If you live in an unincorporated part of Mendocino County, or in the cities of Fort Bragg, Willits or Point Arena, you should have received a letter from Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) in June, letting you know they’re taking over for PG&E as the region’s electricity supplier. PG&E will continue to maintain the wires and manage the grid, but thanks to California Assembly Bill 117 back in 2002, local governments can choose to purchase electricity on behalf of their communities.
If you compare rates, you’ll see that SCP’s electricity is slightly less expensive than PG&E’s for both their standard electricity and their extra environmentally friendly option, and that more of SCP’s standard electricity comes from renewable sources.
PG&E offers a standard program and a program called Solar Choice, which produces 100 percent of its electricity via solar energy. The standard option costs $0.24138/kWh, while the Solar Choice program costs $0.26748/kWh.
SCP’s standard offering is called CleanStart, and it costs $0.23925. Its extra environmentally friendly program is called EverGreen, and it produces 100 percent of its electricity from geothermal power. EverGreen costs $0.26425/kWh. For the average customer, the premium for EverGreen is 2.5 cents more per kWh, or about $13 more per month than the standard CleanStart. option
With SCP you will save $0.00213 per kWh or about $1.10 per month on a $120.00 bill. If you opt for SCP’s EverGreen over PG&E’s Solar Choice, you’ll save almost $2.00 per month on a $130.00 bill.
Like most people, I’m happy to pay less for electricity, but I was not happy about the fact that I received a letter from SCP in June—the same month the change to SCP occurred (the change-over happened on customers’ June meter-read date). To stay with PG&E, I would have had to opt out of the SCP service. Otherwise, along with everyone else in the region, I was automatically moved over. If you want to go back to PG&E, you needed to do so within 30 days of your switch over or pay a fee.
SCP touts its strengths as providing cleaner energy, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and offering more local control (with public meetings for rate setting and customer program design, among others). SCP is a not-for-profit public agency “independently run by the participating cities of Cloverdale, Cotati, Fort Bragg, Petaluma, Point Arena, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Willits, Windsor, and the counties of Sonoma and Mendocino,” serving Sonoma County customers since May 2014. The fact that it is a not-for-profit organization means it reinvests revenues into the company rather than paying shareholders in an effort “to keep rates stable, build reserves, and to fund local customer programs,” according to company literature.
Because PG&E is still delivering the electricity via its poles and wires, our bills will continue to be from PG&E. Apparently, PG&E will then pay SCP their share of the money. If you have questions about SCP, you can check out their website at sonomoacleanpower.org or call them at (855) 202-2139.
I think this is probably a net gain: cheaper energy from more renewable resources. As long as that remains the case, we may all be in good shape.
However, here’s a thought to consider: how much do PG&E and their stock holders pay in taxes, be they federal income taxes, state income taxes, or local property taxes? As a not-or-profit, SCP pays fewer, if any, taxes. Is SCP actually cheaper or is it just transferring costs from your utility bill to your tax bill? If a government agency sees reduced revenue in one area, do you really think the agency won’t collect the revenue from you somewhere else?
If you have questions about real estate or property management, please contact me at rselzer@selzerrealty.com or visit www.realtyworldselzer.com. If I use your suggestion in a column, I’ll send you a $5.00 gift card to Schat’s Bakery. If you’d like to read previous articles, visit my blog at www.richardselzer.com. Dick Selzer is a real estate broker who has been in the business for more than 40 years.