What is the Capacity Bidding Program (CBP)?
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What is the Capacity Bidding Program (CBP)?
As your electricity provider, we’re not just focused on delivering your electricity; we’re here to help you find ways to reduce your energy use. For businesses of all sizes, we offer the Capacity Bidding Program (CBP), which rewards you for reducing energy when energy prices are high, demand reaches critical levels, or supply is limited. By pledging to use less energy when a CBP event is called, your business can help us prevent outages and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all while earning incentives that can create significant savings on your electric bill.
Get Paid to Reduce with CBP
- Receive a monthly incentive payment even if no load reduction events are called
- Participate through a third-party Aggregator or Self-Aggregate your portfolio of service accounts
- Make flexible monthly choices; you control how much you bid each month
How It Works
The Capacity Bidding Program is a May to October, event-based program to temporarily reduce energy usage, which means we may call an event any day of the week, but are limited to:
- 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in May
- 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. from June to October
Events are called in response to weather- or system-related energy shortages, and high energy prices, or maybe called up to three times a year for testing purposes. Each month, you choose how much your business can commit to reducing, and you’ll receive incentive payments for meeting your bid. Even if no CBP event is called, you’ll still earn incentives, so it pays to participate.
Events can be scheduled on a day ahead or a day-of basis and can last from one to six hours. Event participants will not be required to reduce load for more than one event per day and not for more than 30 hours per month.
Ready to Apply?
Select a CBP Aggregator or learn how to become an aggregator for your own service accounts. For more information, contact your SCE Account Manager or call the Demand Response Help Desk at 1-866-334-7827. For complete terms and conditions for the Capacity Bidding Program, see our Tariff sheet.
FAQs
If your business is enrolled in Bundled Service, Direct Access, or Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), or is an aggregator of these customers, you are eligible to take advantage of the Capacity Bidding Program. To participate, you’ll need to have an approved meter that measures energy use in hourly increments.
Yes. To participate in CBP, you have the option to enroll through a third-party aggregator, or become an aggregator yourself, and enroll your own service accounts in CBP as one aggregated group. This can also be done with just a single service account.
No. CBP is open to non-residential customers of all sizes, so there is no minimum monthly demand to qualify. Customers with fewer business resources may prefer to participate in CBP through a third-party Aggregator.
The CBP offers two types of incentive payments: Energy Payments and Capacity Payments.
- Energy Payments are only earned when events occur and are based on your actual energy-use reduction.
- Capacity Payments are based on the load reduction amount you nominated for the month and vary depending on the month’s capacity price. The closer your average actual energy load reduction during event hours is to your bid/nomination amount, the higher your Capacity Payment. If no event is called in a given month, you’ll receive the full Capacity Payment. If you fail to meet your bid commitment during an event, you may be subject to penalties, so we recommend bidding reduction levels that are attainable.
We know your business energy needs can change from month to month, so we designed the CBP to give you the control and flexibility to change your commitment, or “Capacity Nomination”, on a month-to-month basis. Once enrolled, you’ll have access to our easy online system to choose your bid amount and set notification preferences. You can also opt to be notified the day of, or the day before the event, by your choice of email, SMS text message, or telephone.
Once Capacity Nominations are submitted, you can change your nominated accounts or amounts up until the nomination deadline which is 15 calendar days before the start of the operating month.
No. Each service account may only be nominated once per operating month.
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