In voting to withdraw from their Orange County Power Authority contract, the Orange County Board of Supervisors is impacting the availability of community choice energy for the foreseeable future, according to an OCPA board member.
“It certainly adds a challenge to the agency’s goal of providing green power at a competitive price,” said Don Wagner, who is also a member of the OC Board of Supervisors. “With us out of the OCPA, we have taken the choice away from our unincorporated county residents who might have wanted to access OCPA’s product.”
The supervisors pulled the plug on OCPA, a public utility, with a 3-2 vote at a Dec. 20 hearing where Wagner was among the supervisors who voted against the measure.
The vote was scheduled by OC Chairman Chaffee and OC Supervisor Bartlett after a county report determined the OCPA was allegedly failing at providing homeowners and business owners with a viable alternative to renewable energy.
The Dec. 9 County evaluation by Local Power LLC and other audits alleged problems that include questionable contracting policies, a staff that lacks industry experience, and a flow of residents opting out of the service.
“I believe the ‘problems’ with the OCPA are procedural and personnel issues, not performance related,” Wagner told the Southern California Record. “I think the OCPA remains viable and can do the things it is supposed to do, namely provide competitive, greener power to those who want it and to add competition to the power procurement system.”
As previously reported in the OC Register, some 130,000 unincorporated south county residents and businesses will remain without an immediate option to buy cleaner electricity.
"All we have done is now risk having to pay for any power the OCPA already purchased for us and that is why I argued at the board meeting against withdrawing,” Wagner said. “The only risk to the county was from leaving, not from staying.”
Negative headlines such as ‘Whistleblower complaint sends Orange County Power Authority into a Roil’ and ‘Grand jury slams O.C. Power Authority’s inexperienced leadership, lack of transparency’ have plagued the community choice program since it began six months ago.
The county will owe about $65 million to the OCPA as a result of the vote to end the agreement, according to the board's internal auditor
“That is if the OCPA cannot sell any power it has procured for the county on the open market,” Wagner added. “There is an even better chance, frankly, that the OCPA can make a profit by selling that power above what it paid.”