California Extraction and Processing Energy: Chillers, Ovens, and the 4-to-9 pm Problem

What a California extraction facility actually runs

Manufacturing is a separate DCC license type from cultivation, and it covers hydrocarbon and CO2 extraction, ethanol extraction, distillation, infusion, and packaging [dcc-supplemental-report-fy24-25]. The electrical loads look nothing like a grow's. Instead of a few hundred kW of lighting that switches on and off twice a day, a lab has a handful of large motors and heaters that cycle:

• Process chillers and recirculating chillers for hydrocarbon condensers, rotary evaporators, and jacketed vessels. These are the largest continuous load in most labs and are the first thing to check when demand runs higher than expected.
• Vacuum ovens, decarboxylation ovens, and heated jackets: resistive, easy to schedule, and often left running unattended.
• Solvent recovery: falling-film evaporators and rotovaps pair a heater with a chiller and run for hours per batch.
• Compressed air, vacuum pumps, and CO2 recovery compressors for supercritical systems.
• C1D1 or C1D2 hazardous-location ventilation and make-up air for the extraction booth.
• Cold storage for biomass and crude, and a conventional HVAC load that is small next to a grow's.

Our extraction load guide covers the equipment in detail; this page is about how those loads meet California's tariffs.

Why flat loads do better under California's rate design

Every business schedule at PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E is time-of-use. PG&E's B-19 defines peak as 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm every day, adds a summer partial-peak from 2:00 to 4:00 pm and 9:00 to 11:00 pm, and gives March, April, and May a super off-peak window from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm [pge-sched-b19]. SCE's general service schedules price on-peak at 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm on weekdays [sce-rate-options-2025]. SDG&E's plans use 4 pm to 9 pm as on-peak and narrow event-day windows to 4 to 6 pm on some plans [sdge-business-pricing]. On demand-metered schedules, a second demand charge is assessed on the highest interval inside that window: PG&E calls it a peak-period demand charge, SCE a time-related demand charge, SDG&E an on-peak demand charge [pge-sched-b19] [sce-rate-options-2025] [sdge-business-pricing].

A grow with a 12/12 photoperiod struggles with this because half its rooms are lit at any hour. A lab can choose. Nothing about extraction has to happen between 4 and 9 pm. The operations that matter for the bill are batch processes with a start button, and the time-related demand charge is set by a single 15-minute interval. If the chiller, the oven bank, and the ventilation are all running at 5:30 pm one day in the month, that interval is your on-peak demand for the whole month. If they are not, the charge collapses.

This is also why the peak demand versus peak usage distinction matters more for labs than for any other facility type. Total kWh is small; the shape of the day is everything.

Where a lab lands in each utility's delivery classes

Facility size	PG&E	SCE	SDG&E
Small lab, under about 20 kW	B-1 or B-6, no demand charge	TOU-GS-1, 20 kW or less; Option E has no demand charge [sce-rate-options-2025]	TOU-A, TOU-A2, TOU-A3, no demand charge [sdge-business-pricing]
Mid-size lab, tens of kW to a few hundred	B-10, which PG&E assigns to new accounts expected at 75 to 499 kW [pge-sched-b10]	TOU-GS-2 (above 20 kW to below 200 kW) or TOU-GS-3 (200 to 500 kW) [sce-rate-options-2025]	AL-TOU, AL-TOU2, TOU-M, or DG-R, all over 20 kW with non-coincident and on-peak demand charges [sdge-business-pricing]
Large manufacturing campus	B-19 once demand exceeds 499 kW for three consecutive months [pge-sched-b19]	TOU-8 above 500 kW [sce-rate-options-2025]	Same over-20 kW family; CPP-D event-day variants available [sdge-business-pricing]

Two placement notes specific to California labs. First, the agricultural test: PG&E serves an account on an AG schedule only when 70 percent or more of its energy is for agricultural end uses [pge-sched-b19]. Extraction is manufacturing. A lab that shares a meter with a grow can drag the combined meter under 70 percent and cost the grow its agricultural rate. Meter the manufacturing side separately if there is any chance the cultivation side qualifies. Second, SDG&E's 20 kW breakpoint is low enough that a single chiller decides which family you are in [sdge-business-pricing]; a lab that can keep its monthly maximum under 20 kW pays no demand charge at all, and one that crosses it once is on the demand-billed plans.

Climate and the chiller load

California's 929 cooling degree days statewide [noaa-cag-california] understate the problem for inland labs. Process chillers reject heat to outdoor air, and their efficiency falls as ambient temperature rises. A hydrocarbon lab in the Coachella Valley or the San Joaquin Valley in August is asking a condenser to dump heat into 100 F air at the same hour the tariff prices on-peak demand highest. Coastal labs in the Bay Area, Santa Barbara, or San Diego get free help from the marine layer. If you are choosing a location for a new manufacturing license, the chiller's summer performance is a real line item, not a rounding error.

A worked cost example

Assume a mid-size hydrocarbon and distillation lab in the Inland Empire on SCE, with the following equipment and duty cycles. Every number here is an input we chose; substitute your own.

Load	Connected kW	Hours per day	kWh per day
Process chillers (two units)	40	16	640
Vacuum and decarb ovens	18	10	180
Solvent recovery (evaporator plus chiller)	22	8	176
C1D1 exhaust and make-up air	12	24	288
Compressed air, vacuum pumps, cold storage	10	24	240
HVAC, lighting, offices	15	12	180
Total	117		1,704

Over a 26-day operating month that is about 44,300 kWh. At California's June 2026 commercial average of 27.33 cents per kWh, the energy portion is about $12,100 a month, or $145,000 a year [eia-epm-5-6-a]. At the U.S. average of 14.19 cents it would be about $6,300 a month [eia-epm-5-6-a]. The lab is a TOU-GS-2 account at SCE (above 20 kW to below 200 kW), so it also pays a facilities-related demand charge on its 117 kW coincident peak and a time-related demand charge on whatever it draws between 4 and 9 pm [sce-rate-options-2025].

Now schedule it. Run both chillers, the ovens, and recovery from 6 am to 4 pm, hold only ventilation, cold storage, and offices through the evening, and restart the overnight recovery batch at 9 pm. The facilities-related demand does not change. The time-related demand drops from roughly 117 kW to roughly 37 kW. We are not publishing SCE's current $/kW here because the figure changes with each rate filing; pull it from the TOU-GS-2 sheet in the SCE tariff book and multiply by the 80 kW you removed. The energy charges also fall because the kWh you moved now bill at off-peak prices.

Supply: CCA is the default, DA is the lottery

A lab has the same three generation options as any California business. If a Community Choice Aggregator serves your city or county, you were enrolled automatically and can opt out to bundled utility service; opting out after the first 60 days of service may carry charges and locks you out of the CCA for a year [cpuc-cca-faq]. Direct Access requires filing a Six-Month Notice in the second full business week of June and winning the utility's randomizer. In the 2023 cycle, SCE had 1,206 GWh of headroom and cleared its waitlist, while PG&E had 185 GWh and SDG&E 45 GWh [cpuc-da-lottery-2023]. A lab's flat, predictable load is exactly what an Electric Service Provider likes to price, so if you are in SCE territory the lottery is worth taking seriously. Step-by-step instructions are in the switching guide.

Hydrocarbon versus ethanol regulatory load differences

Hydrocarbon rooms require classified ventilation whenever extraction equipment operates, which means exhaust fans and make-up air run continuously during batch windows [title24-ceh]. Ethanol facilities may batch less frequently but run larger chillers for longer solvent recovery cycles. Both patterns interact with SCE's 4 to 9 p.m. on-peak window and PG&E's similar TOU periods [sce-rate-options-2025] [pge-tariffs].

Fire code often dictates when equipment may start; energy scheduling must work within those limits. Where code allows, shift decarb oven preheat and chiller pull-down to off-peak hours before the afternoon peak. The facilities-related demand charge does not move, but the time-related demand charge can drop sharply when batch work finishes before 4 p.m. [sce-rate-options-2025].

Co-metering with cultivation on one service point

Many California manufacturers share a campus meter with adjacent indoor cultivation [dcc-supplemental-report-fy24-25]. Flat lighting load sets a high facilities-related demand floor; batch spikes from chillers stack on top during on-peak hours [sce-rate-options-2025]. If licensing or fire code requires separate meters for cultivation and processing, enroll supply on both accounts before energization and model PCIA vintage separately for each departure from bundled service [cpuc-pcia].

Efficiency money for process equipment

PG&E's business efficiency programs pay prescriptive and custom incentives on a first-come, first-served basis and include variable-frequency drives and process improvements through third-party implementers [pge-business-ee]. For a lab the obvious targets are VFDs on chiller pumps and exhaust fans, and a controls project that interlocks ventilation with extraction activity instead of running exhaust at full speed around the clock. Ask for a custom-measure review before you buy; incentives are approved before installation, not after.

Two more things to check before you sign anything. Motor-heavy labs often run a poor power factor, and California tariffs can bill for it. And every account on B-10, B-19, TOU-GS-2 and above has an interval meter, which means twelve months of 15-minute interval data are available to you on request; that file is the single most useful thing you can hand a supplier or a broker.

Compare a lab in a single-utility Western state on Nevada extraction, or an Eastern market with open supplier choice on New York extraction.