The California Solar & Storage Association (CALSSA) submitted a formal complaint on August 28 to the California Public Utilities Commission regarding customer service that is far below established standards at the state’s largest two utilities. The complaint asks for a fine of $10 million against Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.
Customers seeking to install solar panels and batteries must request utility approval to install the equipment. Utilities review interconnection applications and make sure transformers and other parts of the electric grid are big enough to handle any energy the customers send to the utilities. The state mandates that utilities perform various steps in that review process within specified timelines.
PG&E and SCE routinely ignore those timelines and cause extensive delays for solar installations, CALSSA says. This raises costs for consumers as they balance financing and construction costs and cannot reduce their energy purchases from the utilities until they get utility permission to use their equipment.
“There are clear rules on how long the utilities can take for their review, but there has been zero enforcement of those rules,” said Kevin Luo, policy and market development manager for CALSSA. “PG&E and SCE get away with suppressing what they consider to be their competition.”
The California Public Utilities Commission established a standard in 2020 that utilities meet the established timelines for 95% of projects and ordered the utilities to submit quarterly reports on their performance. Those reports show that three steps of the review process have compliance rates as low as 27 to 45%, and timelines for three other steps are met only 53 to 81% of the time. Those rates have not improved over the years since the 2020 order.
“It is clear that if PG&E and SCE are not held accountable, they will continue to flagrantly ignore requirements that are intended to make them provide reasonable customer service,” added Luo.
CALSSA expects an administrative law judge at the state commission to review the complaint in the coming months and determine whether fines are warranted.
News item from the California Solar & Storage Association
