This first of its kind report, created and published by South Bay Clean Power is intended as an educational resource for elected officials, staff and CCA advocates to provide ‘real world’ insights into how leading CCAs are finding it easy to deploy — from Day 1 — advanced energy risk management capabilities that rival mature utilities.

The report is a series of expert interviews with five leading Portfolio Managers regarding their approach to managing energy risk, how their services help CCAs and allow effective integration of Distributed Resources, and substantial guidance on how best to manage key CCA regulatory risks —such as the utilities’ proposal to replace this CCA customer non-bypassable charge with the Portfolio Allocation Methodology, or PAM proposal. Responses were provided by:

1. ACES (the Alliance for Cooperative Services Power Marketing)
2. Ascend Analytics
3. Customized Energy Solutions
4. TEA (The Energy Authority)
5. ZGlobal

These public power non-profits & companies provide power portfolio and market operations for large power agencies including three CCAs to date in 2017 (Redwood Coast, Silicon Valley and MCE Clean Energy) and are expected to be hired by the Inland Choice CCA, East Bay Clean Energy CCA, and Monterey Bay CCA over the coming months.

Feedback was also requested on key assumptions in the RFP and contracting recommended under the SBCP Business Plan — such as the willingness of each Portfolio Manager to work at-risk during implementation, and their general approach to assisting public agencies to develop in-house energy risk management expertise.

The audio clip below — courtesy of the California Alliance for Community Energy — provides a recent update by Matthew Marshall, Executive Director of the Redwood Coast Energy Authority. He discusses why the CCA hired The Energy Authority, how this has enabled his CCA to contract with various local renewable resources at launch, and details how the Portfolio Manager is helping to fast-track the CCA’s internal staff capacity and continuing education on how to apply energy risk management principals in practice: