Amended  IN  Assembly  April 18, 2022
Amended  IN  Assembly  March 21, 2022

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill
No. 2061

Introduced by Assembly Members Ting and Reyes

February 14, 2022

An act to add Section 25231.5 to the Public Resources Code, relating to transportation electrification.


LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


AB 2061, as amended, Ting. Transportation electrification: electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Existing law creates the Clean Transportation Program, administered by the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission), to provide, among other things, competitive grants and revolving loans to specified entities for those entities to develop and deploy innovative technologies that transform California’s fuel and vehicle types to help attain the state’s climate change policies. Existing law requires the Energy Commission to develop and adopt an investment plan to determine priorities and opportunities for the program. Existing law requires the Energy Commission, in consultation with the State Air Resources Board (state board), as part of the development of the investment plan, to assess whether charging station infrastructure is disproportionately deployed, as specified, and, upon finding disproportionate deployment, to use moneys from the Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Fund, as well as other mechanisms, including incentives, to more proportionately deploy new charging station infrastructure, except as specified.
Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations, while local publicly owned electric utilities are under the direction of their governing boards. Existing law requires the PUC, in consultation with the Energy Commission and the state board, to direct electrical corporations to file applications for programs and investments to accelerate widespread transportation electrification to, among other things, reduce dependence on petroleum and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The PUC is required to approve, or modify and approve, programs and investments in transportation electrification, including those that deploy charging infrastructure, through a reasonable cost recovery mechanism, if certain requirements are met.
Beginning July 1, 2023, this bill would require an entity that receives an incentive funded by a state agency or through a charge on ratepayers to install, own, or operate a charging station, in whole or in part, to report charging station uptime, as defined. defined, to the Energy Commission. The bill would require the Energy Commission, in consultation with the PUC, to develop a formula to calculate uptime to provide consistent, standardized reporting of information.
Beginning January 1, 2025, this bill would require the Energy Commission, as part of the assessment of the investment plan for the Clean Transportation Program, to assess the uptime of public- and ratepayer-funded charging station infrastructure and, as part of the assessment of whether charging station infrastructure is disproportionately deployed, to assess if there are differences in charging station uptime by population density, geographical area, or population income level. The bill would require the Energy Commission to update these assessments every 2 years and to protect confidential business information, as specified. If, as a result of doing the assessments, the Energy Commission determines station uptime to be an issue that undermines adoption of zero-emission vehicles, the bill would require the Energy Commission, in consultation with the PUC, to consider adopting tools to increase charging station uptime.
Vote: MAJORITY   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: YES   Local Program: NO  

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:


SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Increasing consumer confidence in electric vehicle convenience and accessibility depends on robust, publicly available charging stations.
(b) Despite immense state progress deploying publicly available charging stations, many Californians still lack access to them, including those in low-income, disadvantaged, and rural communities, those residing in multifamily housing, and some dense urban areas.
(c) Publicly available charging stations not only need to be widely available across all communities, but they also need to be highly reliable so that consumers can depend on them no matter where they are.
(d) The State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) is required to equitably deploy the charging stations it funds. However, the Energy Commission is not required to ensure equitable access to reliable charging stations.
(e) The state currently does not have a holistic understanding of the reliability of publicly funded charging stations, nor whether there are inequities to accessing reliable charging stations between communities.
(f) If the state is going to increase consumer confidence in electric vehicles and public charging stations, it must understand the performance of publicly funded infrastructure to assess if there are issues with reliability, and, if so, address these issues with policies and tools to protect consumers.

SEC. 2.

 Section 25231.5 is added to the Public Resources Code, to read:

25231.5.
 (a) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Charging station” means an electrical component assembly or cluster of component assemblies designed specifically to charge batteries within electric vehicles by permitting the transfer of electrical energy to a battery or other storage device in an electric vehicle.
(2) “Excluded time” means the time not included when calculating uptime, as determined pursuant to the determination made by the commission and Public Utilities Commission pursuant to paragraph (2) of subdivision (c).
(3) “Uptime” means the time a charging station’s hardware and software are both operational and available for use, or in use, and the charging station dispenses electricity at the intended power level. “Uptime” does not include excluded time.
(b) (1) Beginning July 1, 2023, an entity that receives an incentive funded by a state agency or through a charge on ratepayers to install, own, or operate a charging station, in whole or in part, shall report charging station uptime to the commission.
(2) (A) The entity that received funding shall report the charging station’s uptime to the commission every 12 months, calculated over a 12-month rolling basis. The entity that received funding for the charging station shall provide this information for a minimum of five years, unless the entity that provided funding determines another timespan is more appropriate and the commission approves. The service provider of electric vehicle service equipment selected by the entity that received funding shall provide this data on behalf of the entity. The service provider may select a designee to provide this data if feasible.
(B) The commission, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, may develop different reporting requirements for nonnetworked charging stations, Level 1 charging stations, and all-inclusive mobile solar charging stations if needed to make compliance with this section feasible.
(C) This requirement shall not apply to charging stations installed at single-family homes. residential real property containing four or fewer dwelling units.
(c) (1) The commission, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, shall develop a formula to calculate uptime to provide consistent, standardized reporting of information.
(2) The commission and Public Utilities Commission shall determine what events that bring a charging station offline constitute excluded time for purposes of developing the formula. In making this determination, the commission and Public Utilities Commission shall only consider events that are outside a software or hardware provider’s control, or events that undermine the equitable distribution of station deployment pursuant to Section 25231.
(d) (1) Beginning January 1, 2025, the commission, as part of the assessment prepared pursuant to Section 25229, shall assess the uptime of public- and ratepayer-funded charging station infrastructure.
(2) Beginning January 1, 2025, the commission, as part of the assessment prepared pursuant to Section 25231, shall assess if there are differences in charging station uptime by population density, geographical area, or population income level, including low-, moderate-, and high-income levels.
(3) The commission shall update the assessments performed pursuant to this subdivision every two years.
(4) The commission shall protect companies’ confidential business information, including, but not limited to, by anonymizing and aggregating the uptime data, to ensure an individual company’s uptime data is not identifiable in its assessments pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2).
(e) If, as a result of doing the assessments pursuant to this section, the commission determines charging station uptime to be an issue that undermines adoption of zero-emission vehicles, the commission, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission, shall consider adopting tools to increase charging station uptime, including, but not limited to, uptime requirements or incentives.