As part of its ongoing efforts to help customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) will provide one-time bill credits to eligible CleanPowerSF customers in October.
The relief program offers credits of $50 for single-family homes, $3,000 for multi-family residential buildings and $750 for nonprofit or small commercial accounts. The amounts are equivalent to a month’s worth of savings on the average customer’s electricity bill.
The $3 million initiative will provide bill credits to customers enrolled in either the California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) or Family Electric Rate Assistance (FERA) discount programs offered by the state of California.
The SFPUC noted that since the city’s Shelter-in-Place order began, San Francisco residents are using about 9 percent more energy compared to previous months. The one-time credit will cover approximately one month’s worth of an average CleanPowerSF customer’s total electricity bill charges, taking into account recent increase in energy use and the CARE or FERA discount.
CARE and FERA are state-wide discount programs offered to low-income electricity customers. Customers enroll through their investor owned utility, but the discount is available to eligible customers of community choice aggregation programs, such as CleanPowerSF.
CleanPowerSF customers that enroll in CARE or FERA by September 30, will be eligible for the one-time bill credit.
In addition to this initiative, SFPUC has launched a new financial assistance program that provides 20% discounts off water and sewer bills for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. In May, the SFPUC announced an initiative to provide discounts off water, sewer and Hetch Hetchy power and sewer bills to eligible residential customers.
SFPUC has also postponed liens and collections, waived late fees and provided rental payment deferments for tenants of SFPUC facilities. They also teamed up with its private contracting firms to support more than 45 small businesses in the Bayview area with $150,000 in grant funding.
CleanPowerSF launched in 2016. After completing citywide program enrollment, CleanPowerSF now serves more than 380,000 customer accounts in San Francisco.
Along with CleanPowerSF, the SFPUC operates Hetch Hetchy Power, the City’s publicly-owned power utility, which provides 100 percent greenhouse gas free energy to public facilities, such as City Hall, San Francisco International Airport, Muni buses, schools and libraries. Collectively, the two programs provide more than 70 percent of the electricity consumed in San Francisco with clean power.
The SFPUC is a department of the City and County of San Francisco. It delivers drinking water to 2.7 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, collects and treats wastewater for the City and County of San Francisco, and generates clean power for municipal buildings, residents, and businesses.
