(The Center Square) – Pacific Gas & Electric customers are going to see changes to their electricity rates starting in March, according to an email to a PG&E customer obtained by The Center Square.
The email said a “base services charge” will change what some PG&E customers will pay every month in California. PG&E serves the northern and central portions of the state.
It isn’t a new charge, according to PG&E, but it is what the company is using to describe certain charges, including fees for start-up connection, energy programs, call center services and billing service charges.
Those fees were previously included in customers’ bills, but are now being rolled into the base services charge, the PG&E email said.
That charge will be $25.15 a month, according to information sent by PG&E. Instituting the rate will reduce the cost of electricity anywhere from 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour, according to PG&E documents sent to The Center Square.
Changes to customers’ bills caused by the base services charge is in response to Assembly Bill 205, which was passed by the California Legislature and signed into law in 2022. The bill required utility providers to find ways to accelerate clean energy projects to reduce the state’s dependence on fossil fuels, according to the bill analysis.
Despite the newly-instituted base services charge, not everyone will see an increase in their bill, particularly low-income customers, a PG&E representative told The Center Square.
“The goal of Assembly Bill 205 is to lower rates for low-income customers,” a PG&E spokesperson told The Center Square. “Customers who are on the income-qualified programs pay a lower fixed charge than people who are not. The base charge goes onto bills, and as part of the restructuring, the actual rate per kilowatt hour gets decreased for all customers.”
Some programs that companies like PG&E and Southern California Edison participate in, like the California Alternative Rates for Energy program, or CARE, and the Family Electric Rate Assistance program, or FERA, charge lower energy rates if a customer is considered low-income. Southern California Edison customers enrolled in those programs can expect to see lower base service charges than their higher-income counterparts. Customers enrolled in CARE get charged only $6 a month for the base service charge, while customers enrolled in the FERA program pay $12 a month for the base service charge, according to Southern California Edison’s website.
“Low-income customers’ bills should be lower,” the PG&E representative said. “For customers who are not on CARE and FERA, they might see a slight bill impact, but the thought is between the September and January decreases, that might offset any bill impact they might see.”
Rates were decreased in recent months, company officials told The Center Square, in large part in anticipation of the rollout of the base services charge.
The new restructure of what PG&E customers pay for electricity will also include a lower price per kilowatt hour, although since each customer’s energy usage can vary, the rate restructure might not lead to a lower overall bill each month, PG&E officials familiar with the rate change told The Center Square.
” As required by the CPUC, PG&E will implement the Base Services Charge (BSC) in March,” PG&E told The Center Square. “Reducing the price of electricity makes it more affordable for low-income customers and encourages the transition to more clean-powered electric appliances in the home.”
The PG&E representative added that the company will know more in February about how the base service charge will affect customer bills.
A result of the bill changes might see lower-usage customers pay more for their PG&E bill every month, while higher-usage customers might be paying more, according to graphs showing one customer’s current and new bill rates included in the email sent from PG&E to the customer.
For example, one customer’s bill showed that under the new change to customer’s bills, monthly usage under 200 kilowatts would increase the bill from $75 to $95 with the inclusion of the new base service charge. Medium monthly usage would increase that same customer’s bill from $184 to $188, and would actually reduce the bill for high usage. That would bring the customer’s monthly bill down from $304 to $296 a month, according to an email from PG&E.
Another electricity provider in the state, Southern California Edison, is also instituting a base services charge. That charge went into effect in November 2025, according to the company.
According to Southern California Edison’s website, some customers who are low users of energy might see their electricity bill go up because the base services charge, set at $24 a month, might offset the decrease in the per-kilowatt hour rate.
Customers who are not enrolled in programs meant to help low-income households, like CARE and FERA, but who still try to reduce their energy use, might actually see their bills go up if they are low-energy users, according to Southern California Edison’s website. That’s because the company is trying to charge households for energy use in ways that will reduce customers’ energy bills as more and more households replace gas appliances with electric ones, according to a company spokesperson.
“The purpose of the base services charge is to make it more affordable for all residential customers to use electric technologies,” Gabriela Ornelas, a spokesperson for Southern California Edison, told The Center Square. “We know this transition to electrification is ongoing, and as customers incorporate more efficient appliances in their home, like an electric vehicle, their electric usage will go up.”
The base services charge is meant to ultimately lower customers’ bills, Ornelas told The Center Square. The lower cost of the kilowatt hour, Ornelas said, may help offset the cost of the base services charge.
“For high-usage customers, the lower cost per kilowatt hour may help offset the base services charge,” Ornelas said. “Consequently, for low-usage customers, the low cost per kilowatt hour may not be enough to offset the base services charge.”
The PG&E official who spoke to The Center Square also said the base services charge is meant to encourage customers to use electrical appliances.
“Not only does an incentive to encourage conservation remain, but this rate restructuring also supports important state decarbonization goals by making it more affordable for customers to electrify their homes and vehicles to help California achieve our clean energy transition goals,” the PG&E official told The Center Square.
Despite the explanations of officials at California’s two largest electricity companies, at least one lawmaker is skeptical of the base services charge.
“This is advertised as a transparent method to detail grid infrastructure costs and energy use costs separately,” Sen. Ben Allen, D-El Segundo, told The Center Square via an emailed statement. “But I share concerns that this may lead to subsidizing our highest consumers through redistributed charges. Such subsidizing is exactly what we need to be avoiding in the face of current affordability challenges.”
Allen added, “I am eager to see the net results of total electric costs as base charges are implemented.”
A fact sheet sent to The Center Square on Friday explains that all PG&E customers already pay for building and maintaining the electric grid, but that the newly-instituted base service charge reallocates how those costs are shared by customers. An official with PG&E familiar with the rate changes explained that low-income customers pay a lower fixed charge.
Staff who work for the California Public Utilities Commission, which approved the rate changes to electrical customers’ bills in 2025, were unavailable to talk to The Center Square in recent days.
Employees of the commission sent a fact sheet to The Center Square on Jan. 9 explaining the base service charge, but did not send a statement to The Center Square via email. Multiple phone calls to the commission went unreturned as of Friday afternoon.
When approached at the commission’s Sacramento office this week, employees of the commission who work in that office were unable to answer questions in person.
Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, chair of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee, also was not available to speak with The Center Square.