 Pioneer Community Energy is now the default energy provider for our county, which means customers will be automatically enrolled to ensure everyone has fair and equal access to Pioneer benefits - and then customers choose stay with Pioneer or opt out to get their electric power from PG&E. Pioneer Community Program Specialist II Alexia Retallack spoke about this especially important topic. Alexia has been with Pioneer Community Energy since its inception in 2017. Pioneer Community Energy is a locally owned and non-profit provider of electricity. It does not answer to Wall Street and stockholders like PG&E does. It encompasses the western slope of El Dorado County and most of Placer County and has 160,000 customers as of January 2022. Of the many things going on with your PG&E electricity and gas bill, only one thing changes: Pioneer purchases power for you instead of PG&E, and your bill for that power should go down 6-7% with Pioneer compared to PG&E. Pioneer also supports solar customers. They support Net Energy Metering (NEM) by crediting the solar energy generated at the current retail rate against the electricity consumed each month. Furthermore, if you generate more electric power than you consume in a month, Pioneer pays 0.5 cents per kWh above the current PG&E rate for Net Surplus Generation. If you are uncertain about whether Pioneer will be better than PG&E for you, Pioneer will do an analysis to see which way is better. For those who use more energy than their solar generates, a significant benefit with Pioneer is that you pay the "true-up" monthly rather than annually with PG&E (the True-Up can be a large budget-busting bill for some customers). In response to a question, Alexia told us not to worry about whether PG&E will go out of business. PG&E still owns and maintains the transmission & distribution (T&D) lines and there is a significant line item on your bill that charges for these facilities and that charge goes entirely to PG&E. In fact, those T&D rates went up 12.6% in January. To find more information about Pioneer Community Energy, their home page leads you to information about rates, billing and solar customers. |
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