Energy Co-op’s Attempt to Downsize Board Gives Goleta a Jolt

The energy cooperative 3CE is having what can only be called growing pains. Starting under the name Monterey Bay Community Power in 2017 with 11 board members from a few counties, it added Santa Barbara County and several cities a couple of years later and grew to 15 and now 19 board members. With San Luis Obispo County coming online in 2025, this past year, some board members asked if 19 might be too many, especially when meetings went long. That thought, however, provoked whiplash, including from the City of Goleta.

Goleta currently shares a seat with Carpinteria, switching off every couple of years, on what is now called Central Coast Community Energy (3CE). It’s a substantial operation, buying and selling green energy and funding construction of renewable energy facilities. Adding San Luis Obispo increases electricity sales to a projected $745 million for 2024-25 compared to $450 million in 2022-23. (The cost of energy was projected to be $665 milliion this coming year.)

The policy board works with staff to understand the myriad regulatory effects on operations and costs, as well as make decisions on power purchases, programs, and the running of the nonprofit. As a nonprofit, the group can sell the energy it buys at a price lower than investor-owned utilities — like SoCal Edison or PG&E — to its partner customers, which locally include the cities of Goleta, Santa Maria, Guadalupe, Buellton, Solvang, Carpinteria, and the unincorporated county areas.

Early in October, Goleta’s council sent a letter to 3CE firmly suggesting that each jurisdiction have representation. In fact, other larger power cooperatives had as many as 35 board seats, the city pointed out, asking 3CE to respect the promise made back in 2019 that local control would be a key feature of joining the cooperative.

Das Williams, 3CE’s Policy Board chair and also a supervisor for Santa Barbara County (which has a permanent seat on the board due to its size, as does Santa Maria), said the problem was the length of time it took to get through an important item with so many people speaking. “It takes an hour and a half,” Williams said. “That’s a structure that nobody was super thrilled about. Until this discussion.”

The 3CE Policy Board also includes Goleta Councilmember Kyle Richards. He echoed the council’s position that the concept of making the board smaller was a “proposal in need of a problem.” Despite the large body, he said, “this is an oversimplified reaction to a problem that I hadn’t really seen as a problem.”

An ad hoc committee was formed to examine the issue, which Richards hoped would find a solution. Williams said the board could have passed the reduction by one vote, but ultimately too many people would have been very unhappy. At this point, “It’s a dead issue,” Williams opined.

The sometimes time-consuming work the board oversees is all about moving away from fossil fuel-powered energy, which Goleta has embraced. The end result is a positive one, Richards observed: a savings in electricity costs for consumers. By January, 3CE anticipates an average charge that is 13-38 percent below what SoCal Edison charges; currently, the charge is set to 2 percent less than SCE’s.

It all adds up. The energy group takes what would be its “profit” and puts it into funding carbon-free energy projects and consumer energy programs. For the coming fiscal year, programs amount to $16.8 million toward electric vehicle rebates, electric bus programs, all-electric agricultural equipment rebates, grant programs, and incentives to build all-electric homes and apartments.

Outreach is an issue, Williams noted at a recent meeting. Not all the funds for every program are fully spent. To find out why, the energy cooperative is holding a meeting on November 14 to learn about the barriers to adopting all-electric appliances — like water and air heaters, and cooking and washing appliances — as the group organizes its next set of rebate and incentive programs. The meeting takes place at the Goleta Valley Community Center, 5679 Hollister Avenue, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. (More here: 3CEnergy.org/rebates.)

Williams, who steps down from the board in January, said that the biggest thing in energy currently was getting enough battery installations to meet the energy and reliability needs of the state. To that end, he mentioned a few times during a recent interview, 3CE energized a new solar and battery storage facility in Riverside County earlier this spring. Sited on 2,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management desert to the west of Chuckwalla Valley, the $1 billion Arica and Victory Pass project provides power to both 3CE and Silicon Valley Clean Energy, energizing as many as 75,000 homes in total.

Speaking to 3CE’s goal of 100 percent renewables before 2030, Williams said, “Today, we are witnessing that clean energy future become a reality, one project at a time,” during an inauguration ceremony in October. The massive installation represents 16 percent of 3CE’s energy demand, while addressing the key peak period after five o’clock when battery power is most needed.

Clarification: This story was amended on November 4, 2024, to correct the anticipated charge, which will be tied to the cost of service, and the current billing from 3CE based on Edison’s rate.