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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

> The FTC just found evidence that American oil companies colluded with the Saudi government to hike gas prices, costing the average family $3,000 last year. The question is, what can we do about it?

Electric cars and heat pumps.

This is why people paid a premium (until about a year ago) for electric cars. Fixed costs are better than variable costs.

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Doesn’t work if you’re in most of California unless you have solar. Price fixing oil is bad, but you can switch to electricity for some uses. If everything is electric and electricity is a monopoly, it’s the worst possible situation.

Why? Electricity is so easy to generate that a monopoly is impossible.

Not in Northern California.

I live in California. Most people's electricity bills have tripled in the last 2-3 years. There's no alternative electricity provider.

So, if everyone switches from oil, guess where the price gouging and collusion will move to?

So make or buy your own generator. Or better yet startup an energy supply company. That's the point of it never beeing monopoly. The market is ripe for entry.

So... the electric company can't become a monopoly because you can spend the money and effort to create your own electric company? How can that not be said for anything anywhere that becomes an obvious monopoly?

> How can that not be said for anything anywhere that becomes an obvious monopoly?

I can't hook up my own ISP or manufacture my own prescription drugs quite as easily as I can put up solar panels or buy a generator.

What exactly are you proposing goes in this generator?

> What exactly are you proposing goes in this generator?

Whatever fuel you have access to that's cheapest. For most people, that will be natural gas or propane.

So we're back to buying fossil fuels from a third party

> we're back to buying fossil fuels from a third party

If we ignore the non-fossil fuel solution mentioned, yes. The point is it's a weak natural monopoly due to multiple alternatives.

Yes that's basically the definition of not beeing able to becomes a monopoly. Any old joe can compete with you.

I think there are legal prohibitions on just putting up solar panels and going off the grid in CA. Like I said, it's the same cartel behavior over a different resource. You cannot start an energy supply company in California, only PG&E can supply power to people in California

So fix California's absurd energy policy. They "deregulated" by giving PG&E a monopoly, paid Enron an absurd ransom when Enron did what should have been considered fraud and made Californian's pay the state back, routinely harm individual solar owners, and refuse to give PG&E any reason to actually maintain their century old infrastructure that sits in a dry forest etc.

People repeatedly point at California fucking up "X" and then say "look how bad X is" ignoring that the other 48 states in the union (Texas also likes to find innovative ways to fuck things up) are doing various amounts of "alright" to "quite well actually" at "X".

For example, Maine also "deregulated" it's electricity sector in the 90s, and is only recently facing problems from the state sanctioned monopoly doing bullshit, and they have an actual excuse that we haven't built out new generation capacity since deregulation, and climate change means we have had an entire year of windstorms destroying the grid, including multiple storms taking out distribution to 1/3rd of the state.

Either you generate it yourself or you pay. PG&E is not paying the third party electricity suppliers exorbitant rates, they're just charging enormous amounts for distribution. Without a political change, electricity will continue to be monopolized and extremely expensive.

There are lots of government-enforced monopolies

That is why I have solar and batteries. Don’t have to worry about energy costs.

There's a state monopoly on hydroelectricity in Québec and we pay the lowest rates in North America while Hydro-Québec pumps a billion dollars into provincial government coffers every year.

Same with BCHydro. Not the cheapest, but still cheap. Much better than being at the whims of shareholders.

I’m not sure of the other two provinces mentioned, but in Ontario we pay artificially low rates for hydro (aka electricity) because the rates are subsidized.

I always thought it to be a ridiculous policy; show people the true cost of their usage and stop hiding taxes all over the place for everyone to make up the difference.

You can brag about low rates via monopoly, but someone else might be paying for em

As best I can tell[1], BCHydro isn't subsidized, unless you count the land usage grants from the province (but the water flow stability is useful for irrigation, so it has other benefits)

[1] https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...

Where I live, heat pumps suffered insane price hikes because production couldn’t keep up with demand during the Russian gas scarcity scare. I‘m talking increases of €10+k.

And electricity prices are especially sensitive to gas/oil prices due to how European energy market prices are set. We still haven’t fully recovered from the insane gas price hike that caused all electricity to 2-4x in price (with huge downstream effects on overall inflation).

People using gas or oil ran into similar price hikes.

PV or if you’re further north solar thermal actually protected people from price spikes.

I doubt it because energy prices play a big role in almost all goods & service prices. We learned this the hard way these last 24 months.

When you bought something before prices hike the purchase can’t be impacted by the price hike.

I have an electric car, and I'm starting a hugely expensive remodel that will involve migrating to a heat pump and electric tankless water heater, but even with solar, it's a laugh to say that my PG&E rates are a fixed cost!

>> PG&E

Fuck PG&E.

I live in the Bay Area, and candidly my choices for solar, inverters, batteries, heat pumps and any thing that will make a home eco friendly are abysmal.

I have a fairly unique roof for the area. There has only been one solar installer who did not run when I explained what I needed. They all have a cookie cutter approach to minimize costs and maximize profits. There is no variance or selection. It's a onesie fits all solution to a dynamic problem.

Electric water heating is interesting. You should look to install a tank and a tankless heater. It's called a booster configuration. Set the tank up to run during the day when you have free power and then only hit the tankless when it runs empty (or your variable costs are low).

Good luck finding a plumber who knows how to set it up.

> electric tankless water heater

I went with a heat pump water heater.

The tankless heaters use so much amperage that I'd overload my main breaker if someone took a bath while the car is charging and the heat it running.

What makes you think that the energy sector overall is immune to this while oil isn't?

More and smaller players in electricity production.

Half the oil and gas production comes from an official cartel so it's kind of in the oil sector's DNA with price fixing.

More opportunity for substitutions when your fuel is electrons instead of a specific blend of fossil fuels processed in a specific way.

That said for profit electric monopolies are indeed a scourge.

Because there are multiple ways to generate electricity- including at-home options for many people.

There’s also an interesting factor in timing and latency of the grid. Peak usage is typically mid afternoon. While least usage is overnight.

There’s essentially excess capacity during the time period that most people charger their car.

Not immune, but more resistant:

- electricity can be generated many different ways

- many generation sources aren't dependent on resupply. Spiking the price of lithium doesn't prevent existing batteries from working, it only makes new ones more expensive. Solar, wind, hydro and nuclear (to a lesser extent)

- electricity supply is heavily regulated, for better or worse.

While all of this is true, there is a monopoly on distribution. Doesn’t matter where it comes from if one entity owns the pipes.

What does matter though is if you can affect the distribution with your vote. I would guess it is harder to affect oil companies, that are often located in other countries than your own.

It's not that it currently is immune, it's that there's a compelling story for the energy sector to become immune from it as we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

> Electric cars and heat pumps.

And guess what the fossil fuel lobby is pumping millions upon millions of dollars in propaganda against.

It's been utterly nuts to watch in Germany - our local tabloid rags and their relentless campaign against heat pumps (as well as a botched communication regarding an energy-efficiency law from the government) actually worked good enough to put local manufacturers into a serious crisis [1]. Electric cars are in a similar bind - barely any government subsidies combined with falling gas prices, a lackluster / too expensive offering by everyone but Tesla and Tesla focusing more on the Cybertruck (that can't ever be certified to European standards) than on boosting Model 3 quality combined means that the % of electric cars on new registrations went downhill from 16% to 12% [2].

On top of the fossil fuel lobby spending comes heavy smear campaigning from Russia and its 5th column (aka, parts of the far left, as well as the most popular far-right party), who have identified anything "green" as a fracture point of society.

[1] https://www.mopo.de/im-norden/niedersachsen/auftragsflaute-w...

[2] https://www.adac.de/news/neuzulassungen-kba/

What to do about it - hit these oil companies, including the Saudi ones, with a huge class action law suit. Additionally US government must fine heavily instances of collusion and oligopoly so that others thinking of following path will be deterred.

Except, last year electric prices were so high in Europe. As in 10 times higher. If it wasnt for thr government stepping in, our family business would've been decimated.

PG&E makes electric-only a little scary. I'll keep 1 EV and 1 ICE car rather than going 2 EVs due to them

Depending on how much you drive a day, a propane powered generator pack for a few thousand bucks (chinesium ones start at ~1000 $ [1]) in your shed should be enough to charge during the night and keep your home powered as well, and unlike gas/diesel, propane doesn't go bad during storage.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B01M0N8256/ref=sr_1_3

Why not skip it and drive an LPG-powered vehicle instead?

Because you'll only need the grid backup like, what, a week or two in the worst case every two or three years? A LPG-powered vehicle will incur all the typical ICE vehicle costs during these three years.

Good luck filling it on a road trip!

Besides, home charging is such a game changer that using a non-traditonal fuel is just a waste of time.

>> The question is, what can we do about it?

> Electric cars and heat pumps.

So us renters who drive long distances every day - when can we expect to come home to a 1k mi range EV and discover our landlord installed an EV charging system and new heat pumps? Because that sounds like a pretty awesome day.

This is me, I'm a renter and my complex will never install chargers. I've tried, it's a no-go.

That said, 50MPG vehicles are common these days. My '07 Prius gets 48, measured, a newer Camry/Accord/Sonata hybrid will get ~50MPG as well. Add an openpilot driving system and it's almost like a private train car.

I drive 80 miles round trip, 5x a week for work. That works out to ~$2000/yr for gasoline. That's really not that bad at all! Just don't drive a crossover or truck as your daily.

I'll probably never buy electric, because I don't want to buy a house (just not for me) and I don't think apartments will install a charger-per-spot (personal requirement). That's OK, hybrid is pretty great.

On the heat pump side, I only have to heat 700 sqft - it requires little energy and is so little cost-wise I don't even track it.

Ban oil exports. Why are we selling our oil overseas?

I would also be OK with tariffs on exports, but they are not legal (it's in the constitution: concession for southern states, protecting their cotton exports).

Also: fix Venezuela.

and where are the components for electric car batteries coming from again and what is the harm done to environment/countries being mined?

It's miniscule when compared to the ongoing harms of oil extraction and implying otherwise is extremely dishonest.

Are you implying that the environmental and political fallout from electric cars is somehow worse? Or just that electric cars are not 100% cost-free?

Everyone here knows that creating an electric car requires emissions; but over its lifetime it's a great improvement over a gas-burning car.

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