Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon
The topic of this show is the new electricity provider in San Jose, California --I hesitate to call them the “utility” as they are technically a electricity provider. The organization is called San Jose Clean Energy. They launched their cleaner and cheaper electricity service this February.
Here’s the background. The utility industry is going through a massive transformation. There is cheaper power from wind and solar and if your business or a homeowner you can easily get your electricity from your roof or parking structure for much less than anything that is provided by the utilities. That is a dilemma for the utility industry. And now, you can also add backup power by adding battery storage which not only provides power during a blackout, which for our customers is becoming more prevalent, but it also allows you to time shift your energy use. The utility companies charge a lot more for electricity during the afternoon and evening than during the day when solar is providing plenty to the grid, so if you put a battery storage system in you can charge when rates are low and utilize the power stored in the batteries. So instead of spending $0.45 per kwh on our electricity in the afternoon and evening you get basically $0.07 per kwh for electricity from your battery. With the recent bankruptcy of PG&E (one of the largest utilities in the U.S.) while it’s not clear how their bankruptcy is going to work out, the on thing that is clear is that the utility industry will not be the same as it was over the last hundred years. The era of centralized generation, public utilities, selling power with wires, building generation plants and selling power to customers is changing.
One of these changes is called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) electricity providers and that is what San Jose Clean Energy is. They basically buy the electricity (mostly solar and wind) and supply it to you through the existing utility lines. And rather than owned by investors, CCA’s are managed and owned by local governments.
To learn more about CCAs and how they are beginning to prominent in communities across the US, and how they benefit local consumers, listen up to this week’s Energy Show.
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