The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has set an experiment in time-of-use electricity rates for large users — commercial, industrial and agricultural customers — offering mid-day pricing discounts when the state’s growing renewable-generated power supplies are most plentiful. The five-member CPUC said it hopes the experimental Energy Matinee Pricing program proves beneficial to consumers and better manages the state’s water and energy resources. The program is designed to use price signals to encourage the state’s largest electricity consumers to shift more of their energy demand to times when energy generation from renewables and low-water using energy are abundant. Energy use profiles show that late afternoon to evening, when solar and wind supplies are low, often is a peak demand time. The discount pricing in afternoon hours are designed to draw more nonresidential load to the mid-afternoon time period, when renewables, particularly solar, are more plentiful.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should reject claims of undue discrimination raised by BP Energy, Dominion Cove Point LNG LP (DCP) said in the latest salvo of a long-running dispute over capacity at the proposed liquefied natural gas export facility in Calvert County, MD. BP recently asked FERC to expedite action on the case, which was remanded by the United States Court of Appeals, and allow it to “turn back” import expansion storage and regasification capacity as the agency previously allowed another existing import customer. But FERC’s reasons for having rejected BP’s undue discrimination claim “remain correct,” DCP said in a filing posted on the regulator’s website Monday, “and the Court’s decision did not in any way hold to the contrary.” DCP asked FERC to reject BP’s claims “and provide further explanation of its rationale as required by the Court.” FERC first authorized DCP to construct the LNG export facility in September 2014.