FIVE-CITY ENERGY PROGRAM ROLLOUT EXTENDED
Customer base of about 770,000 accounts is expected
San Diego's expansive community choice aggregation, or CCA, energy program that will consist of customers in five cities in the region still expects to launch next year, but the timeline for the vast majority of customers has been extended two months, to January 2022.
San Diego Community Power — comprising the cities of San Diego, Chula Vista, La Mesa, Encinitas and Imperial Beach — is expected to have a customer base of about 770,000 accounts, making it the second-largest CCA in the state.
Due to its size, organizers say they plan to roll out the CCA in three phases:
• March 2021, by activating about 1,000 municipal accounts
• June 2021, folding in about 70,000 commercial and industrial accounts, and
• January 2022, integrating close to 700,000 residential customers accounts in the system.
Originally, organizers had planned to phase in all customers by November 2021.
“Our customer base is pretty large and we want to do it incrementally and make sure it goes smooth in each phase so we can do the phase without any hiccups,” said Cody Hooven, interim executive officer for San Diego Community Power, known as SDCP for short. “It's best practice to do it this way and that's what we're following.”
Under the CCA model, local governments assume one important role that has long
still closed and an everchanging release calendar.
Universal Studios announced Tuesday that the latest entry in the “Jurassic Park” series, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” is being pushed back a year until June 2022.
Business has been so shaky that on Monday Cineworld Group Plc said it would temporarily close its 536 Regal cinema locations in the U.S. and 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse venues in the U.K. on Thursday. And last week leading groups representing movie theaters, movie studios and directors issued a dire plea to Congress for financial help for cinemas. They said nearly 70 percent of small and midsize theaters could face bankruptcy or closure without assistance.
AMC CEO Adam Aron said in a statement that the company's agreement with Universal Pictures to shorten the theatrical window, “puts AMC in a position where we can open our theatres when others may feel the need to close.”
AMC, Aron said, will share in home video on demand revenues with Universal.
But even with new releases on the calendar for the remainder of the year, including high-profile independent and awards contenders like “Nomadland ” and Regina King 's “One Night in Miami,” studios have made it clear that they are skittish about releasing their most expensive properties in such a muted North American box office landscape.
Warner Bros. helped provide an early test case with Christopher Nolan's “Tenet.” The film has grossed over $307 million globally, but only $45 million of that has come from North America, which is the world's biggest box office market.
And although there are new films every weekend, back catalog films are regularly claiming spots in the
top 10. Just this weekend the 27-year-old “Hocus Pocus” claimed the No. 2 spot and the 40-year-old Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back” landed at No. 6.
Since “Tenet,” many studios have pushed at least one big film out of 2020, including “Black Widow,” “No Time to Die” and “West Side Story.” Other films vacated earlier, like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “F9.” And some studios have experimented by pivoting to video-on-demand releases, like Disney did with its live-action “Mulan.”
The shifting calendar has a domino effect on future releases too. When Warner Bros. moved “Dune” to Oct. 1, 2021, it took “The Batman” release date, pushing that film to March 2022.