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Powering a
Region
City-owned electric utility in Roseville and community
choice aggregation in Lincoln and Rocklin bring lower
rates to Placer Valley
by Bill Sessa
D
uring last year’s PG&E pub-
lic safety power shut-offs
throughout California, nearly
800,000 customers across Northern
California were left without electricity,
in some cases for several days. But the
residents and businesses of Roseville
were unaffected. That’s because these
customers get their electricity from
the City of Roseville-owned Roseville
Electric Utility, which operates on a
different grid than PG&E.
Roseville Electric provides some of
the most reliable power in the state.
The municipal ownership of the system
also allows the utility provider to offer
electricity at a lower cost than many
other power providers in Northern
California. Local control has also meant
that the city can integrate its elec-
tric utility with its city-owned water,
wastewater and solid-waste services to
better serve residents and businesses,
and be more efficient with its use of
natural resources.
Other Placer County cities, including
Lincoln and Rocklin, are also proactive
when it comes to providing energy at
lower rates for its residents. They do so
by participating in a community choice
aggregator, Pioneer Community Energy.
This approach provides lower energy
rates and reliability to these Placer Valley
cities’ commercial and residential custom-
ers, as well as environmental advantages,
adding value to those who work or live in
the region.
Roseville Electric gets about 40 per-
cent of its electricity from a city-owned
natural gas power plant in Roseville. It
accesses other sources of energy as a
member of the Northern California Power
Agency, a collective that enables utilities
to jointly invest in energy sources. “That
gives us access to geothermal power
(from Lake County) and hydropower from
Shasta Lake and the Central Valley (Proj-
ect),” says Todd White, assistant director
of Roseville Electric. “We also buy solar
and wind power on the open market.”
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