CPUC commissioner John Reynolds presided over his first voting meeting on March 19 following his appointment to president. Additionally, Commissioner Christine Harada made her debut appearance, bringing prior experience from the California Government Operations Agency and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
The meeting's regular agenda included two decisions involving LS Power Grid California: the 'Power Santa Clara Valley Project' and the 'Power the South Bay Project,' with each carrying 5-0.
"These decisions," said Commissioner Harada, "are about what every Californian expects – that when we flip on a switch, the light turns on. When we plug in our EV – it actually charges. That we've got a family member who needs medical equipment to run through the night – that it does."
Commissioner Harada framed the approvals as foundational to reliability and economic growth, emphasizing that transmission should not constrain load growth in rapidly expanding regions.
Power Santa Clara Valley Project
A decision granted LS Power Grid California a certificate to construct the Power Santa Clara Valley Project, a $1.593 billion (cap) transmission upgrade initially approved to address reliability issues in the San José area's 115-kV system. The project was subsequently modified in November 2024 to respond to load forecast increases from 2,100 MW to potentially 4,200 MW through a new HVDC link between major substations.
The decision found the project necessary despite significant environmental impacts, adopted an environmentally superior alternative configuration (AC-1) with mitigation measures, and authorized cost recovery through CAISO-administered transmission rates subject to FERC oversight.
While the decision declined to apply the statutory presumption of need due to inconsistencies in project cost estimates (including exclusion of PG&E interconnection costs), it nevertheless found an independent reliability need based on substantial record evidence.
Power the South Bay Project
A separate decision granted LS Power a certificate to construct the Power the South Bay Project, a 12-mile 230-kV transmission line connecting PG&E's Newark substation to Silicon Valley Power's Northern Receiving Station to address reliability risks and rising demand in the San José area.
Identified by the CAISO in its 2021–2022 Transmission Plan, the project will largely be built underground to relieve system overloads and support future load growth. Construction is authorized beginning March 2026 with a CAISO-required in-service date of June 1, 2028. The maximum cost cap is $813.24 million ($677.7 million base plus 20% contingency), recovered through CAISO-administered transmission rates subject to FERC oversight.
Alberhill System Project
A decision granted SCE a CPCN to construct the Alberhill System Project, a new 1,120 MVA 500/115 kV substation and associated transmission infrastructure in western Riverside County, at a cost cap of $481.7 million in 2023 dollars, including 15% contingency.
The project addresses the Valley South System, an islanded radial network serving roughly 560,000 people and the only one of SCE's 56 sub-transmission systems with no tie-lines to adjacent networks. The system is already operating beyond safe capacity thresholds. Peak demand hit 1,103 MW in Summer 2024 (99% of nameplate capacity assuming tie-lines that don't exist, and 23% above the 896 MW single-transformer emergency rating that actually governs operations).
The Commission found that capacity, reliability, and resilience needs constitute overriding considerations under CEQA, sufficient to justify unavoidable impacts on air quality, noise, and aesthetics.
TURN's arguments were rejected across the board. Valley Substation has five 560 MVA transformers (two serving Valley South, two serving Valley North, and a fifth spare required by SCE's internal planning criteria for emergency backup). TURN argued the spare should be treated as a permanent load-serving asset, which would triple the system's apparent available capacity and undercut the case for Alberhill. The decision rejected this, finding that stripping the spare of its backup function leaves 560,000 customers with no fallback if a load-serving transformer fails.
The decision also rejected TURN's lower resilience event frequencies and alternative metrics as bases for denying the project.
Instant Analysis
The CPUC is moving into a preemptive transmission build cycle across multiple regions, approving large projects based on forecasted load, system vulnerability, and resilience to low-probability events. Cost scrutiny can disrupt formal presumptions but is not blocking approvals. Environmental impacts continue to be outweighed by reliability needs. The Alberhill project demonstrates the evolution: resilience and contingency risk are now sufficient on their own to justify major infrastructure.
More analysis is available at California Regulatory Intelligence.
