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An American Public Power Association survey ranked
Roseville Electric Utility in the top 10-15 percent nationwide
for reliability, saying its customers experience an outage about
once every eight years, a benefit of having 85 percent of its
distribution lines underground.
As a result, about 50 percent of Ros-
eville Electric’s generation is carbon-free,
exceeding the state renewable-energy
portfolio mandate of 33 percent. “We
are seeing that more and more of our
customers are looking for environmen-
tal stewardship and energy efficiency,”
White says.
The utility recently unveiled a small
solar project with capacity for 200 resi-
dential customers, according to Erin Frye,
communications and marketing manager
for the city.
“It’s only 1 (megawatt) of power, but
we wanted to see what a demonstration
would look like before we did this on a
larger scale,” White says. “We filled up
the program in about a month, and we
have a waiting list. It wasn’t a hard sell.”
Frye says 85 percent of those cus-
tomers chose to get 100 percent of their
power from the solar project, even if it
would cost slightly more than the base
50 percent that was offered.
White says Roseville Electric’s rates
are about one-third lower than PG&E but
only in part because of the municipality’s
tax-exempt status. “The overall financial
model is different for investor-owned
utilities,” he says.
Investor-owned utilities generate
revenue through fees for long-distance
transmission of electricity and the
financial return on investing in that dis-
tribution system. These companies are
not tax-exempt and are responsible for
paying dividends to investors. In contrast,
municipal utilities like Roseville Electric
are owned by local taxpayers, making
them tax-exempt and without the finan-
cial responsibility of dividends, so rates
are closer to the actual cost of generating
power.
White says lower rates attract busi-
ness, especially energy-intensive compa-
nies, like the computer chip manufacturer,
data centers and medical-device makers
that chose to be based in Roseville. “(But)
the main driver of our business growth is
our reliability. Business tends to gravitate
to areas where they know the power will
stay on,” he says.
An American Public Power Associ-
ation survey ranked Roseville Electric
Roseville Electric Utility is municipally owned
and gets about 40 percent of its electricity
from a city-owned natural gas power plant in
Roseville.
PHOTO BY ELIJAH WILBUR COURTESY OF
THE CITY OF ROSEVILLE
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