Electrical corporations: resiliency planning: microgrid projects., the official text

An act to amend Section 8370 of, and to add Section 8373 to, the Public Utilities Code, relating to electricity.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations. Existing law requires the PUC, in consultation with the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission and the Independent System Operator, to take specified actions to facilitate the commercialization of microgrids for distribution customers of large electrical corporations, including developing microgrid service standards necessary to meet state and local permitting requirements and developing methods to reduce barriers for microgrid deployment without shifting costs between ratepayers.
This bill would require a large electrical corporation, upon request, to collaborate with local governments, tribal governments, or community choice aggregators within its service area to support resiliency planning, as provided. The bill would require large electrical corporations to provide local governments, tribal governments, and community choice aggregators with access to data, including electrical distribution equipment data, transmission and distribution circuit data, grid hardening plans, and other information as directed by the commission, to support resiliency planning by local governments and tribal governments to ensure local governments, tribal governments, and community choice aggregators are able to plan potential microgrid projects to support critical facilities. The bill would authorize the commission to require large electrical corporations to share this information in aggregated and anonymized form to protect customer privacy and electrical grid security.
Under existing law, a violation of any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the PUC is a crime.
Because the violation of a PUC action implementing the bill’s requirements would be a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The state has an urgent need to accelerate development and procurement of resources that do not emit greenhouse gases when generating electricity to bolster electrical grid reliability and resiliency, and to support economic development and job growth in a manner that aligns with the state’s clean energy objectives.
(b) California is a global leader in solar and battery storage deployment, and these resources are increasingly and urgently needed to boost electrical grid reliability and support the state’s transition to clean energy in a cost-effective manner. However, additional resources are needed to provide a clean, reliable, and resilient electrical grid.
(c) Deenergization of electrical infrastructure should be a last resort strategy for wildfire prevention by electrical corporations. Losing electrical service for an extended period of time results in hardship and losses for an impacted community. An electrical corporation should take all necessary steps to ensure that any electrical outage causes minimal disruption to its customers.
(d) Cities, counties, and special districts affected by deenergization events have essential governmental services shut down during these outages, affecting public health and safety.
(e) Critical facilities and critical infrastructure are vital public resources that serve essential functions. Critical facilities may include law enforcement and emergency response facilities, schools, hospitals, prisons, and major roads, but can also include facilities serving essential needs of a community, including facilities that provide wastewater treatment or health assistance, pharmacies, grocery stores, gas stations, local nonprofit organizations, and emergency shelters. Uninterrupted electrical service to these facilities is essential in order to maintain public health and safety.
(f) Medically vulnerable electricity customers face unique threats to health and safety during electrical outages. The longer an electrical outage lasts, the more dangerous the consequences can become.
(g) An electrical corporation has a responsibility to provide safe and reliable electrical service to its customers and can achieve this through ensuring their infrastructure is modernized and upgraded through hardening and undergrounding portions of its transmission and distribution system, using microgrids, and the accelerated procurement of generating resources that emit no greenhouse gases when generating electricity to bolster grid reliability and resiliency.

SEC. 2.
Section 8370 of the Public Utilities Code is amended to read:
8370.
For purposes of this chapter, all of the following definitions shall apply:
(a) “Access and functional needs population” has the same meaning as defined in Section 8593.3 of the Government Code.
(b) “Critical circuit” means an electrical circuit that supplies electricity to one or more critical facilities or to critical infrastructure, as reported to the commission by each electrical corporation.
(c) “Critical customer” means a customer of an electrical corporation receiving a medical baseline allowance pursuant to Section 739 who resides within a high fire-threat district or vulnerable transmission area, or a customer of a local publicly owned electric utility enrolled in a life support discount program who resides within a high fire-threat district or vulnerable transmission area.
(d) “Critical facilities and critical infrastructure” means facilities and infrastructure that are essential to health and public safety that require assistance and advance planning to ensure their resiliency during a deenergization event, as reported to the commission by the Office of Emergency Services based on consultations with local governments, including, but not limited to, facilities and infrastructure within the United States Department of Homeland Security’s critical infrastructure sectors.
(e) “Customer” means a customer of a local publicly owned electric utility or of a large electrical corporation. A person or entity is a customer of a large electrical corporation if the customer is physically located within the service territory of the large electrical corporation and receives bundled service, distribution service, or transmission service from the large electrical corporation.
(f) “Deenergization event” has the same meaning as defined in Section 8385.
(g) “Distributed energy resource” means an electrical generation or storage technology that complies with the emissions standards adopted by the State Air Resources Board pursuant to the distributed generation certification program requirements of Section 94203 of Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations, or any successor regulation.
(h) “High fire-threat district” means a geographic area identified by the commission as a Tier 2 or Tier 3 fire-threat area, where there is an elevated or extreme risk for fires caused by electrical infrastructure igniting and spreading rapidly.
(i) “Large electrical corporation” means an electrical corporation with more than 100,000 service connections in California.
(j) “Local government” means a city, county, city and county, or special district.
(k) “Microgrid” means an interconnected system of loads and energy resources, including, but not limited to, distributed energy resources, energy storage, demand response tools, or other management, forecasting, and analytical tools, appropriately sized to meet customer needs, within a clearly defined electrical boundary that can act as a single, controllable entity, and can connect to, disconnect from, or run in parallel with, larger portions of the electrical grid, or can be managed and isolated to withstand larger disturbances and maintain electrical supply to connected critical infrastructure.
(l) “Project” means a microgrid project that meets the resiliency needs of a local government, joint powers authority, or special district and may include microgrid projects that meet the resiliency needs for critical facilities and critical infrastructure, critical customers, or customers from an access and functional needs population that can operate disconnected from the distribution system for a predetermined period of time.
(m) “Resiliency” means the ability to mitigate and recover from an electrical service disruption using generation resources that maintain all or essential electrical service to customers, including critical facilities and critical infrastructure. Electrical service disruptions include, but are not limited to, emergencies, natural disasters, planned or unplanned electricity outages, or other events that may cause disruptions to important public services.

SEC. 3.
Section 8373 is added to the Public Utilities Code, immediately following Section 8372, to read:
8373.
(a) The commission shall require large electrical corporations to collaborate with local governments, tribal governments, or community choice aggregators within its service area to support resiliency planning, including identifying critical facilities that may be vulnerable to repeated deenergization events.
(b) (1) A large electrical corporation shall, consistent with privacy, customer consent, confidentiality, and electrical grid security laws, provide local governments, tribal governments, and community choice aggregators with access to data, including electrical distribution equipment data, transmission and distribution circuit data, grid hardening plans, and other information as directed by the commission, to support resiliency planning by local governments and tribal governments to ensure the local governments, tribal governments, and community choice aggregators are able to plan potential microgrid projects to support critical facilities.
(2) The commission may require a large electrical corporation to share information pursuant to this section in an aggregated and anonymized form to protect customer privacy and electrical grid security.
(3) A large electrical corporation shall respond to a data request pursuant to this section within the timelines determined by the commission.

SEC. 4.
No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.