{"id":156828,"date":"2026-01-30T18:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/156828\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T18:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:29:09","slug":"the-clean-energy-alliance-rolls-out-a-rate-relief-program-for-its-customers-in-north-county-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/156828\/","title":{"rendered":"The Clean Energy Alliance rolls out a rate relief program for its customers in North County \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

The board of the Clean Energy Alliance<\/a>, the community choice energy program serving seven municipalities in North County, voted 7-0 on Thursday to adopt a $10.6 million rate relief credit for its customers.<\/p>\n

The move comes in the wake of a sharp increase in state-mandated exit fees that the Clean Energy Alliance will pay San Diego Gas & Electric in 2026. The credit goes into effect on Feb. 1 and runs through the rest of this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a very challenging time\u201d for customers, said board member Mar\u00eda Nu\u00f1ez, who\u2019s also on the San Marcos City Council<\/a>. \u201cI continue to receive a lot of concern from residents and how difficult it is for them to try to pay their necessities, their high rent and their utilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clean Energy Alliance is one of 25 community choice aggregation, or CCA, entities that have sprung up across California in recent years that purchase power for their respective municipalities.<\/p>\n

The California Public Utilities Commission requires CCA customers to pay a fee each month<\/a> to the traditional utility in their respective areas \u2014 in the Clean Energy Alliance\u2019s case it\u2019s SDG&E. The exit fee is formally called the \u201cpower charge indifference adjustment,\u201d or PCIA.<\/p>\n

The PCIA is assessed to offset the costs the incumbent utility has spent over the years on things such as building power plants and developing renewable energy projects. The fee is charged on a per kilowatt-hour basis, and customers can see the amount they pay by looking at their monthly bill, under the listing \u201cPCIA.\u201d<\/p>\n

SDG&E has increased the Clean Energy Alliance\u2019s PCIA rate by 4.8 cents per kilowatt-hour this year, across all of its rate classes.<\/p>\n

To help soften the blow, the rate relief credit approved by the board Thursday will reduce the per-kilowatt rate for residential customers enrolled in the alliance\u2019s Clean Impact program<\/a> by 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.<\/p>\n

CEA\u2019s lowest priced offering, Clean Impact pledges to have a power portfolio comprised of 50% renewable energy sources. SDG&E\u2019s renewable mix is 41.4%.<\/p>\n

The credit works out to a savings of $13.07 per month, compared to what Clean Impact customers would have paid had the measure not been put in place.<\/p>\n

The credit, however, does not apply to customers in CEA\u2019s two other higher-priced offerings \u2014 Clean Impact Plus<\/a>, which pencils out to 50% renewable and 75% carbon-free power, and Green Impact<\/a> that boasts 100% renewable energy content.<\/p>\n

Clean Impact Plus is the agency\u2019s default program and the overwhelming majority of CEA customers are enrolled in it.<\/p>\n

If customers want to opt down to Clean Impact, they can do so by going to the CEA website at thecleanenergyalliance.org\/clean-impact\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as easy as a couple of clicks, or they can call our customer service center,\u201d said Greg Wade, CEA\u2019s chief executive officer<\/a>. Customer service can be reached from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays at (833) 232-3110.<\/p>\n

A slide presentation at Thursday\u2019s meeting broke down the credit\u2019s financial impacts.<\/p>\n

By CEA\u2019s reckoning, customers who get all of their services from SDG&E \u2014 called \u201cbundled customers\u201d in utility parlance \u2014 and consume an average of 361 kilowatt-hours per month pay $174.25 this year.<\/p>\n

With the rate relief credit, Clean Impact customers in Oceanside and Vista will save $2.80 per month compared to SDG&E\u2019s bundled customers and those in Escondido and San Marcos will pay $2.16 less.\u00a0 Customers in Solana Beach will save 10 cents, while those in Carlsbad and Del Mar will pay the same as SDGE\u2019s bundled customers.<\/p>\n

While the price differentials are small, Wade pointed to the fact that Clean Impact\u2019s 50% renewable standard is almost 9 percentage points higher than SDG&E\u2019s. \u201cI think that\u2019s our messaging,\u201d he said. \u201cA 50% renewable product, and we\u2019re moving in the direction of cleaner energy ,and we have other programs customers can take advantage of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Establishing the credit, CEA staff projected, will not crimp the agency\u2019s bottom line or hinder its creditworthiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to develop a rate relief program that addresses the most vulnerable members of our service territory, while also maintaining a strong financial position,\u201d said CEA board chair Katie Melendez, who\u2019s also on the Vista City Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The board also approved a 6.9% rate reduction for CEA\u2019s 261 agricultural customers, regardless of whether they are enrolled in the Clean Impact, Clean Impact Plus or Green Impact programs.<\/p>\n

The Clean Energy Alliance serves more than 255,000 customer accounts in Carlsbad, Del Mar, Escondido, Oceanside, San Marcos, Solana Beach and Vista.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The board of the Clean Energy Alliance, the community choice energy program serving seven municipalities in North County,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,7,6774,181,3054,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-156828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-north-county","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-county","15":"tag-san-diego-headlines","16":"tag-san-diego-news","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}