March 19, 2026 CPUC Voting Meeting Preview: Transmission-Level Planning Problems Take Center Stage

Below is the lineup of items the CPUC is scheduled to consider on March 19. The dominant story is the buildout of physical and regulatory infrastructure for a mass electrification future. Three recurring threads are:

• How the influx of data centers is becoming a transmission-level planning problem. California's San Jose cluster alone features STACK's 90 MW, Menlo Equities' 49 MW, LS Power's two transmission CPCNs (one at $1.6 billion, one at $813 million), plus a load forecast doubling from 2,100 to 4,200 MW. These developments show Silicon Valley load growth outpacing the existing grid so dramatically that the CPUC is approving billions in new transmission on compressed timelines. SCE's Alberhill project in Riverside extends the same logic to Southern California's heat-vulnerable load pockets. The situation is no longer incremental; the Commission is authorizing the kind of capital deployment that reshapes utility balance sheets for a generation.
• Attempts at accountability are intensifying. A pending ICA remediation item is the clearest example (turning hosting capacity maps from informational tools into compliance-grade tools) but similar themes show up in the Climate Credit PD, SDG&E's ERRA compliance review, a denial of SDG&E's POLR memorandum account, and the closure of PG&E's RAMP. Capital deployment's mass acceleration in the electrification age will reveal much about costs, oversight, and regulatory problem-solving.
• The machines of electrification keep getting money, while legacy infrastructure recedes. A tripling of the DG Statistics platform, ORCHARD's EV charging layer, a Flex Alert media extension, an SGIP methane-quality standard holdover...none of these are big-ticket items, but they demonstrate where all major movement is headed. Meanwhile, moves at Shell and Crimson Pipeline tell an equally clear narrative, albeit from the standpoint of departure.

Last, two Consent Agenda items (a SoCalGas GCIM reward and SCE's debt authorization) offer a microcosm of utility finances. One utility gets rewarded for efficient natural gas procurement, another gets funding to finance capital expenditures and address wildfire-related liabilities.

DATA CENTERS

• Draft Resolution E-5447 approves PG&E's Advice Letter 7653-E, and authorizes a non-standard Engineering, Procurement, and Construction agreement with STACK Infrastructure for construction of the 115 kV Ringwood Switching Station in San Jose. The Ringwood facility is a key component of infrastructure needed to energize STACK’s planned 90-megawatt data center load. Under the agreement, STACK will design, procure, and construct the switching station and then transfer ownership to PG&E upon completion.
• Separately, Draft Resolution E-5433 approves, with modifications, PG&E’s agreement to energize a new 49-MW data center and computing lab in Sunnyvale for Menlo Equities. The data center requires the construction of new transmission facilities, including a 115-kV line extension, and substation upgrades. The draft resolution finds the project reasonable but imposes additional ratepayer protections due to the scale and uncertainty of a transmission-level large load. These protections include limiting refunds of the customer's upfront energization costs to 75% of PG&E's annual net revenues from the project, plus an income-tax component adjustment.

TRANSMISSION INFRASTRUCTURE

• A proposed decision grants LS Power Grid California a certificate to construct the Power Santa Clara Valley Project, a $1.6 billion transmission upgrade initially approved to address reliability issues in the San José area's 115-kV system. The project was subsequently modified in November 2024 to respond to load forecast increases from 2,100 MW to potentially 4,200 MW through a new HVDC link between major substations. The PD finds the project necessary despite significant environmental impacts, adopts an environmentally superior configuration with mitigation measures, and authorizes cost recovery through CAISO transmission rates subject to FERC oversight, emphasizing that rising load forecasts and grid stability needs outweigh unavoidable cultural resource impacts. 
• Another item on the March 19 Regular Agenda addresses a separate LS Power application. A proposed decision grants LS Power Grid California a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to construct the Power the South Bay Project, a roughly 12-mile 230-kV transmission line connecting PG&E's Newark substation to Silicon Valley Power's Northern Receiving Station to address reliability risks and rising demand in the San José area. Identified by the CAISO in its 2021–2022 Transmission Plan, the project will largely be built underground to relieve system overloads and support future load growth. Construction is authorized beginning March 2026 with a CAISO-required in-service date of June 1, 2028. The maximum cost cap is $813.24 million ($677.7 million base plus 20% contingency), recovered through CAISO transmission rates subject to FERC oversight.
• Additionally, a proposed decision grants SCE a CPCN to construct the Alberhill System Project in western Riverside County. The PD concludes that new transmission and substation infrastructure is needed to address growing electricity demand, reliability risks, and resilience concerns in the Valley South System. The PD finds that this load pocket (which serves hundreds of thousands of residents and lacks tie-lines to neighboring systems) faces increasing exposure to outages and capacity constraints during extreme heat and contingency events, and that the project’s benefits outweigh its environmental impacts. The PD sets a cost cap of $482 million (2023 dollars) for the three-year construction project.

CLIMATE CREDIT

A proposed decision in R.25-07-013 (the Climate Credit rulemaking) orders PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E to pause distribution of the 2026 residential electric Climate Credit while it considers moving the credit to higher-billed summer months later this year. The PD concludes that allowing the spring 2026 credit to proceed as scheduled would violate the Public Utilities Code, which explicitly requires distribution in high-billed months (and spring is historically a low-bill period for electric customers). 

INTEGRATION CAPACITY ANALYSIS

Draft Resolution E-5440 approves, with modifications, remediation plans submitted by PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E to fix accuracy, transparency, and usability problems in their Integration Capacity Analysis tools. These tools estimate how much distributed energy can be added to the grid without upgrades. Utilities must improve data transparency, reduce redactions, update maps more consistently, and report the causes of discrepancies. The draft resolution is the Commission’s clearest move yet to turn Integration Capacity Analysis from a planning artifact into an accountability tool. By forcing the utilities to track when Integration Capacity Analysis results diverge from real interconnection outcomes, the CPUC is indicating that inaccurate hosting-capacity maps are now a regulatory compliance issue, not just a stakeholder frustration.

FLEX ALERTS

A proposed decision in R.25-09-004 extends the statewide Flex Alert paid media campaign through calendar year 2026, authorizing a one-year budget of $15 million funded by customers of the three large investor-owned utilities. The reduced budget reflects the end of emergency programs like Power Saver Rewards while acknowledging that Flex Alerts still deliver measurable load relief at relatively low implementation complexity compared to new program design.

SDG&E 2023 ERRA COMPLIANCE

A proposed decision approves (with modifications) SDG&E's 2023 Energy Resource Recovery Account compliance application, finding that the utility’s power procurement, contract administration, dispatch decisions, and related accounting were largely prudent and consistent with CPUC-approved plans. The PD also determines that SDG&E recorded a net undercollection of about $214.6 million across its procurement-related balancing accounts (excluding confidential subaccounts) and allows recovery of those costs through established mechanisms.

PROVIDER OF LAST RESORT

Draft Resolution E-5411 denies SDG&E's request for review of Energy Division’s disposition denying Advice Letter 4475-E, which sought to preemptively establish a memorandum account to track incremental administrative and procurement costs in the event of a mass involuntary return of customers to Provider of Last Resort service. If the item is authorized, actual cost tracking would remain available to SDG&E, albeit situationally and under CPUC control.

GAS COST INCENTIVE MECHANISM

A proposed decision approves SoCalGas’s request for an $8.37 million shareholder reward under its Gas Cost Incentive Mechanism for Year 31 (April 2024–March 2025), after finding the utility procured natural gas supplies significantly below its benchmark cost. SoCalGas’s actual gas procurement costs were about $42.1 million under the benchmark, producing $33.8 million in savings for core ratepayers and the remainder as a shareholder incentive under the GCIM’s established sharing formula, which rewards utilities for acquiring gas at or below market prices.

UTILITY FINANCES

A proposed decision authorizes SCE to issue up to $9.85 billion in new debt and $1.155 billion in preferred equity, a $525 million reduction that SCE itself proposed after updating forecasts to reflect the CPUC's 2025 General Rate Case decision (D.25-09-030). The funds would finance capital expenditures, refinance maturing obligations, and address wildfire-related liabilities through 2028.

RISK ASSESSMENT & MITIGATION PHASE

A proposed decision closes PG&E's 2024 Risk Assessment and Mitigation Phase proceeding, which serves as the front-end risk analysis for PG&E’s 2027 Test Year General Rate Case. The PD finds that PG&E’s RAMP filing, which uses a new cost-benefit framework to monetize safety and reliability risks, complies with Commission requirements despite multiple identified deficiencies.

DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

Draft Resolution E-5436 increases funding for the California Distributed Generation Statistics platform to $2.6 million per three-year contract and allows annual inflation-indexed adjustments to support ongoing maintenance and expansion. If authorized, this move would nearly triple current funding and position the platform as a long-term backbone for forecasting, planning, and enforcement.

ELECTRIC VEHICLE LOAD MANAGEMENT

Draft Resolution E-5452 approves (with modifications) SCE's request to update its Low Carbon Fuel Standard Holdback Implementation Plan to add a new vehicle-grid integration program known as Orchestrated Charging and Advanced Resiliency for Distribution (ORCHARD). ORCHARD would integrate a software layer into SCE’s Distributed Energy Resource Management System to directly manage residential electric vehicle charging in order to reduce localized distribution peaks caused by Time-of-Use charging patterns, defer transformer upgrades, and lower system costs.

SELF-GENERATION INCENTIVE PROGRAM

A proposed decision denies ENGIE North America’s petition to modify a 2021 decision in the SGIP rulemaking (D.21-06-005). The petition sought an exemption for wastewater treatment plants from the requirement that on-site biogas used in internal combustion engine projects contain at least 96% methane. The PD finds the petition procedurally defective. If adopted, it would leave the existing methane quality standard in place while keeping the broader SGIP rulemaking open.

PETROLEUM PIPELINES

A proposed decision approves Shell California Pipeline Company LLC's withdrawal of the Carson-to-LAX and Carson-to-Van Nuys petroleum pipelines from common carrier service. The pipelines have never served non-affiliate customers, no protests were filed, and the PD finds no public purpose in maintaining common-carrier status. In short, the PD retires two legacy Shell pipelines from CPUC jurisdiction after decades of nominal common-carrier status never used by third parties. For operators, the PD illustrates a viable pathway for converting unused common-carrier designations to private pipelines where the public-service rationale has disappeared.

CRUDE OIL TRANSPORTATION

A proposed decision approves Crimson California Pipeline L.P.'s request to withdraw the southern segment of the Seal Beach Pipeline from public utility service. The 5.87-mile crude oil pipeline segment, running between Seal Beach and Signal Hill, had only one customer (DCOR LLC), which independently terminated its use of the pipeline after deciding to end operations at Platform Esther and shift to a different oil platform, and withdrew its protest to the application. Crimson argued that continued operation would require expensive repairs, relocations, and maintenance costs that far exceed revenues (in particular, insufficient crude oil volumes to purge saltwater intrusion were causing pipeline corrosion requiring frequent repairs). The PD finds those financial arguments reasonable and determines the pipeline is no longer necessary for public utility service. Crimson will place the pipeline into out-of-service deferment status rather than abandon it, purging hydrocarbons, filling the line with nitrogen, and isolating it while retaining ownership.