Households, businesses, and schools would have had at least $174.5 million more in their collective pockets over the past decade if South San Joaquin Irrigation District had been the retail power provider in Manteca, Ripon, and Escalon instead of PG&E.
That figure, according to SSJID General Manager Peter Reitkerk, was from an exhaustive analysis based on PG&E rates in 2015.
“We will need to update that figure,” Reitkerk said while updating Manteca Rotary last week on SSJID’s 20-year effort to exercise state law allowing irrigation districts to use eminent domain to acquire retail power systems. “PG&E has had a lot of rate increases since them.”
Just since 2020, PG&E’s residential rates have increased 54 percent.
That prompted the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisor last month to start exploring ways to provide an option to PG&E elsewhere in the county.
The supervisors at the same time are supporting SSJID’s bid to acquire the PG&E system in Manteca, Ripon, and Escalon.
Given SSJID is a public agency and is non-profit, there is an 11.25 percent savings off the top. That is the minimum profit the California Public Utilities Commission guarantees PG&E and over for-profit electrical providers to earn.
The are two hurdles yet to forge.
The first to a “right to take” trial scheduled before a judge in 2025.
If the judge agrees SSJID meets the state’s constitutional parameters for irrigation districts to use eminent domain for the public good, the last hurdle will then by a court proceeding to establish the price for acquiring the local retail system.
Once the district clears the right to take hurdle, the SSJID can start hiring to ramp up its retail power service.
The district also must contend with a Hail Mary at the CPUC that PG&E is attempting to slowdown the process.
The action they want the CPUC to take is 180 degrees different than their effort to stop the City of San Francisco from doing the same thing SSJID is seeking to do which is obtain the local retail distribution system.
The 955 miles of power lines, 40,000 meters and three substations serving 130,000 people within SSJID’s 133 square mile service territory represents less than 1 percent of PG&E’s overall customer base.
SSJID will initially have a minimum savings of 15 percent over PG&E.
But as the years unfold after SSJID assumes ownership of the retail system, electricity savings will start to approach the point they are anywhere from a third to a half lower than the for-profit utility.
At the same time, data shows PG&E is the most unreliable electrical provider in California in terms of non-planned power outages which excludes shut offs in high risk wildfire areas during severe dry winds.
PG&E experiences 176 minutes of power outages in a typical year compared to 30 minutes for Modesto Irrigation District.
In fact, all of the public agencies that provide more than a third of the state’s 482 cities with electricity have less minutes of power outages than the for-profit power providers with the exception of San Diego Gas & Electric.
What PG&E is doing to stop SSJID is almost a replay of their efforts in courts for almost a quarter of a century to stop SMUD.
Today SMUD’s average rates are 35 percent lower than what PG&E charges. Only a handful of utilities have lower rates than SMUD in California — Roseville Electric and Turlock Irrigation District. That difference is slight.
The gap between SMUD and other local, publicly owned utilities compared to PG&E continues to grow as PG&E’s annual rate increases are significantly higher.
Based on a CPUC analysis between 2002 and 2019 PG&E rates rose an average of 37 percent compared to the 19 percent the consumer price index rate rose. The data available for average local utilities for the 10-year period between 2008 and 2017 shows a 3.33 percent increase.
While 20-year data was not available for all local utilities, based on SMUD only the increase in rates was less than 10 percent for the corresponding 20-year period or roughly a quarter of PG&E’s
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
