East Bay Community Energy to Launch Commercial Service in June
This June, the East Bay Community Energy Authority (ECBE) will roll out its energy service to municipal and commercial accounts. In 2016, San Leandro joined ten other cities within Alameda County, and the County of Alameda to establish ECBE, a community choice energy aggregation program whose primary purpose is to supply electricity that will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Residential accounts will receive service in November 2018, and there is an opportunity for residential customers to sign up as “early adopters” when the commercial service is launched in June. The EBCE product offering will include Bright Choice, which will be a minimum of 85% carbon free electricity, and Brilliant 100, which will be 100% carbon free. As mentioned in a previous post, the City of San Leandro plans to enroll all municipal electric accounts in the Brilliant 100 electricity product to achieve timely GHG reductions for city operations.
Businesses not interested in the EBCE service must opt out prior to the roll-out. Current PG&E customers should have received at least four notices with information on customization of the service, as well as how to opt out.
EBCE works in partnership with PG&E to deliver reliable electricity under the same tariff structure and billing system but at lower rates and higher clean energy content. The Bright Choice option costs 1.5% less than PG&E’s generation rates, inclusive of utility exit fees, and the Brilliant 100 option costs the same as PG&E, inclusive of utility exit fees.
EBCE has made available a Business Toolkit that provides detailed program information and welcomes businesses to schedule conference calls or meetings in order to learn more.
This will be wonderful. I wonder if this is a better option than getting solar panels on my house in terms of reducing green house gas admissions. I realize cost saving is another topic.
This seems like a great start! I think it may be worthwhile to look at this australian company called “Powerledger”. What powerledger does is create a grid that allows peer to peer sale and purchase of power via blockchain technology. In the power ledger ecosystem, residents are more than just an end user (unlike the system, they are an active participant that provides value to other users. Residents/companies can sell their unused power to other residents/companies peer to peer, rather than selling it directly back to the utility at dirt cheap rates.
The result is that users can buy power at a cheaper rate than utilities, while also selling their excess power to users at a higher rate than utilities will purchase it for.
They have just recently created a division to work with US agencies/groups. I think it would be great if San Leandro could reach out to them and explore options.
Hi, i wanted to follow up on my earlier post regarding power ledger. I just read an article that Santa Clara (Silicon Valley Power) has teamed up with power ledger to test out their system! It’s a good read, and helps explain what they do better that my earlier comment.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/power-ledger-and-silicon-valley-power-to-track-ev-low-carbon-credits-via-bl