[San Diego] – San Diego Community Power (Community Power) has joined the PlanetBids galaxy to enhance and streamline its non-energy procurement operations, utilizing the procurement lifecycle platform to streamline solicitation and vendor management, insurance certifications and project evaluations.
Community Power joins a deep network of fifteen other San Diego-area organizations already on PlanetBids, including the Port of San Diego, San Diego Regional Airport Authority, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, San Diego Convention Center, San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), and the City of San Diego.
As California’s second largest Community Choice Aggregator (CCA), Community Power serves nearly 1 million customers across the San Diego region. As the organization has grown, non-energy procurement activity has also increased. With 15 or more major solicitations planned annually and an additional 20 to 25 smaller solicitations and quote requests, the agency is evolving its procurement practices to support continued growth, with a centralized platform that brings greater consistency, visibility, and compliance to the full solicitation lifecycle.
As procurement activity has expanded, Community Power identified an opportunity to further strengthen how it handles vendor management, tracks solicitation activity, and standardizes processes across procurements. Moving to a centralized platform enhances visibility into opportunities for vendors while supporting a more consistent and transparent experience.
Strengthening Procurement Through Transparency and Access
Centralized Solicitation Management – PlanetBids gives Community Power a single platform to manage solicitations of all types, from formal RFPs to informal requests for quote, with built-in Q&A management, addendum acknowledgment, prospective bidder tracking, and a complete audit trail that replaces the manual email-and-spreadsheet process the team had been working around.
Stronger Vendor Management – Community Power will be able to build a centralized vendor database, target outreach by commodity code, vendor classification, and geography, and tap into PlanetBids' established vendor network across the San Diego region, giving qualified firms better visibility into Community Power opportunities and supporting broader vendor participation to deliver strong value for customers.
Project Evaluations – For the agency's larger, more complex RFPs, evaluators can score submissions, collaborate on results across multiple rounds, and produce award documentation within a single auditable workspace, replacing the off-system evaluation processes the team had been coordinating manually.
Insurance Certificate Management – Community Power will be able to send automated insurance requests to vendors, track certificates of insurance by vendor and coverage type, monitor expiration dates, and trigger renewal notifications to vendors, producers, and internal staff, reducing the manual oversight that insurance compliance currently requires.
Built for Scale in a Growing Organization
Community Power is a relatively young agency with procurement activity increasing year over year. PlanetBids gives the team a platform designed to support the agency’s continued growth, with unlimited requesters through the included Request module allowing staff across the organization to submit non-energy procurement needs directly into the system with AI-assisted scope writing and approval routing. As the organization expands its non-energy procurement function, the platform's modular structure means additional capabilities can be layered on over time.
"As San Diego Community Power continues to grow, we are focused on strengthening our procurement practices in ways that support transparency, consistency, and access to our opportunities,” said Jeb Spengler, Associate Director of Strategic Finance and Procurement at Community Power. “This partnership allows us to better connect qualified vendors with our work while aligning with a strong network of public agencies across the San Diego region – and ultimately deliver greater value for our customers.”
"San Diego Community Power joins a remarkable concentration of San Diego-area agencies already working with PlanetBids, and we're proud to welcome them to that community," said David DiGiacomo, CEO of PlanetBids. "They're a fast-growing organization taking procurement seriously, and we look forward to supporting their team as they build a more efficient, transparent, and competitive procurement program."
Vendors interested in working with San Diego Community Power can register, view open opportunities, and sign up for notifications on new solicitation postings in the agency's new PlanetBids vendor portal.
About San Diego Community Power
San Diego Community Power is a community choice energy program that gives customers an option to run their businesses and homes on significantly higher levels of renewable power at competitive rates. San Diego Community Power serves nearly a million customers in San Diego, Chula Vista, Encinitas, La Mesa, National City, Imperial Beach, and the unincorporated communities of San Diego County. Learn more at SDCommunityPower.org.
About PlanetBids
PlanetBids' lifecycle procurement platform helps procurement professionals in the public, private, education, and non-profit sectors streamline their purchasing operations and improve vendor and supplier relationships for better budget and resource management. With tools for bid and vendor management, business certification and insurance tracking, contract and document management, and reporting, PlanetBids is purpose built by procurement industry experts for agencies of all sizes and budgets. To learn more, visit planetbids.com.
Media Contacts
Kath Fields
Senior Director of Marketing
PlanetBids, LLC
13263 Ventura Blvd, Suite 101
Studio City, CA 91604
kathfields@planetbids.com
818-992-1771
planetbids.com
LinkedIn: PlanetBids
Jill Monroe
Associate Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing
San Diego Community Power
JMonroe@SDCommunityPower.org
619-813-0679
SDCommunityPower.org
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