Southern California Edison Customer Rates to Decrease
Rosemead, CA: An average Southern California Edison residential customer’s bill would decrease about 6 percent by the end of March as a result of several actions by the California Public Utilities Commission , including a vote on Thursday for funding SCE’s day-to-day operations.
The commission’s decision authorized recovery of costs reviewed in SCE’s General Rate Case , which includes inspecting, repairing and replacing infrastructure that will make it easier to restore power after an emergency outage in the future. It also funds the people SCE employs, such as the workers who climb the poles to restore electric service in storms and answer customer service calls.
“Southern California Edison is working hard to keep rates reasonable for our customers while also making the necessary infrastructure improvements for the 21st century power network, and we were able to do that while requesting a rate decrease for our customers,” SCE President Pedro Pizarro said.
Every three years, the commission reviews a request from SCE for the next three-year spending cycle.
As of late November, an average residential customer’s bill will decrease about 2 percent as a result of the commission approval on Oct. 22 of the 2015 costs for energy sources SCE needs to supply electricity. These expenses are passed through to customers at cost; there is no markup or profit. SCE generates about 20 percent of its own power and buys the rest through contracts and short-term markets. These costs are approved annually.
The November bill decrease also includes settlement refunds from the 2000-2001 California energy crisis.
SCE expects the commission to approve its anticipated 2016 costs for energy sources in the first quarter of the year. If the commission approves SCE’s request, an average residential customer’s bill would decrease 4 percent. Part of that decrease will be implementation of a settlement with Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited for the San Onofre outages caused by the failures of replacement steam generators. Ninety-five percent of the net insurance proceeds will benefit customers — SCE’s share of the settlement is $312.8 million.
The General Rate Case makes up more than 40 percent of rates for the nearly 14 million people SCE serves. About half of customer rates comes from the cost of energy sources for power. The remaining portion comes from a variety of other factors, such as large transmission projects regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and programs for energy efficiency and to protect low-income customers.
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About Southern California Edison : An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 5 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.
