[1] https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/integra... (red = saturated local electrical infra)

For example, my own solar doesn't factor into the percentage of power generated in California. No one can tell you the price per kwh.

All PGE knows is that sometimes they send me power, and sometimes I send them power. They have no idea what my internal usage and costs are.

Everything comes to Hawaii by boat or plane, and boats run on diesel. So our power plants burn diesel, instead of coal, because coal, while cheaper per unit energy, would be a whole additional supply chain just for power plants.

And yeah, there's more solar and wind every year, but not nearly enough to provide the overprovisioning and storage necessary to use it for baseline power.

$0.50 a day for more reliable power.

Again, I specifically mean day time office, and residential "retail" price, which is 2-3 times bigger than wholesale.

When there's a sustained negative-degree-weather event for over a week, many people start plugging in extra space heaters or run their electric central heater longer, which places a huge amount of strain on the grid.

Luckily there are many in the midwest who use gas for heating, since it's way more efficient in the long winter months.

There are other factors too, like some plants not being maintained to a level where they can operate at full capacity in freezing weather for weeks at a time (many can, but some are not maintained to that standard—see TX), so those plants can't just pop online like they normally would during the summer.

Parents got ~10" of snow yesterday night. But it's just business as usual.

https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

Anyhow, the legal effect may be irrelevant if the gas producers wouldn't bother trying to export. I would imagine that producers are having trouble just delivering on their long-term, fixed-price contracts in Texas. The short-term prices might be so jacked up precisely because there's little to no surplus to export, period.

Essentially, they are willing to burn all sorts of rules and regulations in order to beat a neighboring state to attract businesses and individuals. They then make up for this loss by drawing federal dollars that are usually paid for by people and companies in those same states they drew people and businesses away from.

But they are absolutely willing to regulate where it helps them individually even if it is against purported principles.

And then, of course, there’s the annual hypocrisy where red state senators will decry any funding towards blue states (for example, emergency funding to California for fire disasters) but jump right into demanding as much money as they can get when there are disasters in their states.

Texas’s energy supply bounties hides this there but it’s evident all over the remaining red states.

I suppose Mexico might be cheaper as Nevada lacks water, particularly in remote regions where there'd be the least local resistance. Baja California has the Pacific and the Gulf of California; Sonora has the Gulf of California.

California's unique history of opposition to nuclear is unfortunate, but there are larger dynamics that are also suffocating nuclear in California; dynamics that at most are only marginally stronger in California as compared to elsewhere in the United States. Oregon or Washington could also build more nuclear plants. They already export a significant amount of electricity to California, especially to Southern California. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie) Nuclear is disfavored everywhere, and even where it's allowed and nominally profitable the RoI still sucks, so it doesn't take much friction to shift investment elsewhere. We need change at the national level to make nuclear practical again.

Though, now I'm genuinely curious why Mexico doesn't have more than its current two nuclear plants. PEMEX? (Note: Not that I think that Mexico is some third-world country bereft of regulations and organized opposition. I'm sure many of the reasons are similar as elsewhere. Still, I bet therein lie some interesting and informative stories.)

> It didn't have to be this way :(

And, it's not! The claimed price is in the ballpark of double the actual price.

[0] https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-ra...

To add, Santa Clara city is served by Silicon Valley Power which I believe has substantially lower rates than PG&E.. there may be other such local providers..

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

The cheapest possible PG&E (Silicon Valley) rate is off-peak (after midnight) winter rate. Looking at my January bill here right in front of me, that rate is $0.16675 for transmission + $0.05525 for generation. So that's 22.2c/kWh. That's the cheapest it ever gets.

The most expensive tier is peak (afternoon to midnight) in the summer, 62c/kWh.