BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2165
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 2165 (Hill)
As Amended August 24, 2012
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |52-18|(May 10, 2012) |SENATE: |27-9 |(August 28, |
| | | | | |2012) |
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Original Committee Reference: U. & C.
SUMMARY : Expands the cap on Net Energy Metering (NEM) for
eligible fuel cell generators and makes revisions to the
definition of eligible fuel cell generators. Specifically, this
bill :
1)Eliminates the existing numeric utility-territory and
statewide megawatt (MW) caps and instead requires all
investor-owned utilities (IOUs), regardless of size, to offer
the fuel cell NEM tariff to customers until the IOU has
interconnected fuel cells with generation equal to 1% of the
IOU's aggregate customer peak demand.
2)Eliminates the existing January 1, 2014, sunset and allows the
California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to expand the cap
beyond 1% at any time it deems appropriate.
3)Specifies that fuel cell NEM generators shall be responsible
for interconnection costs.
The Senate amendments specify a numeric instead of a percentage
cap and remove the language that would allow the PUC to raise
the cap. The numeric cap is now 45 MW and the Senate amendments
raise it to 500 MW, proportionally distributed among electrical
corporations. Senate amendments also amend the sunset date of
January 1, 2014, to January 1, 2015 and add double jointing
amendments with SB 594 (Wolk).
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY, this bill was substantially similar
to the version passed by the Senate.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, one-time costs of approximately $135,000 from the
Public Utilities Reimbursement Account (special fund), beginning
AB 2165
Page 2
in 2013-14, for the PUC to authorize a utility to charge a fee
for providing interconnection inspection services.
COMMENTS : The Fuel Cell NEM statute requires that these
customers be responsible for all other charges except
generation. As such, this type of NEM does not require a
subsidy from non-NEM ratepayers.
The current method of calculating the cap using the "aggregate
customer peak demand for an electrical service company
territory" is to total the aggregate capacity of individual NEM
generation and divide it by the utility peak demand, to arrive
at the percentage of aggregate peak demand. The California
Energy Commission - Alternating Current (CEC-AC) rating is a
publicly available value that is generally accepted by industry
of how much generation is actually interconnected to the grid
after the performance of the inverter is considered. The
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Form 1 filing is
also a publicly available value that is generally accepted by
industry.
Separate from NEM, each on-site generation facility that is
connected to the utility distribution system must be inspected
by utility to ensure that proper disconnection equipment is
accessible to utility personnel that may need to work on power
lines that may be energized by the on-site generation facility.
The requirement is established via PUC Rule 21. The cost for
these inspections is currently embedded in the rates paid by
other customers
Analysis Prepared by : DaVina Flemings / U. & C. / (916)
319-2083
FN: 0005779