Dive Brief:
- A new settlement has been reached between Edison International, environmental groups, and other interest groups over the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), said Edison CEO Ted Craver during the company's quarterly earnings report. The California PUC is expected to rule on the settlement on May 1.
- Core earnings for Edison rose $42 million over Q1 last year, from $252 million to $294 million. These numbers do not include the cost of the SONGS settlement, which is estimated at $92 million but could rise up to $575 million.
- Edison also announced that bankrupt subsidiary Edison Mission Energy's assets have now been transferred over to NRG Energy.
- Looking forward, Edison International will focus on modernizing the distribution grid and exploring potential opportunities, including distributed generation.
Dive Insight:
San Onofre and Edison Mission Energy have been thorns in Edison International's side. With these already or soon-to-be gone from the company balance sheet, the company can focus on growth.
"We have reaffirmed our growth opportunity through a T&D-focused investment program complimented by a decoupled business model that mitigates the impacts of fluctuating energy sales," said CFO Jim Scilacci.
But the "transformative changes occurring in our industry" can also "represent some decent growth opportunities," indicated CEO Ted Craver. Edison's acquisition of rooftop solar company SoCore "is the starting point for a platform focused on providing integrated energy services to commercial and industrial customers and that would be largely aimed outside of the SCE territory," Craver said.
Despite the success of residential solar leasing models in certain regions, Edison isn't interested. "The residential rooftop solar business models largely require subsidies and cost shifting mechanisms to really be viable. That has not been as appealing to us," Craver said.
Edison's "primary strategy is to provide the network [...] through a modern distribution system that really facilitates any and all of these distributed resources -- whether that's rooftop solar or whether its storage and anything else," Craver said. "That's the part that we are uniquely positioned to do well and that's really where our investment dollars are focused in the utility."
