As like many of you, I’ve received a number of notifications from the Clean Power Alliance and due to my sheer lack of time, desire, interest, energy, procrastination and/or (fill in the blank), have waited until now to actually investigate what this means.

So let me impart my newfound wisdom to you.

Clean Power Alliance (CPA) of Southern California was established in 2017 to provide cost competitive “clean” electricity to residents in certain parts of Los Angeles County and several other cities. It quickly grew to 31 communities, including our local Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Camarillo, Moorpark, Ojai, Oxnard, Simi Valley, Ventura and unincorporated Ventura County.

What CPA does is purchase renewable, clean energy, while Southern California Edison (SCE) will continue to deliver it and bill for it.

Each member city that opted in to this program established a default rate option for residents to acquire electricity from CPA via SCE. This is just a default rate. You can change it (see below). The CPA website describes these rates at cleanpoweralliance.org/rate-options/residential-rates:

• Lean Power - costs 1-2% less than SCE’s default rate (Lean Power provides 36% renewable energy content at the lowest possible cost)

• Clean Power - comparable to SCE’s default rate (0-1% savings) (Clean Power provides 50% renewable energy content)

• 100% Green Power - at most, 7-9% premium to SCE’s default rate (as the name indicates, this is 100% renewable energy content)

CPA further noted that SCE has proposed a double digit increase to 2019 rates to make up for a budget shortfall. If these increases are approved, they will likely take effect in March/April 2019 and CPA rates will also change accordingly.

Your Default CPA Power Product

Here are the “default” power products from CPA that local agencies in the Conejo Valley and Greater Ventura County areas have selected:

• Lean Power (36%) - Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Camarillo, Simi Valley

• Clean Power (50%) - Malibu, Moorpark

• 100% Green Power - Ojai, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Unincorporated Ventura County

You can verify your own rate default option at cleanpoweralliance.org/rate-options.

Changing Your Default or Opting Out

As mentioned above, you are not required to stick with the default option. You can switch to a different option at any time. Do so as follows:

• Go to cleanpoweralliance.org/rate-options and log in, using your 10 digit SCE customer number (remove the dashes), last name and zip code.

• There you will see your account status and the other rate options. You may opt down, or up, as it were, to one of the other options, based on your current default.

You may opt out if you’d like, but be aware of the fine print: If you opt out, you will be charged a one-time account processing fee by SCE and will be prevented by SCE from returning to CPA for a minimum of 12 months.

The City of Thousand Oaks provides additional information about CPA at THIS LINK. One other item of note on that page for solar users is “Although applications for onsite solar will still need to go through SCE for interconnection to the grid, CPA will pay customers at a higher rate than SCE for any excess solar energy generated.” Sounds pretty good to me.

More Info:

Clean Power Alliance: cleanpoweralliance.org

So Cal Edison: www.sce.com