Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC)

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) established the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) to assist the development of non-commercialized new and emerging clean energy technologies in California while providing assistance to commercially viable projects. EPIC consists of three program areas: (1) Applied research and development; (2) Technology demonstration and deployment; and (3) Market facilitation, consisting of market research, regulatory permitting and streamlining, and workforce development activities. EPIC activities must be designed to produce electricity ratepayer benefits for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), and Southern California Edison (SCE) customers. The annual EPIC budget of $162 million is collected from customers in electric utility bills at the following levels: PG&E (50.1%), SCE (41.1%), and SDG&E (8.8%). 

The California Energy Commission (CEC) administers 80% of the funding with the ability to invest in all of the approved EPIC activities; SDG&E, PG&E and SCE administer 20% of the funding with funding shares proportional to their respective collections and are limited to investing only in pre-commercial technology demonstrations. The following are links to each of the EPIC investment plans and the CPUC Decisions authorizing their execution and establishing programmatic requirements:

Email at [email protected]

Key EPIC contacts

EPIC Program Manager
Frank Goodman
(858) 654-1605

EPIC Project Technical Leads

Project ID

Project Title

Technical Lead’s Name

Technical Lead’s Phone Number

EPIC-1 Project 1

Smart Grid Architecture Demonstrations

Hilal Katmale

(858) 736-7711

EPIC-1 Project 2

Visualization & Situational Awareness Demonstrations

Aksel Encinas

(858) 541-5508

EPIC-1 Project 3

Distributed Control for Smart Grids

Aksel Encinas

(858) 541-5508

EPIC-1 Project 4

Demonstration of Grid Support Functions of Distributed Energy Resources (“DER”)

Amin Salmani

(850) 559-9870

EPIC-1 Project 5

Smart Distribution Circuit Demonstrations

Aksel Encinas

(858) 541-5508

EPIC-2 Project 1

Modernization of Distribution System & Integration of Distributed Generation and Storage

Molham Kayali

(620) 719-7090

EPIC-2 Project 2

Data Analytics in Support of Advanced Planning and System Operations

Hilal Katmale

(858) 736-7711

EPIC-2 Project 3

Monitoring, Communications, and Control Infrastructure for Power System Modernization

Hilal Katmale

(858) 736-7711

EPIC-2 Project 4

System Operations Development and Advancement

Prajwal Raval

(858) 503-5448

EPIC-2 Project 5

Integration of Customer Systems into Electric Utility Infrastructure

Zoltan Kertay

(858) 503-5438

Other EPIC Related Sites

Presentations and Reports

SDG&E EPIC Annual Reports

Workshop and Symposium Presentations

SDG&E EPIC Final Project Reports