California Dispensary Energy Costs: Small-Commercial Rates, CCAs, and the LADWP Line

The retail load in a California store

Retail is the largest single cannabis license category in California by count; DCC's most recent report puts total active annual licenses at 7,912 across all types, and storefront plus delivery retail makes up a large share, though DCC's report does not break the total out by type [dcc-supplemental-report-fy24-25]. Electrically, a dispensary is a small commercial account with a very particular shape:

• Display and accent lighting that runs all open hours, often 10 am to 9 or 10 pm.
• HVAC sized for occupant load and for the vault, which in many jurisdictions must be a separately conditioned secure room.
• Refrigeration for edibles and beverages, running around the clock.
• Security: cameras, DVRs or NVRs, access control, and exterior lighting, running around the clock.
• Point-of-sale, screens, and back-office IT.
• Curing or storage humidity control if the store also holds inventory in quantity.

The dispensary energy guide has typical watts-per-square-foot figures. What is specific to California is timing. A dispensary's busiest hours are late afternoon and evening, and California's business tariffs price 4 pm to 9 pm as the on-peak window at all three investor-owned utilities [sce-rate-options-2025] [sdge-business-pricing]. A store cannot move its customers to 2 pm. So the levers are the schedule you are on and the generation option you take, not load shifting.

The 20 kW line and which schedule a store lands on

The breakpoint that matters for a dispensary is 20 kW of maximum monthly demand at SCE and SDG&E. A 3,000 square foot store with LED lighting and a right-sized HVAC system can stay under it; a store with a large vault cooler, an old rooftop unit, or electric water heating usually cannot.

Utility	Under about 20 kW	Over 20 kW	What changes
SCE	TOU-GS-1, for demands of 20 kW or less; Option D includes time-related and facilities-related demand charges with lower energy rates, Option E has no demand charges and higher energy rates [sce-tou-gs-1-factsheet]	TOU-GS-2, above 20 kW to below 200 kW [sce-rate-options-2025]	Demand charges become mandatory rather than optional
SDG&E	TOU-A, TOU-A2, TOU-A3: no demand charge, no capacity reservation charge, no event-day surcharge [sdge-business-pricing]	TOU-M (non-coincident demand charge), AL-TOU and AL-TOU2 (on-peak, non-coincident, and generation demand charges), DG-R [sdge-business-pricing]	Demand charges appear; CPP-D event-day variants with up to 18 events become available
PG&E	B-1 (Small General Service) or B-6 (Small General TOU), no demand charge [pge-tariffs]	B-10, the demand-metered schedule PG&E assigns new accounts it expects between 75 and 499 kW [pge-sched-b10]	PG&E's small schedules do not use a hard 20 kW cutoff; assignment depends on expected and metered demand

The takeaway is that most California dispensaries have a real choice. At SCE, a store under 20 kW can elect TOU-GS-1 Option E and pay no demand charge at all, or Option D and gamble that its flat-ish load makes the lower energy price worth it [sce-tou-gs-1-factsheet]. At SDG&E, staying under 20 kW keeps the store on TOU-A with no demand charge [sdge-business-pricing]. At PG&E, a store on B-1 or B-6 has no demand charge, and a store that grows into B-10 gets one. Our rate class guide explains how to read the assignment on your bill.

The security load matters here more than its kWh suggests. Cameras and NVRs draw perhaps a kilowatt, but they draw it at 5 pm along with everything else, and the HVAC for a vault that must hold temperature for product integrity adds a compressor that can start during peak. If your store is hovering at 18 to 22 kW, a soft-start on the vault condenser or a staggered HVAC schedule can be the difference between the two schedule families.

A worked bill for a California dispensary

Assume a 3,000 square foot storefront in Orange County on SCE, open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Inputs we chose, not measurements:

Load	kW	Hours per day	kWh per day
Retail and display lighting	4.5	13	58.5
HVAC (sales floor plus vault)	9	14	126
Refrigeration	1.5	24	36
Security, cameras, exterior lighting	1.2	24	28.8
POS, screens, IT, misc.	2	14	28
Total	18.2		277

That is roughly 8,300 kWh a month with an 18 kW peak, which keeps the store on TOU-GS-1 [sce-tou-gs-1-factsheet]. At the June 2026 statewide commercial average of 27.33 cents per kWh, the energy bill is about $2,270 a month, or about $27,000 a year [eia-epm-5-6-a]. At the national average of 14.19 cents it would be about $1,180 a month [eia-epm-5-6-a]. The California premium on a single store is roughly $13,000 a year.

Two things about that number. The EIA average is a blend of all commercial customers, so an actual TOU-GS-1 bill will differ, and roughly 40 percent of this store's kWh fall inside the 4 to 9 pm on-peak window, so the store's real average price is likely above the statewide mean. Add a second vault cooler or a larger HVAC unit and the peak crosses 20 kW, the store moves to TOU-GS-2, and demand charges arrive on top.

CCA is the supply decision for a single store

For a load this size, supply choice in California means the Community Choice Aggregator. If your city or county belongs to one, the store was enrolled automatically; the CCA had to send at least two notices in the 60 days before service began, and opting out was free during that window [cpuc-cca-faq]. After the first 60 days of service, opting out may carry charges or conditions from the utility or the CCA, and a customer who leaves must stay on bundled utility service for one year before rejoining [cpuc-cca-faq]. Billing stays consolidated on one utility bill with the CCA's generation charges on it [cpuc-cca-faq]. In SDG&E territory, San Diego Community Power and Clean Energy Alliance are the two CCAs and most SDG&E customers are served by one of them [sdge-cca].

The comparison to run every year is the CCA's generation rate for your class plus the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment against the utility's bundled generation rate. The PCIA is a non-bypassable charge set by the year you departed bundled service and re-forecast each October [cpuc-pcia]; it is on the bill whether or not you noticed it. A CCA that looks a cent cheaper on generation can be a wash once the PCIA is counted, and vice versa.

Direct Access at a single store is a long shot. The store would need to file a Six-Month Notice in June and win the utility's randomizer; in 2023 PG&E had 185 GWh of room, SDG&E 45 GWh, and only SCE cleared its waitlist [cpuc-da-lottery-2023]. Suppliers also price small loads with thin margins. The mechanics are in the switching guide if you want to file anyway, and a chain of stores can pool its accounts, which is covered on the multi-site page.

Vault refrigeration and the hidden peak kW line

Product vault coolers run 24 hours a day with a compressor that cycles on demand. A single 3-ton walk-in on a hot afternoon can add 8 to 12 kW for thirty minutes while the sales floor HVAC is already at full load [sce-tou-gs-1-factsheet]. That coincidence is what pushes a TOU-GS-1 account over 20 kW registered demand and onto TOU-GS-2 with facilities-related and time-related demand charges [sce-rate-options-2025].

Mitigations that work in practice:

1. Stagger vault defrost cycles to off-peak hours where food safety allows.
2. Size condensing units with soft-start controllers so two compressors do not start in the same 15-minute interval.
3. Pre-cool the vault before 4 p.m. on SCE and SDG&E on-peak windows so the compressor idles during the billing interval [sdge-business-pricing].

At PG&E, the step from B-6 Small General TOU (no demand charge) to B-10 Medium General Demand-Metered Service happens on maximum demand, not average use [pge-tariffs]. A dispensary chain opening its tenth location should standardize HVAC and refrigeration specs so every store stays under the threshold rather than fixing peaks store by store after the first bad bill.

Delivery-only costs a retail operator cannot shop away

Whether the store takes bundled utility service, a CCA, or Direct Access, the delivery tariff stays with PG&E, SCE, or SDG&E [cpuc-pcia]. Wildfire mitigation, transmission, and public-purpose program charges sit on the delivery side of the consolidated bill [eia-epm-5-6-a]. A CCA quote that beats bundled generation by two cents per kWh may save less than expected once PCIA and delivery kWh riders are counted [cpuc-pcia].

Run the comparison on twelve months of interval data when the account has an AMI meter. Interval files show which hours drive on-peak energy and, on demand-metered schedules, which 15-minute window set facilities-related or time-related demand [sce-rate-options-2025]. Small retail accounts rarely have enough kWh to attract aggressive ESP pricing, so delivery schedule optimization usually beats supplier shopping for a single storefront [cpuc-da-lottery-2023].

County and city notes that change the answer

• Los Angeles city: LADWP, a municipal utility. No Direct Access, no CCA, no supply choice. The largest concentration of licensed storefronts in the state sits on a utility where the only lever is the rate schedule and efficiency.
• Sacramento: SMUD, also municipal. Same situation.
• Los Angeles County outside the city (West Hollywood, Long Beach, Pasadena excepted since Pasadena has its own muni): SCE delivery, with Clean Power Alliance as the CCA for member cities and unincorporated areas.
• San Diego County: SDG&E delivery with San Diego Community Power or Clean Energy Alliance as default generation for most addresses [sdge-cca].
• Bay Area: PG&E delivery, with a patchwork of CCAs by county (Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, Sonoma, and others each have one).
• Emerald Triangle retail: PG&E delivery, and rural distribution circuits where a store's reliability problem can be bigger than its rate problem; see backup generators.

Confirm which utility and which CCA serve a specific address before signing a lease; the boundary can run down the middle of a street. If you are comparing markets, Nevada dispensaries sit on one utility with no CCA equivalent, and Massachusetts dispensaries have open supplier choice with municipal aggregation that works differently from a California CCA.