Price of Public Energy Shoots Up, Still Undercuts SDG&E

This post has been updated.

On Thursday, San Diego’s public power company – San Diego Community Power – will pass big rate hikes on the price of the energy they buy and sell for their almost 1 million customers. 

The cost per kilowatt hour (how energy use is measured) will rise between 9.5 and 14.3 percent, depending upon the power plan the customer uses, if San Diego Community Power’s governing board approves the staff recommendation. Still, the company’s leaders say that price undercuts what San Diego Gas and Electric offers their 250,000 or so customers still buying power from the investor-owned utility. 

“We’re able to provide the largest discount that we’ve ever provided,” said Karin Burns, San Diego Community Power’s CEO. San Diego Community Power started selling energy in 2021. 

San Diego cities that want to use 100 percent renewable energy formed San Diego Community Power and its North County counterpart, Clean Energy Alliance, a few years ago. By participating, those cities pulled their customers away from SDG&E just on the power purchasing or “generation” side, if one is looking at their bill. SDG&E gets most of its electricity by burning natural gas. These public power companies’ goal is to put customer money toward buying and building more green energy than SDG&E offers and bring prices down.

So far they’ve been successful, especially as energy prices at SDG&E continue to climb. 

San Diego Community Power’s “PowerOn” customers, which 96 percent of its customers purchase, will see a 14.3 percent increase in the cost of their power. That’s still 4 percent cheaper than the energy price at SDG&E, Burns said. That energy is 53 percent renewable as opposed to SDG&E’s 41 percent.

PowerBase customers, which only 0.5 percent of their customers use, would see a 9.5 percent rate hike. But Burns said that’s still a full 10 percent cheaper than SDG&E. A customer could save up to $9 a month by switching from PowerOn to PowerBase, said Jen Lebron, a spokesperson for San Diego Community Power. But the energy is less green.

“When it comes to affordability, this is something that we are going to be pushing out more, particularly in high-need communities, and our low income customers to really target them so that they can be aware that PowerBase is available to them,” Lebron said. 

San Diego Community Power’s governing board will vote on the proposed rate increases at its Thursday meeting. 

Clarification: This post has been updated to clarify that San Diego Community Power’s governing board needs to vote on the proposed rates.

The post Price of Public Energy Shoots Up, Still Undercuts SDG&E appeared first on Voice of San Diego.