CA Electric Bills on Income | Hacker News Reader

CA Electric Bills on Income

ktla.com

26 pointsrib3ye45 comments

It’s astounding how many ways governments find to repackage what can trivially be done with tax policy.

What’s next, income-based pricing at the gas station? Just price it into the tax rates. This appears to basically be the equivalent of a (very approximately) .1% tax hike and a fixed electric rate across the board. But instead of that, which can be easily reasoned about, we get a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach like this.

Seriously. This seems way easier to implement at the state level. I don’t want to have to run around updating my income to every service provider.

Increase or decrease taxes at the state level, not at each point of payment.

Lol since when is implementing tax policy changes a trivial thing to do? It’s literally one of the hardest things to do at any level of government.

> It’s astounding how many ways governments find to repackage what can trivially be done with tax policy.

Shifting the cost of electricity from per-kwh usage charges to fixed monthly connection charges cannot trivially be done through tax policy, unless one counts tariffs for regulated services as taxes (which, importantly, the California Constitution does not), in which case this is being done through tax policy.

The equivalent of making the fixed connection charges income sensitive could have trivially been done through (e.g.) income tax policy, but that would have required parallel changes to tax and tariff policy, whereas this one change to tariff policy is simpler, even before considering the state constitutional issues that, in California, a tax policy change (even if structured so that there is no net increase) that involves an increase in any portion of any tax in California requires either a legislative supermajority or an (expensive, in practice, even if successful) public ballot measure, whereas a tariff change requires neither.

I'm referring specifically to the income grading, not shifting to a fixed-fee model. In reality, the legislature (at local/state/national levels) has already made the tax code so convoluted and politicized, which is why musical chairs accounting stunts like this are necessary in the first place.

Is it really simpler to document income to PG&E for every household in California, every year, in perpetuity? Household income isn't tracked by the IRS or FTB, which tracks individual income, so they need a different reporting structure.

Doesn't this effectively eliminate the incentive for people to use less electricity? If I am going to pay a fixed amount every month, why make any effort to buy more efficient appliances, light bulbs, turn off my A/C and electric heaters when I don't need them.

It reduces it. Per kilowatt pricing still exists, they just shift fixed utility costs (e.g. transmission infrastructure) to a fixed rate.

Better explained at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/pge-utility-elec...

Thanks! I answered my own question right as you posted this. It still seems to me that if there is such a high flat rate for higher income earners, that then the delta between trying to save electricity and not is less, so the incentive is still reduced.

I haven’t seen any in depth analysis but I suspect that it would increase electrical usage and lower natural gas usage (at the home), which is what I suspect this rate reform partly may be targeting. CA’s astronomically high per kWh rates create an informative disincentive to electrify homes, even when the overall efficiency of the electric machines is much higher.

I think this article explains it better: https://abc7.com/utility-bills-income-california/13126671/

There are two parts of the bill: a fixed amount, and an amount by usage.

This is how it starts, then...

Once you start segmenting people into groups, then its all about passing the buck to the other group.

I agree. Utilities should all be publicly owned, which would reduce costs to everyone without the pathetic means testing.

Public goods are usually tax-funded which are solely means testing.

Households receiving power are a superset of tax households.

I assume household income is the sum of all taxpayers? I hope this is done in a privacy preserving way where you don't need to tell your PGE bill paying roommate your income.

But even then that seems impossible. If my roommate makes $50k a year and I make > $130k, it seems it's impossible to not reveal that fact to him unless they are assessing fees per taxpayer.

Why would you even tell them about your roommates? Sure they might come up with some ways of hassling you based on the historical occupancy of a premises, instrumented usage patterns, etc. But the underlying dynamic is to give them the fewest "income" figures that will end their questions, since verifying an absence of something is generally tough.

The way by-income stuff is normally done is either on tax forms directly (obviously), or as subsidies for very low income such that they people who really need and want it are willing to jump through the paperwork hoops and spill their personal information. If this has been decided as the appropriate public policy, then it should be assessed right on the state income tax filing. But instead this perverse private-public "partnership" (read: corruption) makes it so that regulators have thought it appropriate for "private" companies to be directly involved in financial surveillance. So they aren't bound by the statutory secrecy of government, while the fact they're monopolies means you can't avoid them.

Wouldn't it be suspicious for a state income tax filing to not to be linked to a listed electricity rate payer? Or are you arguing no one will ever audit?

Audit what? Does this regulation create a responsibility for taxpayers to declare their residence(s) on their tax forms, with a statutory responsibility to be paying the utility company for residing there?

If there isn't, then there really is little downside to telling the electric company that only one person is living somewhere.

This is utter bullshit.

There’s a huge set of people above $180K income, with homes all the way from small rental apartments, townhomes, to mega mansions. How come they are all being put into the same bucket.

>Households earning less than $28,000 a year would pay a fixed charge of $15 a month

So… can I just find a poor person and pay their electric bill for them in exchange for them letting me run some crypto miners in their house?

A ton of small business households are gonna do a paper divorce so the unemployed stay at home single mom can be the one who foots the "running a business out of my home" sized bill.

When you're talking $20k/yr it'd be silly not to.

The price talked about in the article doesn't include the actual power, it's just the price you have to pay for the privilege of being provided electrical service.

So on top of electricity usage, $85 per month becomes an extra fixed fee? Will you all have to pay local or state taxes on top of that?

So how do they know what my income is? They gonna kick my door in and arrest me if I lie? Send me a strongly worded letter?

There are basically 3 ways. You declare your residency and your income to the government of CA. They could ask you for tax documents or permission to retrieve such. They could ask you for your pay-stubs or bank records of deposit. Alternatively credit reporting agencies have access to way more of your personal life than you might imagine including your income and one of the services they sell to business is looking up income.

If you lie its incredibly trivial to put together the pieces and you have committed fraud by lying to obtain a benefit. Notably you aren't getting all your electricity for that figure just different fixed costs to go along with cost per kwh so there isn't that much benefit to lying to obtain. It's like risking jail time to obtain a relatively trivial amount of money.

I imagine that part of the motivation here is that with on site generation and storage the grid becomes less and less viable to fund via usage fees. Without much further storage improvements, an ordinary single family home could run almost entirely on self generated power -- but then when there is sustained poor weather they'd all hit the grid at once.

In that future the grid needs loads of capacity which are seldom used. It's hard to pay for that with usage... and logically that potential demand cost should be a connection fee.

The income based part probably arises because when you price out the connection fee you find that it would be painfully expensive for some. I don't think having the utility further trying to invade your privacy is the right way to deal with this, but I guess it's a lot easier to impose a tax via an unaccountable body than via other means.

anyone who pays a utility bill regularly in California has the right and opportunity to be heard. Some media stories are painting this as "inevitable" and this is not true. Make your voice heard on this issue otherwise you get the future that you deserve.

Isn't this just the implementation of a law that already passed?

Yes, as linked in the article, the article describes changes *mandated* by CA AB 205[1] which was signed by the CA Gov on June 30, 2022. Search the bill text for "income".

"The bill would require the fixed charge to be established on an income-graduated basis, as provided, with no fewer than 3 income thresholds so that low-income ratepayers in each baseline territory would realize a lower average monthly bill without making any changes in usage."

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

This seems bad from a privacy point of view. Imagine, one person owns a home and rents a few of the rooms. That person has to gather private information from the renters. Then PG&E gets the private information. This just plainly seems prejudiced. Why should somebody with more income pay more? Should milk cost more because one has a higher income? Also, how exactly does PG&E verify the income. What if one does not know one's income? If one has zero income or next to zero income for 11 months, then one make some transactions for tax purposes, and one goes form poverty to a much higher tax bracket; does one pay 11 months at poverty level and one month at rich person level? Also, what exactly is defined as income? Is it W2 income, adjusted gross income. This seems wrong looking from every leve. There is no reason for PG&E to gather this. If the state wants to, it can subsidize poor people when they pay their taxes. Perhaps one can put the amount paid to PG&E into the tax form. This just seems like way more work than it should be. I also want to know if I can install battery, solar and wind and just say F' this? Crap like this makes me want to move to another state.

Or convince the utility that you're a business and probably pay a lower rate than the high income tier.

This is already the case for kwh rates if your usage is significantly above average (e.g. large house with a lot of people) -- commercial rates are lower, because the high usage tier residential rates are jacked up to subsidize the low usage tier rates.

PG&E will presumably also leak and sell the info, even if it's illegal for them to do so, but AFAICT it wouldn't be illegal for them to do so.

What are your rates supposed to be if the people living at the residence aren't a constant set but ebb and flow? --- yet another law that assumes that everyone lives a particular way, has a single or a finite set of fixed residences that they own and live in, collects wages at a relatively fixed rate from an employer, etc.

As far as detaching from the grid. It's becoming more viable to do so, which I presume is part of the driver for this change: More and more people are only pulling lots of power when there is sustained bad weather. This creates a lot of transmission costs that aren't paid for by usage.

PG&E residential high peak rates aren't that noncompetitive with running a natural gas generator. So well overbuilt solar, plus batteries, plus natural gas backup for winter storms and you might be able to detach assuming you don't get an EV. You may want to add a few kW bitcoin mining capacity to shed your excess summer power.

Right now the economics of solar support spending money to overbuild solar rather than putting in more battery. An intuitive way to think about it is that a battery provides value when and only when its discharged. Capacity that is discharged every day costs little per use, capacity that is discharged only once a year during a winter storm is extremely expensive per use. Solar provides value only if you can use the energy, but the cost per unit power is much lower, and there are cheap ways to usefully sink excess power. (heating a hot water tank, regenerating a desiccant for cooling, or running a bitcoin miner).

Commercial availability of small flow batteries would likely help the economics of grid detaching a lot-- because the marginal cost of additional capacity can be extremely low.

There are other costs in being grid detached-- a lot less redundancy and spare capacity in your power. If parts fail your power is out. Suddenly the power factor of your devices starts to matter, etc.

CA state elected lawmakers clearly wanted the utility companies to be the face of this policy which they created. As can be seen in this thread, a significant portion of those reading about this have a standing grudge against PG&E et. al.; it's not like their public image can get any lower, and by absorbing whatever public ire arises during the socialization and rollout of this policy, they provide some degree of cover/insulation between the public and the same CA state elected lawmakers who actually imposed the policy, and who just happen to regulate them.

CA voters asked for this kind of class warfare cast into the ever more intrusive laws that rule their everyday lives in ever increasing detail. The only problem is that unfortunately, even if you leave CA, wherever CA leads, most states eventually follow, because of both the "CA voter diaspora" phenomenon and CA shifting the Overton Window in directions that other state bureaucracies can only wait and dream of.

And I've not even commented on the practical "implementation details" you've raised related to the amount of personal information being disclosed to a debatably trustworthy/secure intermediary, and the definitional ambiguity between a "household" and the tax-filing entities that comprise it. I agree with all the points/objections you've raised and could probably think of quite a few more, but it's all moot: this policy is already the law of the land.

> but it's all moot: this policy is already the law of the land.

no, I believe that is not accurate (see sibling comments) What is true is that some changes will take place, but what they are is not yet done. contact your representatives; cite this Bill

the other comment here is misleading.. generally, regulations and program enactment are literally the "Implementation of a law that was passed" .. This law amends Section 739.1 of the California Public Utilities Code, but it does not replace existing rulings, guidelines and practices. The insider game occurs after the legislation is settled.. there is discretion in the implementing regulations, and that is reflected in the repeated use of "reasonable" in the bill text.

source- committee session time in Sacramento as part of graduate school

PR staff at the utilities will ensure the media tells you its inevitable

Where do we complain? I live in a tiny apartment and don't use much electricity. My monthly bill is quite low. This would quadruple my monthly cost.

Your success must be punished, this is the way.

the previous channels of public input emphasized the California Public Utility Commission hearing process, but some have lost faith in that system.. [0]

the California State Assembly (your elected representative) is one piece of the public-comment loop.. [1] [2]

California Senate has a similar body [3]

additional channels or feedback welcome.

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/she-noticed-200-million-m...

[1] https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/

[2] https://autl.assembly.ca.gov/content/members

[3] https://www.senate.ca.gov/seuc-1x#:~:text=First%20Extraordin...

Instead of this, they should bill agricultural and industrial water at residential rates.

Why should industry get a discount?

Electricity billed to each according to his salary, electricity distributed to each according to his needs.

When sending letters about this it might be worth keeping in mind that PG&E is a convicted felon and killer. ( https://www.google.com/search?q=PG%26E+convicted+felon )

Even in the most charitable description they are criminally reckless and have repeatedly placed profit over the lives of the public. An organization that has killed people on multiple occasions through recklessness and greed is not the sort of organization that should be afforded any additional access to anyone's personal information.

Outrageous, of course. Just another reason for productive citizens to leave CA.

The last thing I want is for the power company to be intimately involved in studying the details of my income and the income of those who are living with me!

It seems this is the effect of some law Californians voted for, so they want it.

It would be a shame for the citizens of CA to move somewhere else and vote the same thing there.

No, it isn't.

I wonder can I...opt out i I have a battery?

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