| Attrition | It generally refers to the projected rate of inflation built into investor-owned utility rate cases. |
| Bill Enrollment | Legislation is “enrolled” after its successful passage through both the state Senate and Assembly. After the final vote on a bill, it goes through the enrollment process to ensure the final version is typo free. A clean version of the legislation is sent to the governor with a cover sheet and signature page. However, when the bill gets to the governor's desk is a calculated political decision. |
| Cloture | The only procedure by which the U.S. Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, generally 60 votes. Filibusters have increased in the past several years. |
| Debt Equivalency | Investor-owned utilities after the 2000-01 crisis worried about the financial risks of third-party power contracts. Compensation for that risk is known as "debt equivalency." It boils down to how private utility projects and contracts are treated by credit rating agencies. The California Public Utilities Commission compensates utilities for the perceived risk. |
| Direct Access | Considered consumer choice, "direct access," allows ratepayers to bypass their utility and buy power directly from other providers. The direct access door was opened to customers during the 1996 energy industry deregulation. It was largely frozen after the 2000-01 energy crisis. |
| Dynamic Pricing | This is akin to Time-of-Use rates, entailing the ability to charge ratepayers hourly or other time-segmented rates for electricity to better reflect the actual price of power. Dynamic pricing aims to inform consumers about the real time cost of their energy use to motivate them to shift their power usage away from times of high demand. |
| En Banc | In state agency vernacular, the term means that a regulatory body as a whole is called in to preside over a meeting or a hearing that is not part of its regularly held business meeting. Literally, it’s means all judges are supposed to be “on a bench.” All commissioners are supposed to be available for “en banc” meetings. |
| Energy Star Program | The U.S. EPA began the federal Energy Star program in 1992 in response to the spread of desktop computers and the habit of leaving them turned on all the time. To stop the waste—and cut associated greenhouse gas emissions—EPA set up a voluntary certification program that would award manufacturers with the now familiar Energy Star label if they could reduce the energy consumption of their computer models. Manufacturers did this by incorporating “power management” systems that would allow various components of their computers, like the hard drive, to go into “sleep mode” when the machines sat idle. Since then the program has expanded to some 60 product categories—from dishwashers to chargers for cameras and cell phones. The U.S. Department of Energy manages the program for major appliances, like refrigerators and washers. EPA primarily focuses on consumer electronics and buildings. Manufacturers voluntarily test their own products based on standard government methods and submit those results to the federal agencies. |
| Feed-in Tariff | This oddly-named tariff is not a dairy trough but one involving set payments for renewable energy project output over several years. It provides solar, wind and other alternative project developers financial security. Feed-in tariffs often can include a subsidy. This tariff also includes public, standard contract terms, avoiding closed-door negotiations between utilities and solar, wind and other alternative energy developers. |
| Go to Ground | In the spy trade, “go to ground” means to disappear. Like 007, into the physical ether—new passport, new life. In the electricity trade, it’s similar. When electricity goes to ground it, too, disappears. Electricity, however, doesn’t get a new passport or a new life. It's simply wasted. If it is not used on demand it goes to ground, regardless of its cost. Until there’s storage developed, generators get paid to make electricity and consumers pay again for any excess to take if off the hands of grid operators when there’s too much electricity to consume. |
| Leakage | Regulators trying to limit greenhouse gas emissions are concerned about preventing “leakage.” It occurs when a company moves its operations out of a state, such as California, or to another nation, where greenhouse gases don’t face similar controls. Leakage also can occur when a factory in a regulated state or nation shuts down and a competitor in an unregulated state or nation picks up their market share, producing the same product and exporting it into the regulated geographic area. In both cases, regulators consider the associated greenhouse gas emissions to have “leaked” outside of their regulatory system. |
| Market Price Referent | A fluctuating benchmark set by the California Public Utilities Commission against which the reasonableness of the cost of a solar, wind or other alternative power project is measured. |
| Negawatts | It is more than the Spanish idiom for "you're welcome,"-- de nada, or "It's nothing." Negawatts (NW) are more than doing nothing for which regulators give thanks. Negawatts avoid generating power through consumer conservation and utility demand-response programs. Bolstering NWs means a less capital intensive, and less environmentally impaired California when sound planning and implementation are the impetus. |
| RECLAIM | Major power plants operating within the South Coast Air Basin must maintain a sufficient supply of credits to cover their emissions of nitrogen and sulfur oxides under the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s REgional Clean Air Incentives Market program. It is known as RECLAIM. The program caps total emissions from power plants and other industries in the area. When the program started, each of the facilities received credits based on their historic emissions. Companies that emit less than their cap in any year can sell their unneeded credits to those who wish to emit more than their cap. The credits are traded on the open market at a price determined by the market. |
| Resource Adequacy | Resource adequacy is a cushion of power that utilities are required to have on hand. It helps ensure supply adequacy when power demand is stretched. |
| Smart Grid | AP "smart grid", unlike AP English, generally refers to a two-way digital flow of communication between customers' advanced or "smart" meters, and utilities. A definitive defintion of "smart grid" is lacking. |
| Time-of-Use | Time-of-use rates, or dynamic pricing, refer to electricity prices based on certain blocks of time during the day. It's aimed at motivating large and small customers to reduce power consumption to lower utility bills via time-of-use meters that display block power prices. For example, 6a.m.- 8a.m, energy prices are low because power usage is moderately light across the state. In contrast, power prices on late afternoons on hot days increase due to high demand. Time-of-use rates replace flat rates that apply to most residential ratepayers. The latter rate melds both high and low power costs, which are not transparent to the end user. Currently, 200,000 large energy users in California have time-of-use meters, many of which were paid for by residential ratepayers during the 2000-01 energy crisis. |
| Zero Net Energy | Also referred to as "net-zero energy" homes and commercial facilities, these buildings generate as much power as they consume over a year. It generally refers to energy efficient buildings fitted with solar panels or other carbon-free renewable systems on their roofs or nearby, along with low water using devices. |
