3 Million Energy Users to Get Rebates

One-third of the residential customers of California’s three biggest private utilities conserved enough electricity in June to qualify for Gov. Gray Davis’ summer rebate program, and so will get back an average of $11 as a reward.

The governor called the results, announced Thursday, “a stunning success.”

“When Californians put their minds to something, no goal is unattainable,” Davis said.

In all, nearly 3 million business and residential customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric will split $60 million in rebates.

To qualify for a 20% rebate of their monthly bill, PG&E; and Edison customers had to use 20% less electricity in June than they did in the same month last year. San Diegans qualified with a lower threshold, 15%, because their monthly bills spiked in the summer of 2000 and many residents had already begun dimming lights and turning off air conditioners to save money.

The governor created his 20/20 energy rebate program in March to help prevent blackouts and shrink the state’s power-buying costs. The rebates are available each month from June through September.

In a sense, utility customers reward themselves through the program. The rebates will be paid for using money the utilities have collected from customers, whose June bills were adjusted to include the largest electricity rate hikes ever passed by the Public Utilities Commission.

But the $60 million spent rewarding conservation in June is still cheaper than what the state would have paid to buy the same amount of electricity, said S. David Freeman, who left the helm of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in April to become a senior energy advisor to Davis.

And the money will go to Californians, not to power plant owners and electricity marketing companies headquartered out of state, Freeman said.

“This is simply some data to let people know they are doing an awful lot of good for themselves and for the state as a whole,” Freeman said.

In Edison’s territory, 28% of customers, residential and business, qualified for rebates in June. Nearly the same proportion of PG&E; customers, 27%, will get rebates. And 39% of SDG&E;’s 1.2 million residential and business customers qualified, according to figures given to the Davis administration by the utilities.

The utilities say they administer the rebates by knocking 20% off the amount due in the bill for the month in which consumers qualify. Consumers save money through the rebate and simply by paying for fewer kilowatt-hours. The governor’s advisors estimate that those who qualify for rebates save an overall 30% or more on their electricity costs.

The $60-million cost of the June rebates amounts to what California has spent lately on a couple of days’ worth of power, said Freeman. On Wednesday, he said, the state spent $25 million buying electricity for the customers of PG&E;, Edison and SDG&E--a; drastic decline since January, when power cost the state as much as $100 million a day. Conservation has helped reduce those costs by shrinking the amount of electricity the state must buy at market prices, Freeman said.

Mild weather also has helped hold demand below what was anticipated for the summer.

So far, $9 billion of taxpayer money has been spent buying electricity. Davis and others have promised to repay the state budget, however, through the sale of $12.5 billion in bonds this fall. The bonds, in turn, are supposed to be paid for over the next 15 years through a portion of utility customers’ monthly bills.