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: