CHARGE • Usage estimated 10% to 20% higher due to shutdown

than twice as many SDG&E customers on tiered rates experiencing the higher charge in July.

Under the proposal passed Thursday, SDG&E, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric will each reduce their highusage charge.

In SDG&E’S case, the charge will be 43.3 cents per kilowatt-hour this summer, instead of 60.7 cents per kwh.

With the current high-usage charge, SDG&E estimates a customer on a tiered rate using 1,500 kwh of energy in one month receives an average bill of about $600. With the reduced charge, the customer would see about a 6 to 8 percent decrease, amounting to about $40 to $50.

The reduction will remain in effect through the end of October and can be extended, should California keep COVID-19 restrictions in place.

The administrative law judge at the commission who wrote the proposed decision, Patrick Doherty, said the move makes sense because the high-usage charge “is not designed to penalize residential customers with higher electricity bills when those customers have no choice but to stay at home and use electricity more than they usually do.”

The reduction, however, will affect more customers at

PG&E and Edison than SDG&E.

That’s because most SDG&E customers are on a time-of-use rate program, not tiered rates, and highusage charges do not apply to time-of-use plans.

At the commission’s behest, power companies have been transitioning customers from tiered rates to timeof-use — a structure in which customers pay higher rates when demand on the grid is greater, such as between 4 and 9 p.m.

The switch was supposed to begin for all three utilities last year but the rollouts for PG&E and Edison were delayed because of technical glitches. As a result, SDG&E’S transition is further along than PG&E’S and Edison’s.

Only about 30 percent of SDG&E’S residential customers remain on the tiered rate system.

The high-usage charge produced a torrent of complaints during the blazing summer of 2018. With temperatures soaring and air conditioning use peaking, some SDG&E customers said their monthly bills rose by about 50 percent. The charge hit customers in hotter inland areas particularly hard.

SDG&E officials have lobbied the public utilities commission to get rid of the high-usage charge. But the commission turned down the request, saying the charge was put into place as a “signal” to residential customers using a lot of electricity “that they should reduce their usage.”

SDG&E spokeswoman Jessica Packard said the company believes the highusage charge “is an unfair penalty to certain customers” based on where they live.

“We recently renewed our request, recognizing that many of our customers are facing financial challenges due to the pandemic,” Packard said. “And, while we appreciate that the CPUC reduced the (charge), we think they should have gone further and eliminated it altogether.”

rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com