http://www.allgov.com/usa/ca/departments/natural-resources-agency/department_of_water_resources?agencyid=162

It appears that some DWR bonds are being paid back by the three ISO’s as noted below- http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/published/FINAL_DECISION/13446.htm

. “Overview
This decision implements cost recovery of the revenue requirements of the California Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) relating to its power purchase program pursuant to Assembly Bill 1 of the First Extraordinary Session (Stats. 2001, Ch. 4), hereafter referred to as AB1X. On November 5, 2001 DWR submitted to the Commission a revenue requirement of $10,003,461,000, representing the total to be collected from utility customers of the three major California utilities covering the period from January 17, 2001 through December 31, 2002. On February 21, 2002, DWR sent a letter concluding that certain adjustments, totaling $958 million could be made to its pending revenue requirement. The revisions provided by DWR reflect comments from parties in this proceeding, and corrections to mathematical errors and calculations in DWR’s prior submittals.

In this decision, we determine how DWR revenue collections are to be allocated among the customers of the three major California electric utilities: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), Southern California Edison Company (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E), and we establish procedures to implement the collection process. DWR will collect its revenue requirements through charges remitted from billings to retail customers of the three major electric utilities based on designated per-kWh charges as set forth in this decision. We allocate the total DWR revenue requirement among each of the three major utilities’ service territories as follows:1

Utility Revenue Allocation % Allocation

PG&E
$ 4,507,238 49.8%

SCE
$ 3,553, 841 39.3 %

SDG&E
$ 984,383 10.9%

As to your statement that the mothballed power plants were fully amortized, when Gov. Schwarzenegger asked the DWR to float a $42 billion bond to pay off through long term water contracts that was for what? I believe it was for stranded assets.

Thanks for providing some context to what has led to the rather high electrical costs at the large ISO’s over the years. On the water delivery front it is my understanding that about 20% of the electrical energy used in the state is to move water around the state. What I am a bit unsure of is who actually picks up the tab for the power to move the water. Are the costs spread across all the citizens of the state, i.e. does it come out of general funds, or is their an allocation to the specific water districts that actually use the water?

I am on a well so I get to pay for the electrical power to pump my water (and maintain the system). It would be nice if I was in SMUD’s territory vs PG&E’s as they have a residential rate schedule that takes into account the need for electrical power for well owners. PG&E on the other hand does not adjust their baseline quantities for those of us that have sustainable water delivery on site. Each time PG&E drops the baseline in our territory the cost for me to keep all my fruit trees, roses, and grapes alive goes up. It’s kind of a pity the powers that be will pay some of the large private forest firms to manage their acreage- i.e. carbon credits, but they will penalize (reduced baselines) those of us take action to improve the carbon sequestration on our properties.

Oh well, I guess the plan is to have me stop doing what I am doing and move down into a more temperature climate zone and live in a high rise. That way when my wife and I do our laundry, in the communal laundry facility, our energy usage will not show up on our personal Kwh/month/year billing metric that folks like to keep track of. Short term on the laundry front I guess we can just go back to the old fashioned way of drying clothes- hang them out in the summer. There is no way I will consider putting the infrastructure in to get propane to our laundry room, so I could stop using electrical energy, unless I can come up with some estimate of what the cap and trade program will add to the cost of a gallon of propane! I would consider it if natural gas was available where I live…….

1) Thanks for the plug. The book is $20, btw.

2) Can you document how $42 billion was loaded on the SWP? Somehow I don’t think that MWDSC, which buys half the SWP water, would pay $21 billion over those dozen or so years.

3) precip is NOT the same as runoff. As you know, California averages about 40MAF of runoff per year. In 1998, there was about 330MAF of precip but only 54MAF of runoff (http://www.waterplan.water.ca.gov/docs/cwpu2013/ae/water_portfolio-inflow_outflow_ca.pdf), so you need to stick with apples, not oranges.

4) We disagree on this, but storage is NOT the problem in California. It’s demand greater than supply.