On an emergency basis, California regulators Thursday approved the installation of real-time metering for San Diego Gas and Electric’s 4,700 largest commercial and industrial customers that don’t presently have real time metering as an aid to reducing electricity demand during peak periods this summer.

“We have to decrease demand to fight the exorbitant prices on the wholesale market,” California Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch said.

The five-member regulatory commission unanimously decided to implement the metering on a mandatory basis. But one commissioner, former CPUC President Richard Bilas, said if the state did not face the dire prospects of rolling blackouts this summer he would oppose the measure because it (a) doesn’t give customers a choice, and (b) gives the eventual San Diego meter supplier competitive advantages for eventually serving the large customers of the other two large utilities in the state, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric.

“Electric restructuring was all about giving innovation and choice to customers, and today’s order does neither,” Bilas said. “Today, there are an array of technologies, and companies should be allowed to make their own decisions. This commission should have moved forward to allow real-time metering a long time ago. We’re locking in 4,700 customers to one system that will have a monopoly advantage over future competitors.”

The CPUC punted on a number of other issues, many of which have been pending for weeks and months, awaiting clearer signals from the legislature and ongoing negotiations by the governor with various industry stakeholders.

“We’re putting on the agenda various place-holder items to allow the commission to react quickly to changing conditions in the energy arena,” Lynch said. “In case actions occur in other forums, we need to have the maximum flexibility to act.”

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