People are struggling with the rising costs of living — gasoline, groceries, housing, lending rates, natural gas. And, yes, electricity. This is a difficult time for many households, and Southern California Edison is doing its part to help take some of the sting out of high energy bills.
First, keeping costs down. Some of those costs are not within SCE’s control, such as the costs of the energy delivered to customers with no markup. Those costs can rise because of many factors, such as resource availability, the price of fuels and supply chain constraints.
There are, however, some costs SCE can control, and the company looks for many ways to do that. For example, SCE is part of a consortium that recently secured a $600 million federal grant to upgrade transmission lines with grid enhancing technologies — which could eventually help to keep costs down while building out a reliable, resilient energy system that helps to increase equitable access to clean energy resources.
SCE is getting creative in its efforts, including saving customers about $160 million annually by shifting to wildfire self-insurance rather than relying solely on expensive, commercial insurance. The company is consolidating its 14,000 employees into fewer buildings to reduce operating and maintenance costs.
SCE is also asking the California Public Utilities Commission to approve an agreement to recover $1.6 billion in the costs of claims and other expenses related to the 2017 Thomas Fire and 2018 Montecito debris flows. After the commission approves the agreement, SCE will seek permission to spread the total amount over 30 years, so that most residential customers will pay about $1 a month more and lower-income customers won’t pay more. The agreement also requires Edison shareholders to bear the cost of approximately $1 billion.
It has been California’s hottest summer on record, which means how much electricity a customer uses will have a significant effect on their bills. Here are a few things customers can do to help keep the costs down.
As always, you can go to SCE.com to get more information on energy-saving tips as well as ways you can sign up for assistance programs.
