By Jason Fordney
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A key California State Assembly committee on Wednesday advanced a Senate bill requiring publicly owned utilities in the Los Angeles Basin to support deployment of distributed energy resources and energy storage.
The Committee on Appropriations approved SB 801, which now goes to the full Assembly for a vote.
The legislation was drawn up by State Sen. Henry Stern (D) in response to the 2015 leak that resulted in the closure of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. Many area residents are trying to get the facility closed permanently, but owner Southern California Gas recently resumed gas withdrawals after a court battle. (See Aliso Canyon Resumes Injections.)
Stern noted that investor-owned utilities Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric deployed energy storage quickly after the blowout, which threatened to compromise fuel deliveries to the region’s gas-fired generators.
“However, publicly owned utilities in the area have not yet adopted the same aggressive approach to clean energy storage and other safe reliability solutions in response to Aliso Canyon,” Stern said.
If passed, the measure would require the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), which serves 250,000 customers, to make data available that would help DER providers identify solutions to increase reliability in the region. It also requires LADWP to maximize use of demand response, renewables and energy efficiency in the area where reliability has been impacted by the Aliso Canyon outage.
The bill would allow LADWP to offset any ratepayer expenses with fines or fees levied over the leak against SoCalGas and its parent company Sempra Energy.
It would also require LADWP to study deployment of 100 MW of energy storage and oblige SCE to deploy 20MW of storage by June 1, 2018.
Stern has called the reopening of Aliso Canyon “premature and unnecessary.” California Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller has said the facility should be closed permanently.
The committee also suspended until Friday a vote on SB 100, which mandates that the state’s utilities procure 100% of their electricity from zero-carbon resources by 2045. The Senate in May approved the legislation introduced by Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León, a Los Angeles Democrat. (See California Senate Passes Bill Mandating 100% RPS.)