(UNION CITY, Calif.) – Ava Community Energy CEO Howard Chang outlined the company’s electricity services, renewable energy offerings, and customer programs during a September 22 special meeting of the Union City City Council. Chang also addressed questions about how growing electricity demand from electric vehicles and data centers could affect the company’s services.
According to Chang, these areas have grown since their launch in 2018 to include all of Alameda County minus the city of Alameda and most of San Joaquin County.
Photo Credit: Granicus / Map of areas covered by Ava Community Energy.
Chang explained that Ava Community Energy operates as a Community Choice Aggregator in these areas, providing default electricity generation to customers in its service area, while PG&E continues to deliver electricity. Customers can opt out of Ava’s generation service and choose PG&E as their generation provider instead.
“PG&E continues forward as your delivery service provider and Ava is the generation service provider,” Chang said.
Chang shared that even with an additional option available to customers, Ava Community Energy experienced a 96% participation rate in its area of coverage. Chang claimed that this was due to their lower costs and cleaner methods of energy generation.
To illustrate this, Chang provided a comparison of Ava Community Energy’s energy generation plans with PG&E’s.
Photo Credit: Granicus / Comparison of Ava Community Energy and PG&E generation methods.
As indicated in the graphic above, Ava Community Energy’s “Bright Choice” plan relies on 61.8% renewable energy, a difference of 38.8 percentage points over PG&E’s stated 23% renewable energy sourcing. The plan, which is the city’s “default plan,” is also 0.5% below PG&E rates.
In addition to their energy generation services, Ava Community Energy provides its customers with energy-related programs. The three major programs Chang spoke of included Ava SmartHome Charging, Ava Bike Electric, and Ava SmartHome Battery and Resilience Hubs.
Photo Credit: Granicus / Comparison of Ava Community Energy and PG&E generation methods.
Ava SmartHome Charging is a program for those who drive an Electric Vehicle (EV).
Of this, Chang said, “The intention of this program is to try to educate and inform EV drivers to charge at the optimal times of the day. [These are] times of the day where the grid is less stressed. By doing so [...] customers are inherently lowering their energy costs because they're charging at lower cost times.”
Chang also mentioned that customers receive rewards for participating in this program.
The intention of the Ava Bike Electric program is to help the community experience commuting in a different way through the use of e-bikes. The final program, Ava SmartHome Battery and Resilience Hubs, incentivizes solar panel installation.
Following the presentation, the council had minimal questions. The most prominent was asked by Council Member Lance Nishihira who asked how Ava Community Energy plans on dealing with the rise in data centers and EVs.
Here, he was referring to how these things will require more and more electricity as they become more prominent in society.
To this, Chang responded that there is a lot of uncertainty over what will actually happen and how the rise in such things will affect their services, but that it was an important matter to their company.
OpGov.News has reached out to the Union City City Council in order to learn more about their opinions on Ava Community Energy’s various programs. This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
To add or correct any information in this report, please contact me at madison.v@lead4earth.org.
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