The reason PG&E rates are skyrocketing in California | Hacker News Reader

The reason PG&E rates are skyrocketing in California

sfchronicle.com

31 pointsmiguelazo35 comments

> On March 27, an administrative law judge published a proposed decision that, if approved in May, will impose a new fixed $24.18 monthly charge on residential customers not eligible for low-income discounts.

To not only end solar net metering but then to have a significant charge even for low-import solar/battery sites... ugh. I hope this doesn't go through.

Seems like an excellent incentive for people who can afford it to install sufficient solar panels and batteries to just drop the grid connection. Especially combined with what I've read about many-months-long delays to hookup installed systems, while your brand new panels sit there providing zero watts.

Many/most cities will red tag your house (aka condemn as uninhabitable) if you don’t have an active grid connection.

Which does make sense in a way - they can’t tell if whatever your off grid setup is actually is working or has adequate capacity, but they can tell if your local utility connection is working and up (and up to standards).

And renters have needs. And medical equipment, basic fire safety stuff/lights, heat, etc. are generally required for habitability.

Almost every panel should have breakers that can be tripped to manually disconnect the feed from the utility though, if you don’t want to have to worry about being charged for electricity (beyond ‘grid connection’ fees, which aren’t going away).

Perhaps they meant to switch off the main breakers. There would still be a monthly fee but I don't know how much it would be.

Yeah, edited that in before I saw your comment. Apologies!

Yeah, edited that in before I saw your comment. Apologies!

No need to apologize. I could be entirely wrong as to what they meant.

You aren’t, I was apologizing for seemingly stealing your comment out from under you.

In a case where the monthly grid-connection fee is exorbitant... ideally someone can get their off-grid system permitted by the city (to verify that it meets minimum requirements).

I think the meter reconnection fee for pg&e is something like $75 in our area.

I think that means you could close your account, bet they don’t change the rules, then reopen the account before selling the house.

I imagine they’ll change the rules if this becomes common. Electricity service is so bad here that our house needs to be off-grid capable regardless of whether we pay them.

Yes, and that needs to stop. An off-grid setup should still be subject to all the applicable building and electrical codes, inspections, etc., and perhaps extra checkups on battery health. But once it is installed, running, and inspected, it should be like any other household.

I'm personally flabbergasted that a basic solar installation (e.g., 2 kw+) hasn't been required on every house for national defense, just as the impetus for the interstate highway system national defense (and obviously now maintained for the commerce it enables). In a grid collapse scenario, the difference it would make to have every house with even small stand-alone capability (just enough for a refrigerator, communication, some lighting, etc.) vs millions just in the dark, would be enormous. But here we are, just shoveling $$billions to the grid operators.

The utilities do have better lobbyists.

Their fat margins can easily afford them. And in a lot of cases, they can pass the cost along right to the ratepayers! There are some bills looking to outlaw the funding mechanism, at least. But a lot of these utilities are part of a larger holding shell company, so the laws will have to be creative.

> Californians should be outraged

Outraged about what? My bill has gone up a bit, but PG&E tells me it's because they are burying lines underground to prevent wildfires. It seems like Lydia Lunch hates PG&E, but they don't seem any better or worse than the average utility company.

this... has always seemed incredible to me, as in "hard to believe". how many miles of transmission infrastructure can they bury in the remote wooded mountains of california where the wildfires start? the worn hook that caused the paradise fire was out in the open for a decade, and nobody replaced it. if its so hard to get to a metal hook hanging off the pole, how hard is it to literally dig a trench and bury a conductor that, oh yeah, will no longer be getting aircooled and so must either be much larger/more numerous, or be actively cooled somehow, plus then must be dug up in case of maintenance....

i just don't believe it. i think PG&E is using the idea of burying power lines to justify rate increases for capital expenditures, and hopes to never complete (or maybe initiate) these projects, all the while avoiding immediate active responsibility for currently-neglected infrastructure (sorry about that latest wildfire, we are planning to fix this issue by burying all the power lines by 2375!).

would love to be proven wrong here...

A decade? Try a century! That hook was manufactured in 1928.

I think GP was referring to an inspection of that line / tower which noted the degraded condition of the ~century-old fasteners and recommended replacement. A decade+ passed without that work being done, and then the hook failed.

The liability for that is, of course, being paid for through our higher rates.

I've seen them doing the work to bury the power lines in Northern California near Lassen. It's true that it's labor intensive. It's also true that you can't really trust PG&E, they have a monopoly position over most of the market.

From what I observed, it looked like they have only one or two crews doing all this work. Given the scope of rate increases, the output rate seems low.

I agree re: using it as an excuse to get more money. They generally operate on a ‘cost plus’ type model, use very expensive union labor and their own capital equipment, and seem to always do work in the most absurdly inefficient way possible.

Buried lines are much lower risk of fires and going down in bad storms.

Burying lines is a great way to do it in that cost model too, as a lot of these problem areas require blasting (highly regulated in CA, and absurdly controlled!) and these areas are also often very remote and rugged. To avoid causing fires during the work, there is also a lot of secondary work that needs to happen, and additional ‘fire watch’ labor.

So very expensive, time consuming, easy to generate massive amounts of red tape to bog things down, and hard for people to watch them and complain.

My bill is 1.5 what it was 10 years ago, yet my actual usage is down slightly.

That is not that different from inflation?

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=2014...

Inflation over that time frame was ab ut 1.35 so a 1.5 increase is only slightly above inflation. Is that really outrageous? I'd wager that e.g. Infrastructure and labour costs increased more than that over the last 10 years.

A 1.5x increase is a 43% more than a 1.35x increase. Also, why wouldn't labor costs be factored into that inflation increase, and why would infrastructure costs be more than inflation?

This thread has me confused... Why are we even industrializing if the processes and such don't become more efficient?

I don't expect 0, stuff costs, but I'd expect a downward trend

Not what is going on in this case, but even if real costs stayed the same - counting inflation - costs would go up every year.

That isn't what is going on here, rather PG&E is manipulating the rate payer, and the rate payer is also having to do massive 'catchups' for prior manipulations PG&E has done (like not keeping required records, skimping on maintenance to dangerous degrees, etc.).

And since somehow PG&E has convinced everyone there is no other solution than paying them more money...

Seems very reasonable to be honest.

You will pay more starting next year, depending on whether or not the Commission decide to go forward with the fixed rates which I think is about to happen in July, if I recall From last I checked I would pay about $45 extra a month, but I'm far from wealthy, it's just that the way they are doing the income-based breakdown does not factor in how expensive the area you live in is (Bay Area being quite expensive unless you want to risk living in dangerous areas). Additionally, I don't think this means more reliable power. I have already been through a 24 hour outage last year (and multiple shorter ones every year).

This can be downplayed all day long but it seems obvious to me that CA has a combination of high taxes and poor infrastructure that is incompetently patched with bad policies and all together put a lot of strain on the middle class. If it's not corruption at some level, it has to be greatly incompetent people in power, or a combination of both.

Compare PG&E rates with that of what people in neighboring Santa Clara city pay [0], and then decide whether or not you should be outraged that your paying ~0.45-0.5 per kWh and they are paying 0.166 kWh.

> any better or worse than the average utility company.

PG&E rates are highest on mainland US, still they are no better or worse?

[0] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

They also cover the most ostentatiously 'green' area in the most 'green' state in the US. It's a situation ripe for playing games and skimming off 'feel good' projects.

They tell you whatever platitudes you want to hear, just like what they say to the CPUC. That doesn’t make it true. The rates have gone way up, far faster than inflation or undergrounding can justify. Also, who is to say undergrounding is even necessary? There are grid enhancing technologies like composite cables that make undergrounding totally unnecessary in most cases. The reason for a lot of fires is cable sag, because they’ve been using the same technology for a century. Which is not surprising when your regulator is asleep at the wheel and gives you zero incentive to innovate.

Ah yes, the good old "if it only wasn't for those evil profit gouging companies" excuse. It's literally a get out of jail free card for anything and everything related to the economy. It's such a political issue that the ideologues will just eat it up and spread it on and not ask a single question. Food prices too high? It's the evil profiteering companies. Car prices too high? It's the evil profiteering companies. Home prices too high? It's evil profiteering companies. Utility prices too high? It's the evil profiteering companies.

It's the vast conspiracy across millions of companies, across every city, state, and economic center in the country, that have all decided to go evil at the same point in time and just maliciously raise prices in an evil ploy to make more money. Surely it's that and not, you know, industrial and economic decisions that were made had consequences.

Fuck PG&E with three-phase 150kV. They were negligent when they burned down my mom's town with crumbling century-old bare transmission lines and then they were punitive with their extended PSPSes that caused weeks of outages. Still have that goddamn generator that had to be bought in Redding. You don't hear a peep from the media anymore because disaster capitalism and opportunism came and left.

Municipalities should endeavor with haste to form their own co-op utilities and break free from the greedy corporate dicks who occasionally blow up neighborhoods.[0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

I found an effective way to reduce my PGE bill to $0....I left CA

House in TX is 3x the size of our former CA house, utility bills are 1/3

But you don’t get power for 1/3rd of the year.

Like ERCOT is much better. Good luck with the next freeze. And what’s your property tax rate?

You're suffering from PG&E Derangement Syndrome.

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