A website to let people in the state compare rates from electric providers is now live, the California Public Utilities Commission announced this week.
The California Electric Rate Comparison website, accessible at https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/RatesComparison, offers consumers a side-by-side comparison of current electric rates from investor-owned utilities and community choice aggregators.
Investor-owned utilities are large electric distributors that issue stock owned by shareholders, like PG&E and Southern California Edison.
Community choice aggregation, on the other hand, allows local governments to procure power on behalf of residents, businesses, and others from an alternative supplier of energy.
Aggregation allows communities to negotiate better rates with competitive suppliers and choose greener power sources.
The Electric Rate Comparison Website is currently in phase one, an interim step that will lead to the complete website launch in early 2023, according to the CPUC.
Residential consumers can enter their ZIP code or their county/city to access a “Joint Rate Mailer” that the utility and community choice aggregators have prepared with rates and other information.
8 comments
Link opened up but website wouldn’t work. Searched by zip code and aggregator. Hit search, nothing happened. Good enough for government work.
The user interface could use a little work. I too thought it was not working but realized I needed to scroll the screen to see the results. The search box is yellow and the results are provided below the search box with a white background which matches the white of the main page.
The results also don’t show the rates but instead link to PDF files. As MCE and PC&E are the only providers available for me I was given a PDF that compares MCE vs. PG&E. However, it does not seem to take into account a bunch of regulatory fees/taxes that PG&E includes. It also does not take into account that there are several electric rate schedules such as time of use, medical, etc.
The numbers also don’t match what’s on my most recent PG&E bill. According to the June 30, 2022 bill I pay $0.10700 per kwh for generation by MCE per rate schedule E-1. The rate comparison thing says I should be paying $0.12154 if I was PG&E, $0.10378 for MCE light green, and $0.11378 for MCE deep green.
A little more digging on https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/rates/ finds that the rate comparison thing is showing MCE’s E-TOUA – Residential Time-of-Use which has been “CLOSED to new customers as of 1.1.2020.” MCE’s published rate schedule matches what I’m billed meaning the rate comparison thing is wrong.
Sorry, but I’m not a fan of being automatically “opted in” to anything. Which is what was done with these “aggregates”.
BTW, Who sets the monthly Tier 1 kilowatt allotment????
TOTALLY INEQUITABLE.
Right? The tier should also be based on the amount of people in the house, not just a house.
I find it quite hard to take anything from the CPUC seriously. They have proven themselves multiple times to be just a another inept, feckless and corrupt California bureaucracy.
T-Rex
Also whether you are retired or not
A lot of this stuff is social engineering which we have way too much of these days be it from the guvmint or big business. Leads to us saluting them with our middle finger.
Government is corrupt anyway you slice it. Why can we not see this and vote in individuals who do what they say and not do a 360 turn about when they are elected. Do your darn homework before you vote and stop being led by the nose and believe what the leftist media puts out there. Check your wallets while you are at it. Better off today then 2 years ago?
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