BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
AB 1935 (Campos) - Electricity: clean distributed energy
resources.
Amended: June 30, 2014 Policy Vote: EU&C 10-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: August 11, 2014 Consultant:
Marie Liu
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: AB 1935 would add clean distributed energy
resources to a study regarding distributed generation impacts
and create a new definition for "clean distributed energy
resources."
Fiscal Impact:
Ongoing costs of $154,000 annually from the Public
Utilities Commission Utilities Reimbursement Account
(special) to the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) for staffing and contract costs associated with the
expanded report.
Initial costs of approximately $450,000 and unknown ongoing
costs from the Cost of Implementation Fund (special) to the
Air Resources Board (ARB) to determine the emission factor
and analyze technologies.
Background: Under �321.7 of the Public Utilities Code, the CPUC,
in consultation with the California Independent System Operator
(CAISO) and the Energy Commission (CEC), is required to
biennially report on the impacts of distributed generation on
the state's transmission and distribution systems. The report is
required to specifically assess the impacts of the California
Solar Initiative (CSI) program, the self-generation incentive
program (SGIP), and the net energy metering (NEM) pilot program.
Proposed Law: This bill would add clean distributed energy
resources to the report on the impact of distributed generation
under PUC �321.7. This bill would define a "clean distributed
energy resource" as any of the following:
1.A clean energy generating technology that has a greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions factor that is less than or equal to an
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emissions factor determined by the ARB that represents the
emissions of the GHG that are displaced by the electricity
generated by that technology and has a NOx emissions rate that
is less than or equal to the rate that the ARB determines
reflects the best performance achieved in practice by existing
electrical generation technologies.
2.An eligible renewable energy resource that has a nameplate
generation capacity of 20 or less megawatts.
3.Demand response that provides reliability benefits to the
system, reduces GHG emissions, and supports the state's goal
of increasing renewable energy resources.
4.An energy storage technology that receives energy from a
source that meets the requirements in #1 or #2.
Related Legislation: AB 578 (Blakeslee) Chapter 627, Statutes of
2008 added �321.7 that required the study on the impacts of
distributed generation.
Staff Comments: The CPUC would incur increased staff workload to
first determine what technologies fit the given definitions and
then to oversee a more complex contract for the study. The
impacts of distributed generation report has been completed
twice, both times through contracts issued by the CPUC. Should
this bill become law, the CPUC would continue to contract out
the study, but the scope and the complexity of the study would
increase thereby causing an increase in contract costs. The CPUC
estimates a total ongoing cost of $154,000 of which $100,000 is
for additional contract costs.
Staff notes that this bill is expanding a report that the CPUC
must complete, but has provided little utility to date. The 2013
report states that utilities do not have the tools to collect
and evaluate data on the operating characteristics, costs, and
benefits of various DG systems. This information would be
necessary to compare, on an equal and consistent basis, DG
technologies with central generation and other conventional
electric resource options, among other applications.
The ARB would also incur costs under this bill to determine the
GHG emissions factor and potentially a NOx emissions rate. The
workload necessary for the development of the factor and rate
would cost approximately $450,000 annually for two years for the
next scheduled report. After that initial effort, ARB's ongoing
workload would depend on the extent to which "clean distributed
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energy resources" have changed and therefore are unknown.