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SDG&E Gets State Approval to Form Independent Marketing Division

San Diego Gas & Electric has won state approval to form an independent marketing division it says will educate consumers about entities — several of which have been proposed locally — that would compete with the utility by selling electricity directly to residential users.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously Aug. 18 to allow SDG&E to create and operate the division, so long as strict barriers are maintained between it and the utility. Among these is an insistence the unit be funded by shareholder money from parent company Sempra Energy, an international utility and power generation and trading company also based in San Diego.

SDG&E is the first investor-owned utility in the state to move forward with such a division, even as a growing number of community choice aggregation programs, also known as CCAs, have been proposed statewide. No CCAs exist locally, but some are under consideration in the city and county of San Diego, as well as several North County municipalities.

While the utility has provided few details about its plans for the division, SDG&E spokeswoman Allison Torres denied suggestions by CCA advocates that the division would attack such programs, saying “we’re just here to educate.”

“Today’s decision will enable San Diegans to benefit from a balanced dialogue,” she said by email.

As a tightly regulated utility, SDG&E does not generally make money by selling electricity, but rather by financing maintenance, repairs and improvements to its energy infrastructure, which any new CCAs would be charged for just as the utility’s customers are now.

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