How many extra kilowatt hours medical baseline gives a day
San Diego Gas and Electric runs medical baseline, a California program for households that depend on medical equipment or have a qualifying medical condition. The program gives an enrolled household an extra 16.5 kilowatt hours of electricity a day, or 0.822 therms of natural gas a day, or a mix of both, on top of the standard baseline allocation every residential customer already receives, according to the utility own enrollment form. That extra allowance is billed at the utility lowest rate. No source states what it is actually worth in dollars, so the numbers below are a calculation this site ran using the utility own current rate table.
What the 16.5 kilowatt hours are actually worth
San Diego Gas and Electric standard residential rate schedule, Schedule DR, charges 0.42 dollars a kilowatt hour for the lowest tier, up to 130% of a household baseline allocation, and 0.53 dollars a kilowatt hour above that, according to the rate table the utility posted effective January 1, 2026. Reading that table directly and running it against the 16.5 kilowatt hour allowance, rather than relying on the program pages alone, shows the allowance is worth 6.94 dollars a day of energy at the lowest tier rate, against 8.74 dollars a day if that same energy were billed at the higher tier instead. The difference, 1.80 dollars a day, is what a household avoids by holding that much extra energy inside the cheaper tier, about 657 dollars over a full year. This dollar figure is this site own calculation, combining the daily allowance with the rate table, not a number either the utility or the regulator states directly, and it only holds for a tiered rate household whose usage would otherwise cross into the higher tier by that much. An untiered rate household instead gets a flat 20% discount on electric charges, a separate benefit unrelated to this kilowatt hour figure.
This site calculated all 3 figures by combining the 16.5 kilowatt hour a day allowance from source 2 with the Schedule DR rate table from source 3. Neither source states these dollar figures directly.
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| Priced at the lower tier | 6.94 |
| Priced at the higher tier | 8.74 |
| Avoided by the lower tier | 1.80 |
A separate change already underway for tiered plan customers
Tiered plan medical baseline customers are also mid way through a separate change that has nothing to do with the kilowatt hour allowance itself. San Diego Gas and Electric states that the discount built into a tiered rate plan is moving onto its own bill line and shrinking as it moves, from about 36% to about 20%, over a 4 year statewide transition, a different 20% from the flat untiered discount above. A bill can rise even if a household energy use stays exactly the same, the utility states, because of that shrinking discount. No source states that the 16.5 kilowatt hour allowance itself is changing, only how much discount sits on top of it.
Both figures apply only to customers on tiered rate plans. Untiered plan customers get a separate flat 20% discount instead. The ratio between the 2 figures, the discount falling by close to half, is the finding here, not a 3rd data point, since no source states a 3rd value along this transition.
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| Before the transition | 36 |
| After the transition | 20 |
The statewide program behind the number
Medical baseline is not a San Diego Gas and Electric invention. The California Public Utilities Commission runs it statewide through 4 investor owned utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Gas Company, and states that a medical baseline household is billed for its added gas and electricity at each utility company own lowest residential rate. The dollar value of that promise differs by utility, since each one sets its own tariff, which is why the 6.94 and 1.80 dollar figures above belong only to San Diego Gas and Electric own Schedule DR, not a statewide number.