An act to amend Section 769.3 of, and to amend and repeal Section 913.15 of, the Public Utilities Code, relating to electricity.
AB 1813 revises California’s Public Utilities Code provisions governing the Public Utilities Commission’s customer renewable energy subscription programs and the creation of a community renewable energy program. The bill delays the required PUC evaluation and possible program establishment from 2024 to 2027, extends the notice period for community choice aggregators and electric service providers from 180 to 190 days, and updates the reporting deadline to the Legislature. It also requires the PUC to adopt or modify a subscription program after the Energy Commission completes a separate evaluation of whether community renewable energy generators can qualify as load-modifying resources.
The bill substantially reshapes program design requirements. It directs the PUC to prioritize low-income participation, require at least 51% of program capacity to serve low-income customers, cap individual community renewable energy generators at 5 MW of generation and 5 MW of storage, and limit total program capacity to 4 GW or seven years of new enrollment, whichever comes first. It also ties subscriber bill credits to avoided costs when a generator is deemed load modifying, requires same-local-reliability-area siting, preserves prevailing wage and project labor agreement rules for construction, and adds quarterly reporting during the first two years of the program. The reporting requirement in Section 913.15 would remain in effect only until January 1, 2034.
AB 1813 would amend Public Utilities Code Section 769.3 and Section 913.15, changing the timing, structure, and oversight of California’s customer renewable energy subscription framework. It would require the PUC and Energy Commission to conduct new evaluations and adopt program changes on a later schedule, while adding detailed eligibility, siting, crediting, labor, and reporting standards for community renewable energy generators. The bill also narrows and clarifies the program’s scope by defining low-income participation targets, generator size limits, and a statewide capacity cap, and by creating a process to determine whether projects qualify as load-modifying resources.
The available vote history suggests broad committee support: the bill passed the Assembly committee vote 12-0 on April 22, 2026, and was later read a second time and amended before being re-referred to Appropriations. No committee transcript was provided, so there is no recorded floor or committee debate to indicate opposition or support themes beyond the unanimous committee vote. Overall, the bill appears to have been received positively at the committee stage, at least in its amended form.
The main policy tensions in the bill appear to be around program cost, ratepayer impacts, and implementation design. The bill explicitly requires the PUC to minimize costs borne by nonparticipating customers and to base bill credits on avoided costs when projects are classified as load modifying, which suggests concern about cross-subsidization and ratepayer fairness. Another likely point of contention is the low-income set-aside and the 4 GW cap, which may be viewed by supporters as necessary to ensure equity and manage program growth, but by critics as potentially limiting scale or flexibility. Labor requirements, including prevailing wage and project labor agreement provisions, may also be a point of debate for stakeholders focused on project costs and development timelines.