By Tim O'Connor
(5 -7 minute read)
You might have missed it, but the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) recently released an update to its ambitious and industry-leading power system plan – also called the LA100 Plan (LA100). This update is a significant milestone towards the City’s decarbonization strategy, with implications for the future of energy affordability in Los Angeles.
Our job at the City of Los Angeles’ Office of Public Accountability (OPA) is to help ensure that LADWP is transparent, fair, and accountable to the people it serves. Given the LA100 Plan’s importance to communities, businesses, and industries across the region for decades to come, this article explains:
- The basics of LA100;
- Why LA100 is needed and how it is updated on an ongoing basis;
- How the plan addresses affordability; and,
How the next iteration of the LA100 study could be enhanced to further minimize costs while delivering valuable services to ratepayers.
What is the LA100 Plan?
Despite its name, the LA100 Plan is not simply a renewable energy plan or a compliance plan to achieve the City of Los Angeles’ 100% clean energy target by 2035. It is LADWP’s full-system modernization strategy, which will unfold over the next 20 years. The LA100 Plan includes investments across the power system, such as upgrades and maintenance on poles, wires, and other equipment in the transmission and distribution systems; electricity generation; planning for more electric vehicles and homes; workforce development, customer programs, and emerging technologies. All and more are needed to achieve a stable and carbon-free grid, and to safely and reliably operate the largest municipal utility system in the United States.
Example elements of the LADWP Power System Plan
Given the breadth of the LA100 Plan, one thing is clear: many of the investments reflected in the Plan’s projections are things the utility needs to do in some form, regardless of whether the City’s decarbonization goal was 100% or something less ambitious. What LA100 does is to bring them together into a comprehensive framework that is regularly updated.
Some investments in LA100 stem from the fact that the city is growing and its infrastructure is aging. Other investments result from state laws like SB 100 and local laws and policies that require the utility to support more electric vehicles, provide for more electric buildings, and use more renewable energy. Then there are investments for utility modernization, moving beyond basic infrastructure to adopt cutting-edge technology. These modernization investments include using advanced digital platforms to manage real-time power demands, such as monitoring and controlling the time that smart appliances are used in homes and businesses, and deploying integrated and distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar and energy storage networks, that can return power back to the grid when it’s needed most.
Ensuring all LADWP investments are made efficiently, equitably and in a coordinated manner is a major focus of OPA to help control LADWP’s costs and protect customers from rising bills.
Is the LA100 Plan necessary?
In a word: yes.
The LA100 Plan is updated every couple of years and sets the framework for operating LADWP’s electric system in a changing world. It reflects the need to maintain reliability under increasingly complex operating conditions, including extreme weather events, changing load patterns, and a shift from conventional power generation resources.
Without it, LADWP would have no plan to navigate the complex grid conditions involved in the clean energy transition or to address routine maintenance on an aging distribution system.
Of course, some will question whether every element of the plan is needed, like the construction of green hydrogen-enabled power plants or a full transition to 100% renewables by 2035. For those, investments must be evaluated on the merits and shown how they fit within the broader strategy.
So, when talking about the LA100 Plan, the key question is not whether the power system should evolve. It must. The question is whether and how LADWP can intelligently modernize its power system in a coordinated and balanced way that achieves reliable decarbonization without sacrificing customer affordability.
Our team at OPA believes that it can.
What does the LA100 Plan say about affordability, and where should the next LA100 Plan Update focus?
Although LADWP has kept power rates competitive for more than 10 years, the LA100 Plan shows that over the next decade the cost to keep the local power system running is expected to increase. This is especially true as LADWP and the rest of the state move toward full system decarbonization. These costs are due in part to fuel switching, energy efficiency investments, and modernizing visibility and control of the Power System. At the same time, the LA100 Plan validates how costs are just one side of the ledger – with widespread deployment of technologies also helping to enable significant consumer savings in overall energy and health costs.
At OPA, affordability is central to our mission. That is why we are focused on affordability challenges identified in LADWP’s LA100 Plan, as well as in our office’s own community listening sessions and LADWP’s LA100 Equity Strategies study.
This is where OPA sees more room for growth and refinement in the LA100 Plan going forward. For example, the current LA100 Plan includes multiple modeling scenarios that show how meeting local goals can also result in increased affordability challenges on the not-so-far horizon – especially for achieving the last 10% of carbon reductions from the electric grid. Those scenarios identify how things like long-duration storage, clean generation, and enhanced transmission capability result in the need for more spending. However, since technology matures so fast, models used in the last iteration of the plan may not have fully explored the vast array of multi-benefit solutions available today to manage costs, meet system-wide goals, and equitably serve all ratepayers. LADWP projections also highlight the critical need for modelling how an integrated approach that extends beyond the Power System - one that brings together the whole of the utility and communities– can support longer-term household affordability and accessibility.
How will the next cycle of LA100 planning address ratepayer costs?
LADWP is now entering a refresh cycle for the LA100 Plan, with updated modeling work expected to continue through 2026 and 2027. This effort comes at an important moment for the utility, the City, and the broader energy sector. Why? Because it offers an opportunity for LADWP to demonstrate how an even more integrated effort can benefit ratepayers - including through customer-facing programs, resource planning, power rate modernization, prioritized investments, and the deployment of new technology. OPA believes this is one of the only ways LADWP can hit its targets without breaking the bank since these strategies help avoid or defer portions of future system costs.
The key is this: no one solution is going to address modern grid planning and escalating costs, but a holistic approach to address various needs may. This is why regularly updated integrated planning and reforming power system rates matter, and why the LA100 Plan update is so critical.
In a world where multiple solutions are available, the next LA100 Plan should show how generation planning, distribution planning, rate design, customer programs, electrification policy, and affordability policy can operate in an integrated manner, supporting ratepayers and the energy system in the process.