AB2891:v98#DOCUMENTBill Start
Amended
IN
Assembly
March 21, 2024
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CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2023–2024 REGULAR SESSION
Assembly Bill
No. 2891
Introduced by Assembly Member Friedman
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February 15, 2024 |
An act to add Section 25403.6 to the Public Resources Code, relating to electricity.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 2891, as amended, Friedman.
Energy: electrical demand forecasts.
Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission), at least every 2 years, to conduct assessments and forecasts of all aspects of energy industry supply, production, transportation, delivery and distribution, demand, and prices. Existing law authorizes the Energy Commission to require the submission of demand forecasts from electrical utilities, among other entities, to perform its assessments and forecasts.
This bill would require the Energy Commission, on or before July December 1, 2026, and in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, Independent System Operator, load-serving entities,
and resource aggregators, to adopt a set of upfront technical requirements and load automation standards modification protocols, as defined, to provide the option for a load-serving entity to reduce or modify its electrical demand forecast upon aggregated system operation, as specified.
Digest Key
Vote:
MAJORITY
Appropriation:
NO
Fiscal Committee:
YES
Local Program:
NO
Bill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(1) Decarbonization of California’s economy will require improved alignment between the operation of a renewable and greenhouse gas emission-free generation supply portfolio and increased demand flexibility enabled by load automation technologies.
(2) Reducing California’s reliance on generation from fossil fuels to maintain grid reliability will require incorporating flexible and automated demand management capabilities into the state’s reliability planning and market operations.
(3) Historically, the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission has included the load impact of demand-side management programs into the state’s electricity demand forecast for reliability planning purposes. This process, however, does not account for the ability of commercially available demand management tools to provide dispatchable, programmable, and automated load shifts in response to wholesale market needs, thereby limiting the ability for these resources to fully support reliability planning through commercial operations to mitigate the consequences of extreme weather events and wholesale market volatility. This has led to an increased reliance on costly emergency-based approaches and out-of-market fossil fuel-based
resource procurement to reduce near-term grid outage risks.
(4) In recent years, the Legislature has provided the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission with authority to set load management standards to increase demand flexibility on the grid and has appropriated funding for demand-side and distributed energy resource incentives. These policy and budgetary tools, in combination with the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission’s responsibility to forecast electrical demand, can be synergized to support the integration of demand flexibility into the state’s reliability planning and wholesale capacity market to reduce the state’s reliance on costly emergency-based or out-of-market approaches.
(5) Successful
commercialization of demand flexibility market products or services will require these resources to perform, so that the intended demand reduction or load shift can be relied on with a high degree of confidence by grid operators and electricity market participants alike.
(b) It is the intent of the Legislature that the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission should,
through its load management rulemaking proceeding and experience administering distributed resource incentives, develop a set of technical guidance and load automation standards modification protocols to enable the state to reduce or modify its electrical demand forecast to improve grid reliability.
SEC. 2.
Section 25403.6 is added to the Public Resources Code, to read:25403.6.
(a) (1) On or before July December 1, 2026, the commission, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, Independent System Operator, load-serving entities, and resource aggregators, shall adopt a set of upfront technical requirements and load automation standards modification protocols to provide the option for a load-serving entity to reduce or modify its
electrical demand forecast submitted pursuant to Section 25301 upon aggregated system operation. These requirements and standards protocols shall be met by the resource aggregator through the deployment of load automation modifying technologies and programmatic measures deemed by the commission, Public Utilities Commission, and Independent System Operator to reliably reduce or modify the load-serving entity’s electrical demand.(2) In developing the requirements and standards
protocols pursuant to paragraph (1), the commission may use available funding appropriated by the Legislature to test a variety of technological and programmatic approaches in partnership with interested load-serving entities and distributed energy resource aggregators to facilitate a high degree of confidence for flexible demand performance under the adopted requirements and standards. protocols.
(b) For purposes of this section, “load-serving
the following definitions apply:
(1) “Load modification protocols” means a combination of capabilities and operational parameters to confidently reduce a load-serving entity’s electrical demand forecast for any specified hour or hours.
(2) “Load-serving entity” has the same meaning as defined in Section 380 of the Public Utilities Code.