Success with time-of-use rates can allow utilities to start integrating more variable and distributed generation, leading to more sophisticated time-varying rates that allow for higher penetrations of such generation.

A number of western municipal utilities are trying to avoid getting locked into a first-of-a-kind nuclear project if its costs continue to go up.

The 45-day comment period is uncommonly short, but may allow the agency a brief window to issue the rule before the Biden administration is expected to take office Jan. 20.

Some customers were without power for about a week following the storm, and an expedited investigation concluded utilities failed to follow regulator-ordered emergency response plans.

The new policy provides market certainty around how hybrid resources are supposed to operate in the market, according to Jin Noh, policy manager at the California Energy Storage Alliance.