Of San Diego Gas & Electric's renewable generation, 23 percent comes from geothermal plants.
The electric utility serving the San Diego area received more than 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources last year, the company informed state regulators on Thursday.
California's electricity retailers are required by state law to procure 33 percent of their power by 2020 from renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, bio-gas or small-scale hydroelectric facilities.
The electric utility serving the San Diego area received more than 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources last year, the company informed state regulators on Thursday.
California's electricity retailers are required by state law to procure 33 percent of their power by 2020 from renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, bio-gas or small-scale hydroelectric facilities.
San Diego Gas & Electric said 20.8 percent of the energy delivered to customers in 2011 came from renewable sources, up from less than 12 percent in 2010. Last year the utility relied on a credit system to comply with state renewable-energy targets.
Utilities that do not comply with the 2020 deadline eventually can be fined up to 5 cents per kilowatt hour against deficits for up to $25 million a year.
SDG&E was able to quickly add another 6 percent to its renewable portfolio last year by reworking an ongoing wind power contract to capture credits, according to Jim Avery, senior vice president of power supply for the utility, a subsidiary of holding company Sempra Energy.
Those joint ventures with the Dutch energy group Shell and New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs -- the Cabazon Wind and Whitewater Hill Wind projects -- are located in Riverside County near Palm Springs in one of the state's prime wind corridors.
Of SDG&E's renewable generation, about 60 percent now comes from wind farms, 23 percent from geothermal plants and about 15 percent from plants that run on biomass and recycled landfill gas, Avery said.
Solar power plants, currently a small piece of the equation, will become a major source of electricity for SDG&E after the completion of the Sunrise Powerlink, a $1.7 billion transmission line between San Diego and the Imperial Valley.
In 2011, SDG&E signed 17 new power contracts for 1,480 megawatts of generation capacity from projects that mostly rely on solar and wind technologies.
"This puts us on a trajectory where clearly we will be able to meet our long-term goals of 33 percent-plus by 2020," Avery said.
The effect of California's mandates on power rates for consumers remains unclear. Many renewable-energy plants have yet to come online, and contracts approved by the California Public Utilities Commission are not made public until at least three years into operations.
"The impacts will become less and less as we continue to get more and more competitive projects presented to us over the next couple of years," Avery said.
Less than 1 percent of SDG&E electricity was derived from renewable sources in 2003, when the utility put out its first tailored solicitation.
"We've grown from virtually zero to where we are today," Avery said.
