The Maryland Public Service Commission will consider Potomac Electric Power Company’s application for adjustments of retail rates and charges applicable to electric services. The Exelon subsidiary filed a three-year rate plan, seeking an increase in base revenues of $74.4 million in the first year, and $59.4 million each in the second and third years, with an added $20.4 million for a nine-month extension of the third year. The company proposes a return on equity of 10.5 percent. An additional hearing will be held on March 26. 9702

The New York Public Service Commission will hold a pre-bid conference to discuss a request for proposals for an independent consulting firm to assess long-term gas plans from National Grid, Corning Natural Gas Corp. and Liberty Utilities (St. Lawrence Gas) Corp. A 2022 order established a long-term gas system planning process for local gas distribution companies to adopt improved planning and operational practices, in order to meet current and future customer needs and expectations in a transparent and equitable manner, while maintaining a safe and reliable service and minimizing infrastructure investments. 20-G-0131

The California Energy Commission will hold a workshop to discuss a draft solicitation for a funding opportunity under its Distributed Electricity Backup Assets program. The initiative, established by 2022 legislation, incentivizes the construction of cleaner and more efficient distributed energy assets that serve as on-call emergency supply or load reduction for the state’s electric grid during extreme events. The workshop will provide an overview of the draft solicitation concept, which outlines a framework for a competitive grant solicitation to fund the deployment of distributed energy resources aimed at providing emergency supply or load reduction during extreme events as part of the state’s strategic reliability reserve.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission seeks responses from Avista Utilities to comments received on the utility’s application to create a direct current fast charging rate option. This option is designed to give commercial electric-vehicle charging station owners a way to reduce market barriers associated with high variable demand in existing rate options. Charging station owners using direct current fast charging would pay a certain rate for the service including a monthly fixed demand charge as well as a rate of $0.085 for the first 250,000 kilowatt hours per month and a reduced rate of $0.073 for usage exceeding this threshold. AVU-E-23-16

The Washington Department of Ecology will hold its fifth greenhouse gas allowance auction, which will offer allowances for the current year. The current auction will offer 2024 vintage allowances totaling about 7.4 million and no future vintage allowances will be offered. Washington joined the Western Climate Initiative in December 2021, which provides an auction platform for linked programs in California and Québec, and a stand-alone program in Nova Scotia. In 2023, cap-and-invest auctions raised $1.8 billion, according to the department.

The California Public Utilities Commission will consider a proposed decision to allocate $280 million to low-income customers statewide that install solar and storage technology through the Self Generation Incentive Program, or SGIP. The amount would be allocated from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to the SGIP Residential Solar and Storage Equity budget. The proposal would also make programmatic changes to improve the initiative.The program was initially established to provide incentives for distributed generation resources to reduce peak energy demand. Since 2001, SGIP has been extended and refined several times, and the program focus has transitioned from peak-load reduction to include greenhouse gas reductions. R2005012