Hearings, Bill Target Utilities

Energy customers will have a chance to vent their anger at three public hearings today, just 24 hours after the state Senate approved a bill that would provide immediate rate relief from electricity bills that skyrocketed over the summer.

“Our main objective is to find out what happened, why it happened and how to avoid it happening in the future,” Armando Rendon, a spokesman for the California Public Utilities Commission, said of the hearings, scheduled in the wake of soaring bills for customers of San Diego Gas & Electric.

The hearings, part of a series expected to run through September, are set for 10 a.m. to noon, 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 14AB, 111 W. Harbor Drive, San Diego. Organized by the PUC at the governor’s request, the hearings are designed to investigate the functioning of the wholesale electricity market and the associated effect on retail rates, especially as it has affected SDG&E;’s 1.2 million customers, including about 100,000 in south Orange County.

“Some action will probably come out of it,” Rendon said, “though it is too early to speculate on what that action may be.”

The state Senate, meanwhile, took some action of its own Tuesday, voting 30-0 for AB265, a measure that would set a cap of 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour on SDG&E; charges, holding the average monthly bill for residential customers to $68 through 2002. The measure, authored by Assemblywoman Susan A. Davis of San Diego and Sen. Dede Alpert of Coronado, both Democrats, is expected to be heard by the state Assembly today and could become law by the end of the week. Under its provisions, any costs over the 6.5-cent cap would be covered by revenue from other sources, including various power-generating facilities owned by the company and revenue-producing agreements with customers and other utilities.

“The whole point of this is to say that it isn’t right that consumers are suffering while we’re trying to fix a dysfunctional system,” Alpert said on Tuesday. The summer’s high electricity bills “caught everyone by surprise. It’s just amazing, and it affects literally everyone. AB265 is hugely important to stop the hemorrhaging in San Diego and southern Orange County while we work to fix the system.”

Doug Kline, a spokesman for SDG&E;, described the measure as a “bill deferral plan” that would add $40 to the average residential bill by 2003. “It’s just deferring bills until a later date,” he said. “It definitely has some flaws, and it doesn’t address the root problem: that wholesale costs are too high and the power supply too thin in the state. This plan does not appear to be financially manageable.”

* JOLT OF REALITY

California’s big electricity users have gotten cheap rates for years. Now’s the shock. A1