Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations, while local publicly owned electric utilities are under the direction of their governing boards. 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.

This bill, the California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act, would require the commission, on or before July 1, 2027, to establish a rate structure that includes an electrical corporation tariff for the interconnection of the participating customer facilities and the provision of transmission, distribution, and generation services to participating customers, as specified. The bill would require the commission, as part of establishing the electrical corporation tariff, to, at a minimum, establish eligibility criteria for participating customer, evaluate the risks and benefits of the electrical corporation tariff to nonparticipating customers, ensure that the electrical corporation tariff prevents the creation of stranded costs for, or cost shifts to, nonparticipating customers, and, for unbundled customers, ensure that charges generally included in the generation component of their bills are assessed separately from charges generally included in the transmission and distribution components of their bills. The bill would require that the electrical corporation tariff require a participating customer that submits an application for interconnection of a facility to an electrical corporation to disclose whether an application for the same facility has been submitted in other electrical corporation service territories or other jurisdictions and to disclose each instance in which an application for the same facility has been submitted. The bill would also require that the electrical corporation tariff, among other things, assign cost responsibility for all transmission facility upgrades triggered by a new facility interconnection to the applicable participating customer and require an early termination fee to be assessed against a participating customer under specified circumstances. The bill would require a participating customer to prefund a contract of at least 15 years in duration through the electrical corporation, community choice aggregator, or electric service provider for the installation of new, incremental, zero-carbon energy resources, and to participate in a new demand response program authorized by the commission, as provided. The bill would also require each electrical corporation to publish and update maps showing locations where participating customers can interconnect without the need for significant, costly, and time-consuming transmission upgrades.

This bill would encourage each local publicly owned electric utility to develop a tariff that is similar to the electrical corporation tariff described above and ensures, among other things, that costs are not shifted from a customer that is not subject to that tariff to a customer that is subject to that tariff, and that the costs of investments in infrastructure made by a customer that is subject to that tariff are not recoverable from other customers that are not subject to that tariff.

Under existing law, a violation of any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a 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.