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 or modify an electrical corporation tariff for the interconnection of the participating customer facilities and the transmission, distribution, and generation services to participating customers, as specified. The bill would require the commission, as part of establishing or modifying the electrical corporation tariff, to, at a minimum, establish eligibility criteria for large load customers, as defined, and facilities, evaluate the risks and benefits of this tariff to nonparticipating ratepayers, and ensure that the tariff prevents the creation of stranded costs for, or cost shifts, to nonparticipating ratepayers. The bill would require the tariff to require a large load 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 the tariff to, among other things, assign cost responsibility for all transmission facility upgrades triggered by a facility interconnection to the applicable participating customer and to require an early termination fee to be assessed against any participating customer under specified circumstances. The bill would also require each participating customer to install onsite zero-carbon energy storage, as provided, and each electrical corporation to publish and update maps showing locations where large load 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 that costs are not shifted from a customer that is subject to the local publicly owned electric utility’s tariff to a customer that is not subject to that tariff, and that the costs of investments in infrastructure made by a large load customer that is subject to the tariff are not recoverable from other nonparticipating ratepayers.

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