Newsom signs SB 913, a 2028 deadline to count aggregations as grid capacity

Governor Gavin Newsom approved SB 913 on September 30, 2026, according to the bill's history page. Authored by state Senator Josh Becker of Menlo Park, the enrolled bill adds Section 380.1 to the Public Utilities Code: on or before June 30, 2028, the California Public Utilities Commission, in coordination with the California Energy Commission and the Independent System Operator, must enhance existing market-integrated pathways for aggregated distributed energy resources to qualify as resource adequacy capacity. Resource adequacy requirements are what existing law has the CPUC set, in consultation with the grid operator, for all electrical corporations, electric service providers, and community choice aggregators, per the Legislative Counsel's Digest.

The Secretary of State chaptered it the same day, September 30, 2026, as Chapter 987, Statutes of 2026, per the bill's history page. The Governor's office listed the bill among those signed in its September 30 legislative update.

An aggregated distributed energy resource, in the bill's definition, is an aggregation of more than one distributed resource that is capable of supplying electricity to, or reducing electricity demand on, the electrical distribution system when called upon to do so. Becker's office lists home batteries, electric vehicles, and thermostats as the hardware it has in mind. Resource adequacy exists to cover the evening net-load peak of the duck curve, and the raw material is accumulating: the CPUC reports more than 8,000 customer batteries totaling over 100 MW installed each month, according to the May 28, 2026 release from Becker's office.

What the law orders, and what the floor amendments cut

Aggregations must be able to qualify for local, system, or flexible resource adequacy capacity within any qualifying capacity or successor methodology the commission adopts, if the aggregation meets all qualifying criteria, and are eligible to receive resource adequacy credit for their qualifying capacity value, including energy exported past the utility meter to the extent the commission authorizes it. The commission sets those export conditions, with a guardrail: net energy metering customers and net billing tariff customers receiving service under Section 2827, 2827.1, or 2827.10 may not be paid twice, through both the aggregation and the retail bill credits, for energy exported in response to a dispatch through the aggregation.

Qualifying capacity methodologies must credit load reductions and net exports of energy during the specific hour of the day required for resource adequacy showings, fully integrate these resources into the current resource adequacy construct and counting conventions, and allow aggregations to combine different types of distributed resources and technologies. Multiple enrollment is authorized, so multiple devices may participate behind the same utility point of interconnection, including in separate programs, if there is no double counting or duplicate compensation for the same load reduction or energy export, and the commission must set requirements, through existing or new proceedings, to implement and enforce that. To the extent feasible, all capacity determinations must be technology neutral, based on measured performance, and weather normalized, allowing the broadest set of device types and technologies into an aggregation and putting the burden on the aggregation's provider to ensure it can deliver, in total across all of its distributed resources, the promised demand reduction or electricity supply when called upon.

Procurement is in the statute, for one class of buyer. Subdivision (c) requires the commission to allow load-serving entities, a term the section defines by reference to Section 380, to include aggregations in resource adequacy filings and commission-ordered procurement under Section 454.54, consistent with the loading order in the state's energy action plan, if the aggregation meets the energy attribute requirements specified in the applicable procurement order or resource adequacy requirements; the Digest words the same requirement as allowing electrical corporations, electric service providers, and community choice aggregators to do so. By the same June 30, 2028 deadline, the CPUC must develop recommended changes to the Independent System Operator's proxy demand resource and distributed energy resource aggregation participation models, including the must-offer obligation for each model, to be consistent with the commission's own requirements for aggregations under the section, and communicate them to the grid operator for consideration in a new or existing initiative.

On metering, the law is conditional rather than absolute. The CPUC must determine the extent to which device-level telemetry may provide accurate measurement of net load impact delivered to the grid in response to a dispatch signal from the grid operator, and must develop reasonable and standardized requirements so that distributed resources meeting them can settle on device-level telemetry, if the commission has found that the telemetry provides sufficient and accurate measurements.

Among the changes the Assembly's final floor amendments, adopted August 21, 2026, made visible in the bill's own redline: the CPUC's deadline moved from June 30, 2027 to June 30, 2028, in both mandates. An entire subdivision on procurement rules was struck; one of its paragraphs required flexibility to accommodate the differing characteristics of resource types, and the other barred procurement requirements from preventing entities other than load-serving entities from developing and managing aggregations, so third-party aggregator access now rests on commission discretion. And the definition lost a sentence that would have excluded customers on net energy metering tariffs from the definition of distributed resources; as enacted, those customers are in, subject to the duplicate-compensation guardrail.

Signed into a funding gap

The law orders pathways, not payments: the digest key records no appropriation. The program paying these devices is the California Energy Commission's Demand Side Grid Support program. AB 113, the Budget Act of 2026 amendments bill, approved by the Governor and chaptered on September 18, 2026 as Chapter 248 per its history page, carries no appropriation for it, as The Duck Curve reported on September 5, 2026; the same post reports that SB 168, chaptered July 13, 2026 as Chapter 81, made the 2021 backup-assets money also available to the program and extended that appropriation to June 30, 2027, without stating an amount.

Advanced Energy United said in an August 29, 2026 release that the program "is currently funded only through the end of 2026." Dispatches under the program are already large: Sunrun and Tesla said in a September 21, 2026 release that their fleets of home batteries dispatched more than 580 MW of peak power to California's grid on the evening of September 9, 2026, over a three-hour window called under the Demand Side Grid Support program and, in PG&E territory, the CPUC's Emergency Load Reduction Program (coverage).

The Duck Curve's reference page on US virtual power plants carries the running record of the program, the bill, and the September 9 dispatch.

Outlook

The deadline slipped a full year on the Assembly floor. The surviving procurement subdivision is written for load-serving entities, and the struck paragraph that had barred rules from shutting out other aggregators is gone, so how the CPUC's procurement rules treat aggregators that are not load-serving entities will be settled in the proceeding, not the statute. And because the digest key records no appropriation, whether the Demand Side Grid Support program has money past the end of 2026, the point at which Advanced Energy United says its current funding stops, is a budget decision the new section does not touch.