Did OCPA Break the Law & Rob Businesses?

The Orange County Power Authority Could be on the Hook for Millions

You may have noticed that your power bill has gone up quite a bit in the past few months. Some of that is because power is just more expensive as we demand more energy while simultaneously producing less reliable forms of it here in California.

Contrary to progressive propaganda, this isn’t some scheme by SCE to pad their pockets. When Southern California Edison wants to raise your rates they have to go in front of the California Public Utility Commission and justify any rate adjustments to get those increases approved and most of those increases themselves are in response to government mandates.

In the last few years those adjustments amount to a more than 20% increase in costs to consumers and it’s going up every year as CA mandates transitions to less reliable forms of power.

But some of the costs many of you are seeing locally are related to the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA).

In their zeal to “Go Green” the cities of Fullerton, Irvine, Buena Park, Huntington Beach, along with the County of Orange started (or joined) the OCPA (the County has since left).

To find out if you’ve been switched over to OCPA from SCE and any of this applies to you, look at your bill from SCE under “Details of Your New Charges” (could be page 3, could be page 6, it varies). If you’ve been moved into OCPA it will say “Orange County Power Authority” above your rate type, on the top right and towards the bottom.

Here’s what you’re looking for on your bill:

I can guarantee that if you’ve been moved into OCPA you are paying more for power (somewhere near 6-10% more) than if you had stayed with SCE.

Why?

Because the function of the OCPA is to handle the procurement and billing of people for power, under the presumption that you’re willing to pay a premium for “green energy”.

This is partially predicated on the idea that you don’t know how power comes into your house (there is no “green energy” wire up on those poles as all power is co-mingled) or how we produce power in California. When you’re charging your Telsa at 2am, congrats you aren’t using solar, even if you’re being charged a premium as though you were).

Beyond all of that is the faulty assumption that a bunch of elected officials and bureaucrats can plan, manage and deliver power more efficiently than SoCal Edison.

Let me explain this simply. OCPA does not produce one kilowatt of power. They don’t transmit or deliver one kilowatt of power. What they do is speculate on power costs and buy power that is delivered by Edison to you. They offer the power in “tiers” of partially Green and All Green (which of course is nonsense as you’re paying for the production but not the usage of the Green power) and those tiers get more expensive based upon their Greenness.

No offense necessarily to Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung, but I’ve seen nothing on his resume to make me think that he’s more qualified to oversee the entity delivering power to me than anybody at Edison. That sentiment goes for just about every functionary tied to OCPA.

But it gets worse. If you want to pay more for Green power, you could already do this with Edison. All you needed to do was call them or go [HERE] to raise your rates and they’d happily charge you to Go Green.

They’re at capacity so it’s a waitlist system now.

The entire CCA plan was sold on saving you money while Going Green and yet less than 3% of OCPA’s customers were able to save so much as $1 compared to what they would have paid SoCal Edison. That’s because only 3% chose the least Green (or most basic) of the tiered plans. Everybody else was opted into higher, more expensive tiers.

The “savings” was always a lie and a lot of people are hip to the fact that you can never trust a politician to let you keep more of your own money.

Sacramento knows this which is why the OCPA, and all community choice aggregators (CCAs) when approved, are legally required to be Opt-Out services. They know that you’ll open your bill, ignore what you think is the usual propaganda inside, pay your bill and not notice that they’re letting you know that they’re about to Opt you into a crony system.

By law you have to be sent two notices within 60-days before they opt you in and two after they’ve opted you in. Here’s the relevant law;

13) (A) The community choice aggregator shall fully inform participating customers at least twice within two calendar months, or 60 days, in advance of the date of commencing automatic enrollment. Notifications may occur concurrently with billing cycles. Following enrollment, the aggregated entity shall fully inform participating customers for not less than two consecutive billing cycles. Notification may include, but is not limited to, direct mailings to customers, or inserts in water, sewer, or other utility bills. Any notification shall inform customers of both of the following:
(i) That they are to be automatically enrolled and that the customer has the right to opt out of the community choice aggregator without penalty.
(ii) The terms and conditions of the services offered.

I personally don’t recall ever getting these notices (but I don’t open all of the mail we get) and I knew about OCPA at the early stages & I knew to opt-out the nanosecond it was possible.

Yet many didn’t and they’re starting to see cost increases on the electrical bill. Some are saying as much as $50-100 more per billing cycle. Some even more still.

And that’s a problem for the embattled OCPA as they’re already fighting the City of Irvine over allegations of incompetence and malfeasance. The County of Orange already left OCPA over similar concerns.

But the real problem for OCPA is that it appears that they forgot (or refused) to let businesses know that those business were all being opted in.

Not informing businesses, as cited in the law above, would be quite illegal.

I’ve spoken to a few businesses who have no idea what OCPA even is, let alone that they were supposed to be offered a chance to opt-out. No business that I’ve spoken to has been able to produce one of the four required notifications that should have been sent by OCPA.

If it turns out that OCPA neglected to notify businesses of the power transition it could mean fines for every account impacted because there are costs associated with re-connecting to SoCal Edison.

Back to the relevant law;

This bill would provide that, if a customer of an electric service provider or community choice aggregator is involuntarily returned to service provided by an electrical corporation, any reentry fees imposed on that customer are to be the obligation of the electric service provider or community choice aggregator, except as specified. The bill would require the electric service provider or community choice aggregator, as a condition to its registration, to post a bond or demonstrate insurance sufficient to cover paying those reentry fees.

While the law here specifies that a customer isn’t liable if they’re put reconnected to a electric service provider (locally SCE) from a CCA (locally OCPA) “involuntarily” (usually from the closure of a CCA) it doesn’t say anything specifically about what happens if the CCA refuses to follow the law.

It would seem to me that if you were involuntarily put INTO the CCA without the legal option to opt out, then it’s likewise an involuntary action to go back to the status quo of getting your power from SCE.

But that will ultimately be up to the courts to decide.

After looking at one business’ bill, it appears that they were charged around $800 to transition back to SCE from OCPA. If that business didn’t get the chance to opt out, which is clearly what they wanted, that should put OCPA on the hook for that $800 cost. Now imagine if dozens, or hundreds, of businesses are in the same boat as that one business with the $800 transition fee (from SCE). That starts to add up quickly.

This business I’m referring to is a mid-sized business with decent power consumption costs and the transition costs to go back to SCE will vary by customer. So while this business uses more power than, say, a law office, they use a lot less power than a large retail establishment.

And OCPA could well be on the hook for all of those varying transition costs across an unknown number of businesses in a half dozen cities.

Additionally it could lead to a class action lawsuit to recover any charges over and above what would have been paid had those businesses opted out and stayed with SoCal Edison.

We’re talking millions of dollars. Millions and millions.

And the only way OCPA will make that money back is by charging you, their customers, more each billing cycle.

I’d recommend going [HERE] to opt-out if you haven’t already.

If you were switched to OCPA without your knowledge we’d love to hear from you and for you to share this story to help others learn about this issue.

We’d also recommend sending an email to Fullerton’s representative on the OCPA board, Mayor Fred Jung. He can be reached at fred.jung@cityoffullerton.com.

Correction; I wrote that Orange was a member of OCPA when it was meant to say the County of Orange (who has since left).