17. Publicly-Owned Electric Utilities - Separate Program

This decision does not adopt any feed-in tariff program requirements for publicly owned electric utilities.

SB 32 added § 387.6 to the Pub. Util. Code. Section 387.6 requires, generally, that a local publicly owned electric utility offer a tariff to owners or operators of electric generation facilities within its service territory. Parties provided comments on this issue and on the issue of whether certain issues set forth in SB 32 and SB 2 1X may benefit from coordination with local publicly owned electric utilities, such as, the calculation of proportionate share of the 750 MW program cap.

In response, the California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) states that the Commission has no jurisdiction over publicly owned electric utilities. CMUA further states that the Commission has no jurisdiction to calculate proportionate share of the 750 MW cap for publicly owned electric utilities and that § 387.6(e) makes clear that the Commission has no authority to determine that share. CMUA further states that no coordination is needed between the program adopted by the Commission for IOUs and the program adopted by municipalities for publicly owned electric utilities but acknowledges that feed-in tariff programs implemented by IOUs may provide informative examples for the governing boards of publicly owned electric utilities. Other parties provided no further comments.

We agree with the CMUA that based on § 387.6, the Commission has no authority to design or implement a feed-in tariff program for publicly owned electric utilities. We further agree that SB 32 increased the total § 399.20 FiT Program cap to 750 MW and allocates a portion of this 750 MW to publicly owned electric utilities. We direct PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E to work cooperatively with publicly owned utilities as needed to share information that will assist them in developing a feed-in tariff program consistent with § 387.6. As discussed above, we assert jurisdiction over IOUs and the allocation methodology relied upon to determine their share of program capacity.