Load Impact Evaluation of California’s Statewide Base Interruptible Program

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Created on Friday, 01 May 2009 00:00

Each of California’s three major investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), offer the Base Interruptible Program (BIP). BIP is a tariff based, emergency-triggered demand response program that the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) can dispatch for system emergencies, and the utilities can dispatch for local emergencies.

Customers enrolled in BIP receive incentive payments in exchange for committing to reduce their electrical usage to a contractually-established level referred to as the Firm Service Level (FSL). Participants who fail to reduce their load to their FSL are subject to a financial penalty assessed on a kW per hour basis. Enrollment in BIP in January 2009 equaled 149 accounts for PG&E, 583 accounts for SCE and 20 accounts for SDG&E.

This report documents the ex post and ex ante load impact estimates associated with BIP for all three of California’s major investor owned utilities. Ex post estimates are provided for the most recent events for PG&E and SDG&E. Ex ante load impact estimates are provided for SCE and SDG&E for the years 2009 through 2020. PG&E plans to fold BIP customers into the Company’s PeakChoice program after 2010. As such, ex ante load impacts for PG&E are presented just for the years 2009 and 2010.

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