Summary: VCE has partnered with PG&E to enroll our customers in a new hourly flex pricing pilot program. Customers can save money on their electric bill by taking advantage of low-rate periods during the day.
Yolo County, CA. — A new pilot program that Valley Clean Energy (VCE) and PG&E are introducing this month may help your home or business save on electricity bills. The Hourly Flex Pricing pilot program helps participants take advantage of lower-cost energy periods during the day.
How it works
The Hourly Flex Pricing pilot program, which PG&E oversees, begins in November 2024 and runs through the end of 2027. PG&E delivers the electricity that VCE purchases for our customers. Our residential, business, and agricultural customers are all eligible to participate.
Beginning this month, PG&E will publish its dynamic hourly rates 24 hours in advance. If you’re enrolled in the pilot program, you can then schedule the best time to run your appliances, EV chargers, or manufacturing processes. You can also set up your smart devices or automation software to automatically monitor PG&E’s hourly flex rates, so you don’t have to pay attention to hourly rate changes in order to save.
Because PG&E is testing hourly flex pricing with this three-year pilot, customers who participate in the program will continue to be charged VCE’s standard rates for electricity. You won’t see any changes on your monthly utility bills. However, PG&E will be tracking your power usage. Each time you use electricity when program rates are lower than the standard rate, the pilot program will credit you for the difference. Each time you use electricity when hourly flex plan rates are higher, you won’t be charged extra. At the end of each 12-month period, PG&E will tally up all the credits. It will then send you a check for the savings you have accrued over the year.
VCE residential customers already pay 2.5% less for electricity than PG&E customers. In fact, low-income households signed up for CARE, FERA, and medical discounts pay 4% less than PG&E’s standard electric rates.
Hourly flex pricing prepares us for the future
The goal of introducing flex pricing is to incentivize homes and businesses to use power when electricity is plentiful and rates are low. That way, we can prevent outages and make California’s electric grid more resilient. VCE, PG&E, and other utilities are also preparing to meet the state’s 2045 goal of generating 100% of our energy from fossil-free sources such as solar, wind, and battery storage. (At VCE, we’ve already pledged to hit this goal by 2030.)
“Now is the perfect time to introduce VCE customers to hourly flex pricing,” says Mitch Sears, Executive Director of Valley Clean Energy. “A new generation of smart thermostats and automation software makes it convenient for homes and businesses to take advantage of dynamic electric rates. Our award-winning AgFIT (Flexible Irrigation Technology) pilot program has shown us that farmers can save <need a stat from VCE> when they irrigate their fields when electricity is less expensive.”
To learn more about the Hourly Flex Pricing pilot program, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org/programs/hourly-flex-pricing/.
About Valley Clean Energy
Valley Clean Energy — or VCE — is the official electricity provider for residential and commercial customers in Woodland, Winters, Davis, and unincorporated Yolo County. We’re a not-for-profit public agency, which means that we’re working 100% for our customers. VCE keeps program control and revenues right here at home, where we can create jobs and build local clean energy projects. We reinvest dollars to boost our local economy while taking control of our clean energy future. More information is available at https://valleycleanenergy.org/.