The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, operating as BC Hydro, is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia. It is the main electricity distributor, serving more than 4 million customers in most areas, with the exception of the City of New Westminster, where the city runs its own electrical department and portions of the West Kootenay, Okanagan, the Boundary Country and Similkameen regions, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis Inc. directly provides electric service to 213,000 customers and supplies municipally owned utilities in the same area. As a provincial Crown corporation, BC Hydro reports to the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, and is regulated by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC). Its mandate is to generate, purchase, distribute and sell electricity.
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered at 300 Lakeside Drive, in Oakland, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 million households in the northern two-thirds of California, from Bakersfield and northern Santa Barbara County, almost to the Oregon and Nevada state lines.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is a public agency of the City and County of San Francisco that provides water, wastewater, and electric power services to the city and an additional 1.9 million customers within three San Francisco Bay Area counties.
Southern California Edison, the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles. However, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Imperial Irrigation District, and some smaller municipal utilities serve substantial portions of the southern California territory. The northern part of the state is generally served by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company of San Francisco. Other investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in California include SDG&E, PacifiCorp, Bear Valley Electric, and Liberty Utilities.
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Since the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon has been the only operational nuclear plant and largest single power station in California. It was the subject of controversy and protests during its construction, with nearly two thousand civil disobedience arrests in a two-week period in 1981.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), also known as Green tags, Renewable Energy Credits, Renewable Electricity Certificates, or Tradable Renewable Certificates (TRCs), are tradable, non-tangible energy certificates in the United States that represent proof that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated from an eligible renewable energy resource and was fed into the shared system of power lines which transport energy. Solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs) are RECs that are specifically generated by solar energy.
The California Public Utilities Commission is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition, the CPUC regulates common carriers, including household goods movers, passenger transportation companies such as limousine services, and rail crossing safety. The CPUC has headquarters in the Civic Center district of San Francisco, and field offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
Silicon Valley Power (SVP) is a not-for-profit municipal electric utility owned and operated by the City of Santa Clara, California, USA. SVP provides electricity service to approximately 55,116 residential and business customers, including large corporations such as Intel, Applied Materials, Owens Corning and NVIDIA. SVP also owns and maintains a dark fiber network named SVP Fiber Enterprise.
A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal, which have been adopted in 38 of 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The United States federal RPS is called the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Several states have clean energy standards, which also allow for resources that do not produce emissions, such as large hydropower and nuclear power.
Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), also known as Community Choice Energy, municipal aggregation, governmental aggregation, electricity aggregation, and community aggregation, is an alternative to the investor owned utility energy supply system in which local entities in the United States aggregate the buying power of individual customers within a defined jurisdiction in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts. The CCA chooses the power generation source on behalf of the consumers.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2021, utility-scale solar power generated 115 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 2.8% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 164 TWh.
California Proposition 7, would have required California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025. In order to make that goal, levels of production of solar, wind and other renewable energy resources would more than quadruple from their current output of 10.9%. It would also require California utilities to increase their purchase of electricity generated from renewable resources by 2% annually to meet Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requirements of 40% in 2020 and 50% in 2025. Current law AB32 requires an RPS of 20% by 2010.
Solar power has been growing rapidly in the U.S. state of California because of high insolation, community support, declining solar costs, and a renewable portfolio standard which requires that 33% of California's electricity come from renewable resources by 2020, and 60% by 2030. Much of this is expected to come from solar power via photovoltaic facilities or concentrated solar power facilities.
New Jersey has over 4,100 MW of install solar power capacity as of mid-2022, which provides 6.7% of the state's electricity consumption. The's state's growth of solar power is aided by a renewable portfolio standard that requires that 22.5% of New Jersey's electricity come from renewable resources by 2021, and by one of the most favorable net metering standards in the country, allowing customers of any size array to use net metering, although generation may not exceed annual demand. As of 2018, New Jersey has the sixth-largest installed solar capacity of all U.S. states and the largest installed solar capacity of the Northeastern States.
A community solar project, farm or garden is a solar power installation that accepts capital from and provides output credit and tax benefits to multiple customers, including individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other investors. Participants typically invest in or subscribe to a certain kW capacity or kWh generation of remote, electrical production. The project's power output is credited to investors or subscribers in proportion to their investment, with adjustments to reflect ongoing changes in capacity, technology, costs and electricity rates. Community solar provides direct access to the renewable energy to customers who cannot install it themselves. Companies, cooperatives, governments or non-profits operate the systems.
Energy in California is a major area of the economy of California. California is the state with the largest population and the largest economy in the United States. It is second in energy consumption after Texas. As of 2018, per capita consumption was the fourth-lowest in the United States partially because of the mild climate and energy efficiency programs.
London Nicole Breed is an American politician who is the 45th and current mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. She was supervisor for District 5 and was president of the Board of Supervisors from 2015 to 2018.
A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Other common names for the same concept include Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) at the United States federal level and Renewables Obligation in the UK.
Net metering in Michigan was a state program that allowed utility customers to develop renewable energy generation projects on-site at their home or business to meet their own energy needs and reduce their electric bill. As of the end of 2015, Michigan had approximately 2,000 net metering customers. The net metering program was replaced with a inflow/outflow program which charges retail rate for grid energy used and pays for excess sent to the grid at a cost-avoided rate. This cost-avoided rate is much lower than the retail rate and each utility must have their price approved by the state utility board in their rate case.
California produces more renewable energy than any other state in the United States except Texas. In 2018, California ranked first in the nation as a producer of electricity from solar, geothermal, and biomass resources and fourth in the nation in conventional hydroelectric power generation. As of 2017, over half of the electricity (52.7%) produced was from renewable sources.
