CCE was formed to carry forward the vision of the San Diego Energy District, which was founded in 2011 to advocate for Community Choice Energy in the San Diego area.
Many years of advocacy led to the formation in 2017 of the first Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) in San Diego County, the Solana Energy Alliance. By 2019, communities representing the majority of the load in San Diego County had committed to forming CCAs.
Community Benefits
Local generation and storage of electricity brings a host of benefits to a community. These include:
* Money stays in the community.
* Local jobs are created.
* Microgrid design can protect communities from power failures.
* With local generation, power needed for long distance transmission is reduced.
* Power stored during the day reduces the need to purchase expensive power in the evening.
Most importantly, local energy is renewable and contributes to decarbonization, which we must accelerate in order to overcome the climate crisis.
Vision
Our vision of community energy extends through all levels, from individual buildings to whole communities.
* At the most basic level, individual homeowners and businesses are already installing solar power and beginning to install batteries.
* Local microgrids can tie together facilities and allow them to remain operational in the event of grid failures.
* At the largest scale, communities are forming Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) to take control of the purchasing of electricity.
All of these things are feasible today, and as renewable energy becomes cheaper, they are increasingly cost effective. At this point, the greatest barriers are obsolete regulations.
