Electricity: distributed generation.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical 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 requires the commission to require each electrical corporation under the operational control of the Independent System Operator as of January 1, 2001, to modify tariffs so that all customers that install new distributed energy resources, as defined, in accordance with specified criteria are served under rates, rules, and requirements identical to those of a customer within the same rate schedule that does not use distributed energy resources, and to withdraw any provisions in otherwise applicable tariffs that activate other tariffs, rates, or rules if a customer uses distributed energy resources. Existing law provides, notwithstanding these requirements, that a customer that installs new distributed energy resources not be exempted from (1) reasonable interconnection charges, (2) charges imposed pursuant to the Reliable Electric Service Investment Act, and (3) charges imposed to repay the Department of Water Resources for electricity procurement expenses incurred in response to the electricity crisis of 2000–01. Existing law requires the commission, in establishing the rates applicable to customers that install new distributed energy resources, to create a firewall that segregates distribution cost recovery so that any net costs, taking into account the actual costs and benefits of distributed energy resources, proportional to each customer class, as determined by the commission, resulting from the tariff modifications granted to members of each customer class may be recovered only from that class. This bill would make legislative findings and declarations as to clean onsite electricity generation and nonbypassable charges. The bill would, to the extent authorized by federal law, require the commission, by July 1, 2015, to establish a pilot program to do both of the following for those electrical corporation customers that have operational clean distributed energy resources, as defined: (1) require each electrical corporation to collect all applicable nonbypassable charges fixed or imposed by the commission based only on the actual metered consumption of electricity delivered to the customer through the electrical corporation's transmission or distribution system, and (2) calculate a reservation capacity for standby service, if applicable, based on the capacity needed by an electrical corporation to serve a customer's electrical demand during an outage of the clean distributed energy resource providing electric service for that customer. The bill would require the commission to suspend the eligibility of additional customers to participate in the pilot program when 500 megawatts of nameplate generating capacity from clean distributed energy resources has become operational statewide pursuant to the pilot program. The bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to report to the Legislature on the impact of the pilot program upon specified matter by July 1, 2020, or when 450 megawatts of nameplate generating capacity from clean distributed energy resources has become operational pursuant to the pilot program, whichever comes sooner. Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime. Because the provisions of this bill would be a part of the act and because a violation of an order or decision of the commission implementing its requirements would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program by creating a new crime. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.