Year: 2023

Under the preliminary plan, a temporary venue with a capacity of about 6,000 would be installed on the North Lawn Open Space area at the Great Park. The venue would be programmed for concerts in the spring and summer, beginning in 2024. The Pacific Symphony would present a half-dozen of those concerts as the venue’s resident orchestra.

The OCTA project would create a 90,000-square-foot facility at the 21.3-acre site, which straddles an existing rail spur across from the Travata seniors housing tract.

The work at the rail yard — which would occur at night — includes testing the trains’ brakes and emergency brakes; horns and gongs; and public address and intercom systems.

On the other hand, OCPA is stockpiling a massive self-survival reserve fund — growing toward $100 million — to insulate the agency from tens of thousands of electricity customers “opting-out” of OCPA.

The public has asked OCPA to release its CAISO (California Independent System Operator) settlement statements — which would show OCPA’s purchases; resales; and actual delivery of renewable products to the California electricity grid.

So far, OCPA refuses to provide these statements, which contain an accurate accounting of the granular charges incurred by OCPA when its electricity flows over the state’s power grid. CAISO settlement statements also identify much of OCPA’s purchases of system power (dirty brown power).

The following illustrates the problem: 

1. Councilmembers Treseder and Kim naively believe OCPA’s energy contracts reveal actual energy deliveries. They apparently do not know that power purchase agreements (PPAs) do not tell us what OCPA actually delivers to its customers.

2. Councilmembers Treseder and Kim also believe power content labels represent OCPA’s actual energy content. During an October 8th event, Treseder inaccurately stated that OCPA “has delivered to all four cities — all businesses and residents — 95.5% renewable energy.” And at a City Council meeting, Kim said the power content label “shows OCPA is producing renewable energy,” which is partially true, but not to the extent portrayed by the label.