Essential Use Customer

• Print Page
• Email Page

Depending on the status of back-up generation at the facility, non-residential customers who provide certain essential public health, safety, and security services are considered essential use customers and usually exempt from rotating outages ordered by the California Independent System Operator due to an insufficient supply of electricity. If you believe your facility meets the criteria below, complete and return an Application for Essential Use Customer Status. (PDF, 160 KB)

Who Qualifies?

The following customers qualify:

• Government and other agencies providing essential fire, police and prison services
• Government agencies essential to national defense
• Hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities
• Communication utilities as they relate to public health, welfare and security, including telephone utilities
• Navigation communication, traffic control, and landing and departure facilities for commercial air and sea operations
• Electric-utility facilities and supporting fuel and fuel transportation services critical to continuity of electric power system operation
  
• Radio and television broadcasting stations used for broadcasting emergency messages, instructions and other public information related to the electric-curtailment emergency
• Water and sewage treatment utilities (partial or complete exemption while requiring their service, such as fire fighting)
• Areas served by networks (at utilities discretion)
• Rail transit systems as necessary to protect public safety (to the extent exempted by the commission)
• Customers served at transmission voltages to the extent that (a) they supply power to the grid in excess of their load at the time of the rotating outage, or (b) their inclusion in rotating outages would jeopardize system integrity
• Optional Binding Mandatory Curtailment Program (OBMC): Any customer, or customers, meeting the following criteria:
  • The customer must file an acceptable binding energy and load curtailment plan with the utility. The customer must agree to curtail electric use on the entire circuit by the amount being achieved via rotating outages. The customers plan must show how reduction on the entire circuit can be achieved in 5 percent increments to the 15 percent level, and show how compliance can be monitored and enforced. The customer must maintain the required reduction during the entire rotating outage period. The required curtailment level is requested prior to commencement of Stage 3. Several customers on a circuit may file a joint binding plan to guarantee the required curtailment from the entire circuit. Each utility shall facilitate communication between customers on a circuit if any customer expresses interest in enrolling in the OBMC program.
• This category was open to certain types of customers for a limited period of time during the energy crisis (2001-2003) but has since been closed.
• Petroleum refineries, vital ancillary facilities and other customers in the critical fuels chain of production (to the extent exempted by the commission)
  • Petroleum refineries are facilities that separate or alter the components in crude oil, and convert the components into usable fuels or feedstock for further processing. Vital ancillary facilities are facilities that, if curtailed during a rotating outage, would cause one or more petroleum refineries to significantly curtail production, initiate a controlled shutdown, or initiate an emergency shutdown. Eligible refineries and vital ancillary facilities must be firm electricity service customers served at transmission level or served at distribution level in an outage block exempt from rotating outages.

The CPUC noted that even for these customers, protection cannot be guaranteed because daily circuit switching may temporarily change a customer’s outage block and priority classification.

Reporting an Outage

In the unlikely event an essential use customer is inadvertently interrupted due to a rotating outage, call 1 (800) 468-4743 to report the outage. If feasible, PG&E will restore service to the essential use customer. Water and sewage treatment facilities are provided with a specific toll-free number to call if an emergency arises which requires their service, such as firefighting.

Every other year, PG&E reviews our essential use customer list to verify that each customer on the essential use customer list should continue to be included. We will make contact with each essential use customer to ensure:

• Its business functions have not changed in a manner which would eliminate it from the commission-designated categories of essential use customers
• There has been no change in the sufficiency or adequacy of its backup generation which would affect whether an essential use customer should be exempt
• Any customer who is found to need reclassification (either essential to nonessential or nonessential to essential) receives a notification 15 days in advance of the effective date of reclassification.

In addition, the company sends a Welcome Letter to new customers that includes instructions for applying for Essential Use Customer status. When an application is received, PG&E determines the customer’s status and sends written notification of their classification.

Backup and Standby Generation

In 1982, the commission directed the utilities "to evaluate the adequacy of the standby generating equipment of [essential] customers and to consider removing them from the lists of essential use customers." Decision No. 82-06-021 at p. 12. The commission reasoned that "[essential use] customers that have sufficient standby generating equipment for their essential load should not be routinely protected from rotating outages because this double protection may be jeopardizing other equally essential customers at the higher load reduction levels." For that reason, some essential customers may be "nonexempt" — that is, subject to rotating outages — if they have sufficient and adequate backup generation to support their critical activities for up to two hours, the expected typical upper duration of a rotating outage.

Hospitals and Nursing Facilities

On March 23, 2001, in an Assigned Commissioner's Ruling, the utilities were ordered to provide an automatic and unqualified exemption for all hospitals with 100 or more beds, whether or not those hospitals have any backup generating facilities. That Ruling was subsequently modified on April 3, 2001, in Decision 01-04-006 to exempt all hospitals from rotating outages regardless of the number of beds. The Ruling was again modified on April 22, 2002, in Decision 02-04-060 to exempt skilled nursing facilities licensed by the California Department of Health Services, regardless of the status of backup or standby generation.

Water and Sewage Treatment Facilities

With regard to water and sewage treatment facilities, the CPUC clarified its position in Decision No. 92315, concluding that such customers would not be automatically exempted from rotating outages. However, water and sewage facilities may request an exemption from a specific rotating outage if an emergency exists [requiring their service]. The CPUC noted that the utilities were expected to grant such requests, but that water and sewage facilities were not to request an exemption unless absolutely required to ensure the publics health and safety. Decision No. 92315 at p. 4.