Speaker 1: (00:00)
After years of preparation, San Diego's community choice energy program is about to start enrolling hundreds of thousands of customers. The rollout begins this month with residential customers in Imperial beach when LA Mesa and Sonita and the cities of Chula Vista and San Diego get on board by the end of may, more than 7,000 residents will be getting power purchased by San Diego community power, rather than by SD G and E energy delivery. And monthly bills won't change much, but supporters say the amount of clean and renewable energy powering San Diego will increase significantly. Joining me is San Diego union Tribune, a energy reporter, Rob Eski and Rob
Speaker 2: (00:43)
Welcome. It's gonna be back Maureen.
Speaker 1: (00:46)
So in a nutshell, what's the difference between the community choice energy program and San Diego gas and electric in the way power is purchased?
Speaker 2: (00:55)
Well, as far as the way, power is purchased, San Diego community power will purchase more green energy than San Diego gas and electric does right now. Right now, when you take a look at the renewable portfolio of SDG E it's about 31%. When San Diego community power takes over the default rate program for residential customers will be about 50% renewable energy. So it's a little bit more renewable energy, some 19% more
Speaker 1: (01:28)
SDG and E's profits go to shareholders, where do San Diego community power profits go?
Speaker 2: (01:34)
Well, first of all, if SDG and E profits go to Sempra, which is the, uh, holding company of San Diego gas and electr, but, uh, a community choice energy program like San Diego, community power, any profits they get after they're done paying their employees, et cetera, they use that excess revenue. They take that and they invest it in renewable energy projects around the area. They end up buying and purchasing solar power and solar farms, wind farms, energy storage, battery, storage programs, things like that.
Speaker 1: (02:11)
So does this change over mean that SDG and E is outta the picture?
Speaker 2: (02:15)
No, not at all. Probably the best way to look at it is when you think about a utility company, a traditional utility like San Diego, gas and electric, they do do all sorts of things. They do transmission, they do distribution of the electricity. They've got trucks driving around, you see them on the, on the highway, they're fixing power lines. They're doing all these sorts of things under a community choice program. The community choice energy program just does one responsibility. It's a big respons, but these are just one thing. And that is purchase the power, the power contracts, the various sources of power that are gonna be used inside that power mix within that community. But all the other responsibilities that I've mentioned that is still the responsibility of a traditional electric utility like San Diego, gas and electric.
Speaker 1: (03:04)
Now residents in Imperial beach are first in this particular rollout. How will customers be informed?
Speaker 2: (03:11)
They'll get notified altogether. They'll get four notifications two before and two after their words, just to let them know what's going on. And so they'll be notified starting about 60 days before the transition is made, and then they get updated
Speaker 1: (03:28)
And are our monthly bills gonna look different
Speaker 2: (03:31)
Only slightly. You will still, if you're in these five cities that you mentioned that are joining SDP, if you're in those five cities, you will still only get one bill and it will come from SDG and E. But within that SD G E bill, when you look at the details of the bill, it'll mention one specific thing, it'll say power generation. And that is what the power generation that SD C P rather than SDG and E is getting for you.
Speaker 1: (04:02)
What about customers who have rooftop solar, what's gonna change for them.
Speaker 2: (04:07)
They will transition over to San Diego community power. So if you're a NEM customer, net energy metering customer, that program that you are under, under SD E will transfer over and you'll now be a San Diego community power customer. And the only difference there is going to be that you'll get a slightly better deal when it comes to the excess energy that you sell back to the grid. If you are a solar customer, you'll get a little bit better deal under, uh, San Diego community power than you get with SDG and E. What
Speaker 1: (04:43)
About regular energy customers? Will they see their bills go down?
Speaker 2: (04:47)
They'll go down slightly only be it'll you'll save your residential customer. You'll save about 1% now four or five years ago when San Diego community power was first sold to the, uh, city council of, of San Diego to approve this, they were estimating about a four or 5% discount, but things have gotten, have changed on the energy landscape and the energy contracts have gotten a little bit more expensive in the last few years. So they, they say that through. That's the big reason why instead of a four, 5% discount on your rate, you're only gonna get a 1% discount.
Speaker 1: (05:26)
And what happens if a customer doesn't like this change? Do do we have any option to stay with SDG and E
Speaker 2: (05:34)
You can, you can stay with SDG E they can do that for free, but the, uh, responsibility is on the customer to contact San Diego community power and say, I want to opt out, but if you want to opt out, you can do so. And you can do it for free. If after 60 days you wanna opt out, you can, but you have to pay a nominal fee. It's about a dollar and 25, and you can get transferred back over to SD G and E.
Speaker 1: (06:00)
So if people do nothing, they're just automatically going to be transferred over to SD C P program.
Speaker 2: (06:06)
That's exactly it. It's an interesting dynamic in the sense that you're going to be transferred over. That's the default position here. And I've asked during the time I've been covering this story, you know, what was the rationale behind that back in 2000, when the say when these community power programs were first, uh, devised here in California, the thinking was that if the elected representatives of your community decides to go to community power, energy program, that therefore that responsibility then shifts over to the San Diego community power. And so therefore they're the ones who get the customers rather than the incumbent utility, if that makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 1: (06:53)
So if there's a power outage, who's responsible for fixing
Speaker 2: (06:58)
That that's still SDG and E's responsibility. The best way to look at this is that all transmission and distribution questions that is SD E and the billing questions, everything except the power generation is done everything, except that is still done by SD E. So SD E still can do these quote public safety, power shutoffs, and they're still responsible for bringing, bringing the lights back up when those shutoffs are done. So that is all responsibility of SDG E. This
Speaker 1: (07:31)
Is a rather complicated change. Actually, there are a number of options for people who decide they wanna go to SD ECP, or they don't wanna go number of cleaner energy options that they might wanna choose. So if listeners wanna find out more about the program, is there a website?
Speaker 2: (07:49)
Yes, Maureen, you can contact SD community, power.org and get more information. And on that website on one of the pages of the website, there's a very good explanation that breaks down what your Bill's going to look like and what that all means. So that might be helpful for people to take a look at.
Speaker 1: (08:06)
I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, energy reporter, Rob Eski, Rob. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: (08:13)
Thank you, Maureen.
Speaker 3: (08:19)
I.
