Business View Magazine | September 2019

210 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 and reliability to the energy grid, because we can control when those batteries dispatch. It’s also another way we can touch the other side of the bill. As a CCA, we supply the energy but Southern California Edison is the utility that delivers the energy, so they own all the infrastructure, all the wires, all the meters, and they handle the billing. So, when a customer gets a bill, there are two separate charges: the delivery charge from Southern California Edison and the energy supply charge from Lancaster Choice Energy. Right now, we can only control the supply side of the bill, but with batteries, we can help our customers avoid some of the energy demand charges that they see on the delivery side. “In California, we recently switched our ‘time- of-use’ hours. It used to be really cheap to use energy in the evening and the high prices were during the day, so we tried to get everybody to avoid using energy during the day. It has now flip-flopped – high peak prices are now starting at 4PM, which is when everybody comes home and the solar goes offline. So now, suddenly,