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Calif. State Senator Says, If PUC Granted Greater Regulation Of Community Choice Aggregations (CCAs), PUC Would "Kill" CCAs

Senator Chastises PUC President For Saying CCAs Source of Resource Adequacy Problem When Nearly All Of Cited RA Waivers Were For Retail Suppliers, Not CCAs

March 21, 2019

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Copyright 2010-19 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

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During a California State Senate hearing this week, Senator Scott Wiener opposed granting the California PUC greater authority over community choice aggregations (CCAs)

In the questioning of California PUC President Michael Picker during the hearing, Wiener stated, "Frankly, with all respect, Mr. Picker, your comments here today further bolster my belief that I don't want to see the CPUC having a greater role," in the regulation of CCAs

Wiener further said that, "I think the CPUC would pretty quickly move to kill off CCAs. I'm just being super blunt."

In particular, Wiener noted recent testimony before a state assembly committee in which Picker had cited 11 local resource adequacy (RA) waivers granted to CCAs and electric service providers (ESP) as indicative of an RA problem facing the state. See our story on the prior assembly hearing here

However, Wiener said that a public records request to the PUC revealed that CCAs were not the entities granted such waivers

Wiener pressed Picker on how many local RA waivers were granted to CCAs last year.

A PUC staff member, who was appearing with Picker, said that, of the cited 11, "either one or zero," were for CCAs, the rest were for ESPs

"I'll apologize for the way I characterized the problem, but I will not say that there's not a problem," Picker said

Picker reiterated that the PUC continues to consider adoption of a centralized buyer for RA

Wiener said that it appears that the PUC is, "attempting to double down on this hyper-centralized monopoly model that has not worked well for California." Wiener said that such model has shown "hostility" toward CCAs and distributed energy resources

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