Public Utilities Commission: direct transaction proceedings.

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 specified costs and procedures. 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 federal Flood Control Act of 1962 provides that specified amounts of electricity generated by the Central Valley Project power system are to be made available to Tuolumne County and Calaveras County on a first-preference basis. This bill would require the commission, in a proceeding relating to direct transactions, to consider the federal restrictions on a preference power electricity provider, as defined, to engage in direct transactions.