What Is “3rd Party Electric” on a PG&E Bill?

“3rd party electric” on a PG&E bill is the charge for electricity bought by someone other than PG&E, almost always a community choice aggregator (CCA) run by your city or county. PG&E still delivers the power, reads the meter and sends one combined bill. You are not paying twice: the third party replaces PG&E's generation charge.

PG&E's own bill explainer puts it this way: the electricity and gas you use are bought by PG&E or by a third-party provider such as a CCA or a CTA, and those third-party charges appear on your PG&E bill. Below is how to read that section, what the PCIA line means, and whether the third party costs more. For the broader question of why bills are high, start with our guide to high California electric bills.

Why a third party is on your bill

When a city or county starts or joins a community choice program, PG&E says California law requires that customers there be enrolled automatically, and the CCA must send at least two notices within a 60-day period. If you missed them, the first sign may be a new section on the bill. From then on, the CCA buys or generates your electricity, and PG&E keeps doing everything else: transmission and distribution, meter reading, billing, maintenance and outage response. PG&E also collects your payment and passes the CCA's share along.

PG&E names 12 CCAs in its territory: Ava Community Energy (Alameda and San Joaquin counties), Central Coast Community Energy, CleanPowerSF, King City Community Power, MCE (Contra Costa, Marin, Napa and Solano counties), Pioneer Community Energy (Placer County), Redwood Coast Energy Authority (Humboldt County), San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Sonoma Clean Power (Sonoma and Mendocino counties), Valley Clean Energy (Davis, Woodland, Winters and unincorporated Yolo County) and WestLight Energy, formerly Peninsula Clean Energy (San Mateo County and Los Banos).

Reading the bill: three kinds of electric charges

A CCA customer's electric charges fall into three buckets. PG&E's joint rate comparisons with each CCA use the same three, which makes them the easiest way to see the split with real numbers.

• Generation (the third-party section). The cost of producing the electricity, set by your CCA. PG&E defines generation charges as the cost of creating the electricity that powers your home.
• PG&E delivery. The cost of moving power over PG&E's wires, the same per kWh whether PG&E or a CCA supplies the power.
• PCIA and franchise fee. Charged by PG&E to customers who buy power elsewhere. For PG&E customers, the same costs are folded into PG&E's generation rate.

What the PCIA line means

The Power Charge Indifference Adjustment makes sure that PG&E customers and CCA customers both pay the above-market cost of power PG&E bought on their behalf. “Above market” means contracts that cost more than the power would sell for today. Your PCIA depends on your vintage, the year you moved to the CCA, because that decides which of PG&E's past purchases were made for you. The franchise fee surcharge works the same way; PG&E collects it for cities and counties.

The vintage can make a real difference. In PG&E's joint rate comparison with WestLight Energy, current as of July 2026, the combined PCIA and franchise fee is 3.746 cents per kWh for WestLight customers on the 2016 vintage and minus 0.918 cents for PG&E customers on the 2025 vintage.

Is the third party more expensive than PG&E?

It depends on the CCA, the plan and the month, which is exactly why PG&E and each CCA publish joint rate comparisons. Here is one, on PG&E's tiered E-1 plan:

Two lessons from that table. First, delivery is by far the biggest piece, about 30 cents of the roughly 41, and you pay it no matter who supplies the power. Second, a CCA's cheaper generation rate can be mostly offset by the PCIA; here the 50% renewable plan came out about $2.21 a month cheaper than PG&E, and the 100% renewable plan about $1.53 more. The comparison for your CCA and plan is linked from PG&E's CCA page, and the CPUC's rate comparison site covers the rest of the state.

What stays the same when a CCA supplies your power

PG&E says CCA customers keep access to CARE and FERA, Medical Baseline, Budget Billing and payment plans, energy-efficiency rebates and demand response programs. So the income-qualified discounts in our PG&E bill discount guide still apply. Your PG&E rate plan still matters too, because it sets the delivery price and the hours; see PG&E time-of-use plans and PG&E tier rates. If you move into a CCA city, you still call PG&E to start service.

Businesses sometimes see a similar split for a different reason: an Electric Service Provider under Direct Access, explained in Direct Access electricity in California. For solar owners, generation credits for exports are also handled by the provider that buys your power, so CCA and PG&E solar customers can see different credits; our true-up bill explainer covers the annual settlement. For how PG&E's own prices have moved, see whether PG&E rates went up.