Electric service: direct transactions.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations and gas corporations, as defined. Existing law authorizes the commission to fix the rates and charges for every public utility, and requires that those rates and charges be just and reasonable. Existing law, relative to electrical restructuring, requires the commission to authorize and facilitate direct transactions between electricity suppliers and retail end-use customers. Existing law, enacted during the energy crisis of 2000–01, authorized the Department of Water Resources, until January 1, 2003, to enter into contracts for the purchase of electricity, and to sell electricity to retail end-use customers at not more than the department's acquisition costs and to recover those costs through the issuance of bonds to be repaid by ratepayers. That law suspended the right of retail end-use customers, other than community choice aggregators and a qualifying direct transaction customer, as defined, to acquire service through a direct transaction until the Department of Water Resources no longer supplies electricity under that law. Existing law continues the suspension of direct transactions except as expressly authorized, until the Legislature, by statute, repeals the suspension or otherwise authorizes direct transactions. Existing law requires the commission to authorize direct transactions for nonresidential end-use customers subject to a reopening schedule adopted and implemented by July 1, 2010, that will phase in over a period of not less than 3 years and not more than 5 years, and subject to an annual maximum allowable total kilowatthour limit established for each electrical corporation. The annual maximum allowable total kilowatthour limit is required to be established for each electrical corporation at the maximum total kilowatthours supplied by all other providers to distribution customers of that electrical corporation during any sequential 12-month period between April 1, 1998, and October 11, 2009. This bill would modify the annual maximum allowable total kilowatthour limit for each electrical corporation to include the total kilowatthours of new load previously authorized and implemented by the commission pursuant to a specified statute. The bill would require the commission to adopt a specified schedule to phase in the allowable amount of increased kilowatthours by July 1, 2012, instead of July 1, 2010. The bill would change an existing requirement that the commission review and modify its currently effective rules governing direct transactions to instead authorize the commission to perform such review and modification.