar and wind prices over the next decade. In addition, PG&E refused to sell a part of its renewable PPAs to the new CCAs as they started up in the 2014-2017 period. On top of that, PG&E ratepayers paid an additional 50% on an already expensive Diablo Canyon due to the terms of the 1996 Settlement Agreement. (I made the calculations during that case for a client.) And on the T&D side, I pointed out beginning in 2010 that the utilities were overforecasting load growth and their recorded data showed stagnant loads. The peak load from 2006 was the record until 2022 and energy loads have remained largely constant, even declining over the period. The utilities finally started listening the last couple of years but all of that unneeded capital is baked into rates. All of these factors point not to the state or even the CPUC (except as an inept monitor) as being at fault, but rather to the utilities’ mismanagement.

Using Southern California Edison’s (SCE) own numbers, we can illustrate the point. SCE’s total bundled marginal costs in its rate filing are 10.50 cents per kWh for the system and 13.64 cents per kWh for residential customers. In comparison, SCE’s average system rate is 17.62 cents per kWh or 68% higher than the bundled marginal cost, and the average residential rate of 22.44 cents per kWh is 65% higher. From SCE’s workpapers, these cost increases come primarily from four sources.

  1. First, about 10% goes towards various public purpose programs that fund a variety of state-initiated policies such as energy efficiency and research. Much of this should be largely funded out of the state’s General Fund as income distribution through the CARE rate instead. And remember that low income customers are already receiving a 35% discount on rates.
  2. Next, another 10% comes roughly from costs created two decades ago in the wake of the restructuring debacle. The state has now decreed that this revenue stream will instead be used to pay for the damages that utilities have caused with wildfires. Importantly, note that wildfire costs of any kind have not actually reached rates yet. In addition, there are several solutions much less costly than the undergrounding proposed by PG&E and SDG&E, including remote rural microgrids.
  3. Approximately 15% is from higher distribution costs, some of which have been created by over-forecasting load growth over the last 15 years; loads have remained stagnant since 2006.
  4. And finally, around 33% is excessive generation costs caused by paying too much for purchased power agreements signed a decade ago.

An issue raised as rooftop solar spreads farther is the claim that rooftop solar customers are not paying their fair share and instead are imposing costs on other customers, who on average have lower incomes than those with rooftop solar. Yet the math behind the true rate burden for other customers is quite straightforward—if 10% of the customers are paying essentially zero (which they are actually not), the costs for the remaining 90% of the customers cannot go up more than 11% [100%/(100%-10%) = 11% ]. If low-income customers pay only 70% of this—the 11%– then their bills might go up about 8%–hardly a “substantial burden.” (70% x 11% = 7.7%)

As for aligning incentives for electrification, we proposed a more direct alternative on behalf of the Local Government Sustainable Energy Coalition where those who replace a gas appliance or furnace with an electric receive an allowance (much like the all-electric baseline) priced at marginal cost while the remainder is priced at the higher fully-loaded rate. That would reduce the incentive to exit the grid when electrifying while still rewarding those who made past energy efficiency and load reduction investments.

The solution to high rates cannot come from simple rate design; as Old Surfer Dude points out, wealthy customers are just going to exit the grid and self provide. Rate design is just rearranging the deck chairs. The CPUC tried the same thing in the late 1990s with telcom on the assumption that customers would stay put. Instead customers migrated to cell phones and dropped their land lines. The real solution is going to require some good old fashion capitalism with shareholders and associated stakeholders absorbing the costs of their mistakes and greed.

Are PG&E’s customers about to walk?

3 Replies

In the 1990s, California’s industrial customers threatened to build their own self-generation plants and leave the utilities entirely. Escalating generation costs due to nuclear plant cost overruns and too-generous qualifying facilities (QF) contracts had driven up rates, and the technology that made QFs possible also allowed large customers to consider self generating. In response California “restructured” its utility sector to introduce competition in the generation segment and to get the utilities out of that part of the business. Unfortunately the initiative failed, in a big way, and we were left with a hybrid system which some blame for rising rates today.

Those rising rates may be introducing another threat to the utilities’ business model, but it may be more existential this time. A previous blog post described how Pacific Gas & Electric’s 2022 Wildfire Mitigation Plan Update combined with the 2023 General Rate Application could lead to a 50% rate increase from 2020 to 2026. For standard rate residential customers, the average rate could by 41.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.

For an average customer that translates to $2,200 per year per kilowatt of peak demand. Using PG&E’s cost of capital, that implies that an independent self-sufficient microgrid costing $15,250 per kilowatt could be funded from avoiding paying PG&E bills.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study referenced in this blog estimates that a stand alone residential microgrid with 7 kilowatts of solar paired with a 5 kilowatt / 20 kilowatt-hour battery would cost between $35,000 and $40,000. The savings from avoiding PG&E rates could justify spending $75,000 to $105,000 on such a system, so a residential customer could save up to $70,000 by defecting from the grid. Even if NREL has underpriced and undersized this example system, that is a substantial margin.

This time it’s not just a few large customers with choice thermal demands and electricity needs—this would be a large swath of PG&E’s residential customer class. It would be the customers who are most affluent and most able to pay PG&E’s extraordinary costs. If many of these customers view this opportunity to exit favorably, the utility could truly face a death spiral that encourages even more customers to leave. Those who are left behind will demand more relief in some fashion, but those customers who already defected will not be willing to bail out the company.

In this scenario, what is PG&E’s (or Southern California Edison’s and San Diego Gas & Electric’s) exit strategy? Trying to squeeze current NEM customers likely will only accelerate exit, not stifle it. The recent two-day workshop on affordability at the CPUC avoided discussing how utility investors should share in solving this problem, treating their cost streams as inviolable. The more likely solution requires substantial restructuring of PG&E to lower its revenue requirements, including by reducing income to shareholders.

A misguided perspective on California’s rooftop solar policy

1 Reply

Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas has taken another shot at solar rooftop net energy metering (NEM). He has been a continual critic of California’s energy decentralization policies such as those on distribution energy resources (DER) and community choice aggregators (CCAs). And his viewpoints have been influential at the California Public Utilities Commission.

I read these two statements in his blog post and come to a very different conclusions:

“(I)ndividuals and businesses make investments in response to those policies, and many come to believe that they have a right to see those policies continue indefinitely.”

Yes, the investor owned utilities and certain large scale renewable firms have come to believe that they have a right to see their subsidies continue indefinitely. California utilities are receiving subsidies amounting to $5 billion a year due to poor generation portfolio management. You can see this in your bill with the PCIA. This dwarfs the purported subsidy from rooftop solar. Why no call for reforming how we recover these costs from ratepayers and force shareholder to carry their burden? (And I’m not even bringing up the other big source of rate increases in excessive transmission and distribution investment.)

Why wasn’t there a similar cry against bailing out PG&E in not one but TWO bankruptcies? Both PG&E and SCE have clearly relied on the belief that they deserve subsidies to continue staying in business. (SCE has ridden along behind PG&E in both cases to gain the spoils.) The focus needs to be on ALL players here if these types of subsidies are to be called out.

“(T)he reactions have largely been about how much subsidy rooftop solar companies in California need in order to stay in business.”

We are monitoring two very different sets of media then. I see much more about the ability of consumers to maintain an ability to gain a modicum of energy independence from large monopolies that compel that those consumers buy their service with no viable escape. I also see a reactions about how this will undermine directly our ability to reduce GHG emissions. This directly conflicts with the CEC’s Title 24 building standards that use rooftop solar to achieve net zero energy and electrification in new homes.

Along with the effort to kill CCAs, the apparent proposed solution is to concentrate all power procurement into the hands of three large utilities who haven’t demonstrated a particularly adroit ability at managing their portfolios. Why should we put all of our eggs into one (or three) baskets?

Borenstein continues to rely on an incorrect construct for cost savings created by rooftop solar that relies on short-run hourly wholesale market prices instead of the long-term costs of constructing new power plants, transmission rates derived from average embedded costs instead of full incremental costs and an assumption that distribution investment is not avoided by DER contrary to the methods used in the utilities’ own rate filings. He also appears to ignore the benefits of co-locating generation and storage locally–a set up that becomes much less financially viable if a customer adds storage but is still connected to the grid.

Yes, there are problems with the current compensation model for NEM customers, but we also need to recognize our commitments to customers who made investments believing they were doing the right thing. We need to acknowledge the savings that they created for all of us and the push they gave to lower technology costs. We need to recognize the full set of values that these customers provide and how the current electric market structure is too broken to properly compensate what we want customers to do next–to add more storage. Yet, the real first step is to start at the source of the problem–out of control utility costs that ratepayers are forced to bear entirely.

AB1139 would undermine California’s efforts on climate change

2 Replies

Assembly Bill 1139 is offered as a supposed solution to unaffordable electricity rates for Californians. Unfortunately, the bill would undermine the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by crippling several key initiatives that rely on wider deployment of rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources.

  • It will make complying with the Title 24 building code requiring solar panel on new houses prohibitively expensive. The new code pushes new houses to net zero electricity usage. AB 1139 would create a conflict with existing state laws and regulations.
  • The state’s initiative to increase housing and improve affordability will be dealt a blow if new homeowners have to pay for panels that won’t save them money.
  • It will make transportation electrification and the Governor’s executive order aiming for 100% new EVs by 2035 much more expensive because it will make it much less economic to use EVs for grid charging and will reduce the amount of direct solar panel charging.
  • Rooftop solar was installed as a long-term resource based on a contractual commitment by the utilities to maintain pricing terms for at least the life of the panels. Undermining that investment will undermine the incentive for consumers to participate in any state-directed conservation program to reduce energy or water use.

If the State Legislature wants to reduce ratepayer costs by revising contractual agreements, the more direct solution is to direct renegotiation of RPS PPAs. For PG&E, these contracts represent more than $1 billion a year in excess costs, which dwarfs any of the actual, if any, subsidies to NEM customers. The fact is that solar rooftops displaced the very expensive renewables that the IOUs signed, and probably led to a cancellation of auctions around 2015 that would have just further encumbered us.

The bill would force net energy metered (NEM) customers to pay twice for their power, once for the solar panels and again for the poor portfolio management decisions by the utilities. The utilities claim that $3 billion is being transferred from customers without solar to NEM customers. In SDG&E’s service territory, the claim is that the subsidy costs other ratepayers $230 per year, which translates to $1,438 per year for each NEM customer. But based on an average usage of 500 kWh per month, that implies each NEM customer is receiving a subsidy of $0.24/kWh compared to an average rate of $0.27 per kWh. In simple terms, SDG&E is claiming that rooftop solar saves almost nothing in avoided energy purchases and system investment. This contrasts with the presumption that energy efficiency improvements save utilities in avoided energy purchases and system investments. The math only works if one agrees with the utilities’ premise that they are entitled to sell power to serve an entire customer’s demand–in other words, solar rooftops shouldn’t exist.

Finally, this initiative would squash a key motivator that has driven enthusiasm in the public for growing environmental awareness. The message from the state would be that we can only rely on corporate America to solve our climate problems and that we can no longer take individual responsibility. That may be the biggest threat to achieving our climate management goals.

What is driving California’s high electricity prices?

5 Replies

This report by Next10 and the University of California Energy Institute was prepared for the CPUC’s en banc hearing February 24. The report compares average electricity rates against other states, and against an estimate of “marginal costs”. (The latter estimate is too low but appears to rely mostly on the E3 Avoided Cost Calculator.) It shows those rates to be multiples of the marginal costs. (PG&E’s General Rate Case workpapers calculates that its rates are about double the marginal costs estimated in that proceeding.) The study attempts to list the reasons why the authors think these rates are too high, but it misses the real drivers on these rate increases. It also uses an incorrect method for calculating the market value of acquisitions and deferred investments, using the current market value instead of the value at the time that the decisions were made.

We can explore the reasons why PG&E’s rates are so high, much of which is applicable to the other two utilities as well. Starting with generation costs, PG&E’s portfolio mismanagement is not explained away with a simple assertion that the utility bought when prices were higher. In fact, PG&E failed in several ways.

First, PG&E knew about the risk of customer exit as early as 2010 as revealed during the PCIA rulemaking hearings in 2018. PG&E continued to procure as though it would be serving its entire service area instead of planning for the rise of CCAs. Further PG&E also was told as early as 2010 (in my GRC testimony) that it was consistently forecasting too high, but it didn’t bother to correct thee error. Instead, service area load is basically at the save level that it was a decade ago.

Second, PG&E could have procured in stages rather than in two large rounds of request for offers (RFOs) which it finished by 2013. By 2011 PG&E should have realized that solar costs were dropping quickly (if they had read the CEC Cost of Generation Report that I managed) and that it should have rolled out the RFOs in a manner to take advantage of that improvement. Further, they could have signed PPAs for the minimum period under state law of 10 years rather than the industry standard 30 years. PG&E was managing its portfolio in the standard practice manner which was foolish in the face of what was occurring.

Third, PG&E failed to offer part of its portfolio for sale to CCAs as they departed until 2018. Instead, PG&E could have unloaded its expensive portfolio in stages starting in 2010. The ease of the recent RPS sales illustrates that PG&E’s claims about creditworthiness and other problems had no foundation.

I calculated the what the cost of PG&E’s mismanagement has been here. While SCE and SDG&E have not faced the same degree of exit by CCAs, the same basic problems exist in their portfolios.

Another factor for PG&E is the fact that ratepayers have paid twice for Diablo Canyon. I explain here how PG&E fully recovered its initial investment costs by 1998, but as part of restructuring got to roll most of its costs back into rates. Fortunately these units retire by 2025 and rates will go down substantially as a result.

In distribution costs, both PG&E and SCE requested over $2 billion for “new growth” in each of its GRCs since 2009, despite my testimony showing that growth was not going to materialize, and did not materialize. If the growth was arising from the addition of new developments, the developers and new customers should have been paying for those additions through the line extension rules that assign that cost responsibility. The utilities’ distribution planning process is opaque. When asked for the workpapers underlying the planning process, both PG&E and SCE responded that the entirety were contained in the Word tables in each of their testimonies. The growth projections had not been reconciled with the system load forecasts until this latest GRC, so the totals of the individual planning units exceeded the projected total system growth (which was too high as well when compared to both other internal growth projections and realized growth). The result is a gross overinvestment in distribution infrastructure with substantial overcapacity in many places.

For transmission, the true incremental cost has not been fully reported which means that other cost-effective solutions, including smaller and closer renewables, have been ignored. Transmission rates have more than doubled over the last decade as a result.

The Next10 report does not appear to reflect the full value of public purpose program spending on energy efficiency, in large part because it uses a short-run estimate of marginal costs. The report similarly underestimates the value of behind-the-meter solar rooftops as well. The correct method for both is to use the market value of deferred resources–generation, transmission and distribution–when those resources were added. So for example, a solar rooftop installed in 2013 was displacing utility scale renewables that cost more than $100 per megawatt-hour. These should not be compared to the current market value of less than $60 per megawatt-hour because that investment was not made on a speculative basis–it was a contract based on embedded utility costs.

Victory for mobilehome park residents and owners

1 Reply

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.

 

Utilities’ returns are too high (Part 2)

2 Replies

IOU ROE premiums

My previous post, Part 1, showed how California’s utilities’ share prices have risen well above the average across utilities despite claims that investors are risk averse to the California utilities. That valuation premium reflects an excessively high authorized return on equity (ROE) from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

The utilities’ market values can then be linked to the utilities’ book values and authorized returns on equity to calculate the implied market returns on equity. The authorized income per share is the authorized ROE multiplied by the book value per share. That income is divided by the market share price to arrive at the implied market return on equity for that company. Both Sempra (SRE) and Edison International (EIX) significantly outperform the Dow Jones Utility average and PG&E Corporation (PGC) maintained the same trend until market had significant concerns about the company’s role in the 2017 wildfires.

The figure above tracks the difference or premium value of the authorized ROE over the market valuation of that ROE. A premium value of zero means that the market valuation is on par with the authorized ROE. A higher or positive premium value means that investors see the utility’s equity shares as attractive investments with lower risks than the assessments of the commissions that set the authorized ROEs. In other words, a commission is providing an overly generous incentive to investors if the premium value is positive.  The figure above compares the market implied ROE for the three California holding companies to a market basket of 10 U.S. holding companies that own 17 electric and gas utilities, and do not own significant non-utility subsidiaries. 

At the time of the 2012 cost of capital decision, the authorized ROEs for the California utilities and the basket of U.S. utilities were close to the implied market ROEs. Except for Sempra, which was an outlier as evidenced by its share price growth relative to the other utilities, the authorized ROE was within 100 basis points of the implied market ROE at the end of 2012.  For both Edison International and PG&E Corporation, the authorized ROE and the implied market ROE on December 31, 2012 were exactly on par—10.5% for Edison and 10.4% for PG&E. Only Sempra showed a positive premium of 300 basis points as a result of a rapid increase in market value over 2012.

Over the period from 2012 to late 2017, the implied market ROEprogressed steadily downward–that is, the market value premium increased–for both the California utilities and the other U.S. utilities. Sempra’s premium leveled off in late 2014 and has drifted downward since without any significant corrections. SCE’s diverged upward some from the U.S. utilities mid-2016, but again there are not sharp changes in direction, even with the Thomas Fire in late 2017. PG&E followed the same pattern as SCE until the Wine Country fires in late 2017, and took another sharp turn with the Camp Fire and, understandably, the subsequent voluntary bankruptcy filing.

We can see at the end of September 2017, just after the last Commission decision on cost of capital, the market premium for the 10 utilities had grown to 470 basis points. The premiums for PG&E, Edison and Sempra all lied in a narrow band between 410 basis points for Edison and 470 basis points for PG&E. In other words, 1) California utility investors were receiving overly generous returns on their investments as evidenced in the share prices, and 2) California utility investors have not been demanding a significant discount for perceived increased risk compared to other U.S. utilities, contrary to the assertions by the utilities’ witnesses in this proceeding.

 

Utilities’ returns are too high (Part 1)

5 Replies

IOU share prices

An analysis of equity market activity indicates that investors have not priced a risk discount into California utility shares, and instead, until the recent wildfires, utility investors have placed a premium value on California utility stocks. This premium value indicates that investors have viewed California as either less risky than other states’ utilities or that California has provided a more lucrative return on investment than other states.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) should set the authorized return on equity to shareholders (ROE) to deliver an after-tax net income amount as a percentage of the capital invested by the utility or the “book value.” As Alfred Kahn wrote, “the sharp appreciation in the prices of public utility stocks, to one and half and then two times their book values during this period [the 1960s] reflected also a growing recognition that the companies in question were in fact being permitted to earn considerably more than their cost of capital.” (see footnote 69)

The book value is fairly stable and tends to grow over time as higher cost capital is invested to meet growth and to replace older, lower cost equipment. Investors use this forecasted income to determine their valuation of the company’s common stock in market transactions. Generally the accepted valuation is the net present value of the income stream using a discount rate equal to the expected return on that investment. That expected return represents the market-based return on equity or the implied market return.

Alfred Kahn wrote that a commission should generally target the ROE so that the book and market values of the utility company are roughly comparable. In that way, when the utility adds capital, that capital receives a return that closely matches the return investors expect in the market place. If the regulated ROE is low relative to the market ROE, the company will have difficulty raising sufficient capital from the market for needed investments. If the regulated ROE is high relative to the market ROE, ratepayers will pay too much for capital invested and excess economic resources will be diverted into the utility’s costs. On this premise, we compared each of the utilities’ market valuation and implied market ROE against market baskets of U.S. utilities and the current authorized ROEs.

The figure above shows how the stock price for each of the three California utility holding companies (PG&E Corporation (ticker symbol PCG), Edison International (EIX) and Sempra (SRE)) that own the four large California energy utilities. The figure compares these stock prices to the Dow Jones Utility index average from June 1998 to July 2019 starting from a common base index value of 100 on January 1, 2000. The chart also includes (a) important Commission decisions and state laws that have been enacted and are identified by several of the utility witnesses as increasing the legal and regulatory risk environment in the state, and (b) catastrophic events at particular utilities that could affect how investors perceive the risk and management of that utility.

Table 1 summarizes the annual average growth in share prices for the Dow Jones Utility average and the three holding companies up to the 2012 cost of capital decision, the 2017 cost of capital modification decision, and to July 2019. Also of particular note, the chart includes the Commission’s decision on incorporating a risk-based framework into each utility’s General Rate Case process in D.14-12-025. The significance of this decision is that the utility’s consideration of safety risk was directed to be “baked in” to future requests for new capital investment. The updated risk framework also has the impact of making new these new investments more secure from an investment perspective, since there is closer financial monitoring and tracking.

As you can see in both Table 1 and in the figure, the Dow Jones Utility average annual growth was 5.5% through July 13, 2017 and 5.8% through July 18, 2019, California utility prices exceeded this average in all but one case, with Edison’s shares rising 9.4% per annum through the first date and 8.4% through this July, and Sempra growing 15.2% to the first date and even more at 15.3% to the latest. Even PG&E grew at almost twice the index rate at 10.4% in 2017, and then took an expected sharp decline with its bankruptcy.

Table 1

Cumulative Average Growth from January 2000 12/12/2012 7/13/2017 7/18/2019
Dow Jones Utilities 3.9% 5.5% 5.8%
Edison International 7.2% 9.4% 8.4%
PG&E Corp. 8.6% 10.4% 2.4%
Sempra 15.8% 15.2% 15.3%

The chart and table support three important findings:

  • California utility shares have significantly outpaced industry average returns since January 2000 and since March 2009;
  • California share prices only decreased significantly after the wildfire events that have been tied to specific market-perceived negligence on the part of the electric utilities in 2017 and 2018; and
  • Other events and state policy actions do not appear to have a measurable sustained impact on utilities’ valuations.

In Part 2, I show how utilities’ premiums on their authorized ROE have grown over the last decade.

Exit fee market benchmarks threaten CCAs abilities to meet long term obligations

3 Replies

Capacity Net Revenue Adequacy 2001-2018CCAs may have to choose between complying with the long-term commitments specified in Senate Bill 350 and continuing to operate because they cannot acquire resources at the specified market price benchmarks that value the entire utility portfolio according to the CPUC.

The chart above compares the revenue shortfalls that need to be made up from other capacity sales products to finance resource additions. The CAISO has reported for every year since 2001 that its short-run market clearing prices that were adopted as the market price benchmark in the PCIA have been insufficient to support new conventional generation investment. The chart above shows the results of the CAISO Annual Report on Market Issues and Performance compiled from 2012 to 2018, separated by north (NP15 RRQ) and south (SP15 RRQ) revenue requirements for new resources. (The historic data shows that CAISO revenues have never been sufficient to finance a resource addition.) The CAISO signs capacity procurement (CPM) agreements to meet near-term reliability shortfalls which is one revenue source for a limited number of generators. The other short run price is the resource adequacy credits transacted by load serving entities (LSE) such as the utilities and CCAs. This revenue source is available to a broader set of resources. However, neither of revenues come close to closing the cost shortfall for new capacity.

The CPUC and the CAISO have deliberately suppressed these market prices to avoid the price spikes and reliability problems that occurred during the 2000-2001 energy crisis. By explicit state policy, these market prices are not to be used for assessing resource acquisition benchmarks. Yet, the CPUC adopted in its PCIA OIR decision (D.18-10-019) exactly this stance by asserting that the CCAs must be able to acquire new resources at less than these prices to beat the benchmarks used to calculate the PCIA. The CPUC used the CAISO energy prices plus the average RA prices as the base for the market value benchmark that represents the CCA threshold.

In a functioning market, the relevant market prices should indicate the relative supply-demand balance–if supply is short then prices should rise sufficiently to cover the cost of new entrants. Based on the relative price balance in the chart, no new capacity resources should be needed for some time.

Yet the CPUC recently issued a decision (D.19-04-040) that ordered procurement of 2,000 MW of capacity for resource adequacy. And now the CPUC proposes to up that target to 4,000 MW by 2021. All of this runs counter to the price signals that CPUC claims represent the “market value” of the assets held by the utilities.

If the CCAs purchase resources that cost more than the PCIA benchmarks then they will be losing money for their ratepayers (note that CCAs have no shareholders). Most often long-term power purchase agreements (PPA) have prices above the short-term prices because those short-term prices do not cover all of the values transacted in the market place. (More on that in the near future.) The CPUC should either align its market value benchmarks with its resource acquisition directives or acknowledge that their directives are incorrect.

CCAs add renewables while utilities stand pat

3 Replies

1542383922472

California’s community choice aggegrators (CCAs) are on track to meet their state-mandated renewable portfolio standard obligations. PG&E, SCE and SDG&E have not signed significant new renewable power capacity since 2015, while CCAs have been building new projects. To achieve zero carbon electricity by 2050 will require aggressive plans to procure new renewables soon.