Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC)

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) established the Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) to assist the development of non-commercialized new and emerging clean energy technologies in California while providing assistance to commercially viable projects.  EPIC consists of three program areas: (1) applied research and development; (2) technology demonstration and deployment; and (3) market facilitation, consisting of market research, regulatory permitting and streamlining, and workforce development activities.  EPIC activities must be designed to produce electricity ratepayer benefits for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), and Southern California Edison (SCE) customers.

The annual EPIC funding is collected from customers in electric utility bills at the following levels: PG&E (50.1%), SCE (41.1%), and SDG&E (8.8%).  The California Energy Commission (CEC) administers 80% of the funding with authorization to invest in all three program areas.  SDG&E, PG&E and SCE administer 20% of the funding with funding shares proportional to their respective collections and are limited to investing only in pre-commercial technology demonstrations.  Therefore, SDG&E’s share of the EPIC funding is 0.2 x 0.088 = 1.76%.

The information in this website focuses on the SDG&E EPIC Program and includes links to the comprehensive final reports for the SDG&E-administered EPIC projects and other SDG&E EPIC program information.  An EPIC database encompassing the work of all four EPIC administrators is available at https://www.epicpartnership.org/. 

This program is funded by California utility customers under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission.