The Upshot

CEL's technology is integral to the newly proposed CalFUSE Framework, which will promote demand flexibility and lower costs for utilities and consumers.

CEL's Technology Enables Proposed CalFUSE Framework

The California Public Utilities Commission has proposed a new framework for demand flexibility known as California Flexible Unified Signal for Energy (CalFUSE). As a registered Automated Service Provider (ASP), CEL's technology will enable CalFUSE to receive and respond to real-time rates.

As California moves toward 100% renewable power, the state's electricity system is undergoing rapid transformation. These changes, while necessary and exciting, have the potential to bring about adverse impacts on the State’s power grid. Experts agree that California must leverage demand flexibility in order to meet the state’s aggressive emissions reduction targets. CPUC created the framework as a means to develop a policy pathway that is "standardized, easy to implement, and allows the industry to develop low-cost, flexible demand management capabilities and integrate them into smart end-use devices and DERs by default for use by all customer classes." To this end, the CalFUSE roadmap consists of six key policy elements. These are all intended to be available on an opt-in basis as follows:

• ELEMENT 1: Develop standardized, universal access to the current electricity price
• ELEMENT 2: Introduce dynamic electricity prices based on real-time wholesale energy cost
• ELEMENT 3: Modify electricity prices to incorporate dynamic capacity charges based on real-time grid utilization
• ELEMENT 4: Transition to bi-directional electricity prices
• ELEMENT 5: Offer a subscription option based on customer-specific load shapes
• ELEMENT 6: Enable transaction features allowing lock-in of future electricity prices