Community Choice in the News

Central Coast energy agencies offer incentives to electrify home and heating systems

Santa Maria Sun

Recent extreme natural gas prices had a huge impact on Central Coast residents, with SoCalGas’ rates tripling from $1.05 per therm in December 2022 to $3.45 in January 2023.

Three energy agencies are offering opportunities to switch to cleaner, more sustainable sources for heating. The Tri-County Regional Energy Network (3C-REN), Central Coast Community Energy, and TECH Clean California are offering incentives (which can be combined) for people to upgrade their natural gas furnace or water heaters to all-electric heat pumps, 3C-REN Program Manager April Price said.

Central Coast Community Energy offers a program called Electrify Your Home that brings costs down by $3,500, and TECH customers can access its Clean California heat pump water heater incentives that bring the cost down by $3,100.

Sonoma CCA Approves Agreements to Develop New Geothermal Technologies

California Energy Markets

Three separate cooperation agreements relating to the development of the Sonoma Clean Power Geothermal Opportunity Zone that were approved by the community choice aggregator’s board of directors could eventually add as much as 600 MW of geothermal energy to the grid to meet the state’s growing need for power and to satisfy emissions targets.

Agreements are being made with Chevron New Energies, Cyrq Energy and Eavor through which each company would develop its geothermal energy technology as a pilot project with the goal of scaling each to commercial operation.

Although SCP’s GeoZone initiative is targeting between 500 and 600 MW of capacity and the state needs 2,000 MW, CEO Geof Syphers said there is “no shortage of demand” throughout California, including a hearty “appetite” for geothermal from other CCAs. He noted that early geothermal procurement contracts were with Nevada-based facilities, but said the state needs its own geothermal supplies.

Calif. Community Choice Aggregator Taps Green Bond to Lower Costs of Renewable Energy Procurement

American Public Power

California’s community choice aggregator Clean Power Alliance has arranged for the issuance of a municipal non-recourse Clean Energy Project Revenue Bond through the California Community Choice Financing Authority.

The nearly $1 billion bond issuance is expected to reduce CPA’s renewable energy costs by approximately $66.7 million over the initial eight-year period of the bonds, or an average of $8.3 million annually.

Energy prepayment bonds are long-term financial transactions available to municipal agencies like CPA to provide power procurement cost savings.

One of the US’s first solar peaker plants – with Tesla Megapack – just broke ground

Electrek

Solar energy company Arevon Energy and San Diego Community Power have broken ground on the Vikings Energy Farm, one of the first solar peaker plants in the US.

Vikings Energy Farm is a solar + storage power plant in Holtville, California, in Imperial Valley, near the Baja California border. It was first announced in May 2021. It will consist of First Solar thin film Cadmium Telluride PV solar modules and a Tesla Megapack for battery energy storage.

Tesla Megapack stores energy for the grid reliably and safely, eliminating the need for gas peaker plants and helping to avoid outages. Each unit can store over 3 MWh of energy – enough energy to power an average of 3,600 homes for one hour.

Silicon Valley Clean Energy Receives Wind Power Through 15-Year PPA

American Public Power

Silicon Valley Clean Energy began receiving wind generation from the Terra-Gen, LLC Cameron Crest contract at the start of this year, the California community choice aggregator said on Feb. 21.

Under a 15-year power purchase agreement Terra-Gen will provide 77.7 megawatts of electricity generated between three sites in Kern County, Calif. Electricity received through this PPA accounts for nearly 5 percent of SVCE’s annual retail load.

This is the second long-term wind project to come online for SVCE and is complementary to other resources in the agency’s power mix, including solar with battery storage and long-duration storage.

How to run your house on clean electricity, no solar panels required

The Washington Post

Woody Hastings, a program manager with the Climate Center advocacy group, says he started encouraging city officials to consider a CCA in 2016. But it wasn’t until California experienced recent record-breaking wildfire seasons — with utility equipment igniting some blazes — that council member Dan Wright really started to pay attention. “Learning is a process, and it took several discussions, reading what [Hastings] sent me, and going over it to say, ‘Okay this makes sense for us,’” he says.

Wright rallied support, and last year, Stockton voted to join a CCA called East Bay Community Energy. Starting next year, the CCA says, it will increase the supply of renewable electricity to residents, at lower rates. (More than 11 million customers across California now get their power from CCAs.)

Because CCAs are public agencies, “there’s enhanced transparency and accountability” around their decision-making, Hastings says.

From brownfield to green wellspring

Pv Magazine

East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) is a California Bay Area not-for-profit public agency that procures renewable energy to be delivered, via utility Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) lines, as a “community choice energy service.” The group was awarded an EPA National Notable Achievement Award last year for going beyond power procurement and performing a successful pilot demonstration of the revitalization of brownfield sites as EV charging hubs.

In May 2021, East Bay Community Energy was awarded a $300,000 grant by the EPA to develop an inventory of brownfield sites throughout its service area that could be a good fit for redevelopment as fast charging hubs for light, medium, and heavy-duty electric vehicles.

The EPA’s Land Revitalization Program provided East Bay Community Energy with contractor technical assistance to help determine the environmental and economic feasibility of redeveloping brownfield sites along Interstate 880 into EBCE fast charging hubs. The analysis involved the development of a financial pro-forma model that anticipated redevelopment costs and benefits under best-, moderate- and worst-case scenarios.

California aggregator signs 20-year geothermal power PPA with Open Mountain Energy

Think GeoEnergy

California-based Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) Peninsula Clean Energy has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for 6 MW of geothermal power from Open Mountain Energy (OME). The power will come from the Whitegrass No. 2 project being developed by Open Mountain Energy in Lyon County, Nevada.

OME is a subsidiary of Kaishan Group which owns, develops, and operates geothermal energy projects in the U.S. The Whitegrass No. 2 project is expected to start supplying power by mid to late 2023.

The announcement of Peninsula Clean Energy comes amidst the signing of similar agreements with other renewable energy supplies such as a 15-year contract with a hydroelectric project and a 3-year contract with a wind power project. The CCA had also previously signed a 15-year PPA with Ormat Technologies Inc. for 26 MW of clean energy from the Heber 2 geothermal facility.

Home of the future: Climate-friendly, electrified and closer than ever

Canary Media

To begin to understand how to make the home of the future more accessible, we need to look beyond the technology-laden convention halls of CES to places like, say, the home of retired higher-education administrator Cheryl Ajirotutu in the Dimond District neighborhood of Oakland, California.

Through her work at Oakland’s Cypress Mandela Training Center, where she volunteers as a financial literacy educator, Ajirotutu heard about a home-electrification program from East Bay Community Energy, a community energy provider serving Oakland residents, and BlocPower, a New York–based startup that specializes in efficiency and electrification retrofits in underserved communities.

Ajirotutu applied to the program last year, and her home was selected as one of 100 to receive support. The first step was a whole-home energy audit whose purpose was to reveal “what you needed and why you needed it,” she said — an experience that changed her understanding of energy consumption.

Earthquakes? Winter Storm? No Problem for the Redwood Coast Energy Authority Microgrid

Microgrid Knowledge

The microgrid faced one of its first major tests early in the morning Dec. 20, 2022, when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked the region. More than 70,000 customers in Humboldt County lost power.

“It was basically a real-world test of a worst-case scenario,” said Matthew Marshall, executive director of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, the community choice aggregator that owns the microgrid.

Marshall said the quake hit shortly after the batteries discharged to the grid during the evening peak, so they were at their low point of charge.