Here comes San Diego Community Power: Five-city community choice energy program launches
The San Diego Union-Tribune
After seven years of discussion and debate, a five-city San Diego community choice energy program that will provide an alternative to San Diego Gas & Electric when it comes to purchasing sources of power has rolled out the first phase of its operations.
San Diego Community Power — consisting of San Diego, Chula Vista, La Mesa, Encinitas and Imperial Beach — began serving municipal accounts across the five cities Monday in places like school districts, fire stations and libraries. By the end of March, about 700 municipal customers are expected to be lined up.
The community choice aggregation, or CCA, program plans to add an additional 72,000 commercial and industrial customers in June and is scheduled to fold in 695,000 residential customers next January.
With about 767,700 total customers, San Diego Community Power, or SDCP for short, will be the second-largest CCA in California.
SDCP interim CEO Bill Carnahan and Chief Operating Officer Cody Hooven said that while rates vary by class, they estimate customers who opt for PowerOn will pay a monthly bill that is about 2 to 3 percent less expensive than SDG&E. If customers choose Power100, the costs will be about the same as SDG&E.
“All our advocates and families have been asking for is choice and competition, so we’re excited to be able to offer that,” Hooven said. “We can do big things here.”
Growing in popularity in California for just over a decade, CCAs now serve more than 11 million customers. With its launch, SDCP becomes the state’s 24th community choice energy program.
Read more here: Here comes San Diego Community Power: Five-city community choice energy program launches – The San Diego Union-Tribune
