California has got good at building giant batteries

Also, my pge statements now have a line item for transmission that's usually larger than my generation total. If I have 2x solar and I'm feeding my neighbor, are they paying the same "transmission" structure for the power I'm providing them?

Suppose you have 1000 MW (constant) of nuclear and 1000 MW (daytime average) of solar. Therefore on the average day you're getting 2 GW total. The daytime price on that day is $0.04/kWh, which is just enough to make solar viable. If every day is like this, solar is doing fine.

But then there's a day when it's extra sunny. Solar is generating not 1000 MW but 1800 MW. Is that good for solar's profitability? No, it's bad, because that means there is oversupply and the price per kWh is zero. Nobody is making any money that day. Solar generated 1800 MW for 12 hours and got zero return. Solar's average is now down to $0.014/kWh. That's below sustainability. Oops. Nuclear also got zero return that day, but only generated at 1000 MW, so its average wasn't negatively affected by as much.

Then, another day, it's extra cloudy. Solar only generates at 300 MW. It's a supply emergency and the wholesale price per kWh rises to $0.28/kWh. Finally everyone is given an opportunity to bring up their average. So solar generates 300 MW for 12 hours and nuclear generates 1000 MW for the same 12 hours and they each get $0.28/kWh. At this point solar's average is back up to $0.04/kWh, which is its breakeven. Meanwhile the nuclear plant's average -- during only the daytime hours -- is $0.1067/kWh.

Then you have the nighttime hours. To play here solar needs storage. Storage is something like $0.14-$0.50/kWh by itself. If you charge it with solar, you're up to $0.18+/kWh. But that's on average again. On the day it was extra sunny, the batteries were already completely full, so that night the price didn't stay at zero and the nuclear plant made some money. On the day it was extra cloudy, the batteries got low, and then the nighttime price wasn't just $0.18/kWh, it was much higher.

Then, once in a while, it's cloudy for a whole week. The batteries aren't just low but completely drained, even before sunset. Solar + batteries can't address this case at all because an entire week's worth of battery storage is prohibitively expensive for something that only happens once a year or so. The nighttime price that week -- because of the volatility created by solar -- goes through the roof. Nuclear plants gets all of that money while the solar plants get none of it, because they're the only available source of electricity.

The economics aren't the same as before because now the prices fluctuate all over the place. But that only means that a generation source that supplies power all the time can make up for the times when rates are low because there is oversupply during the times when the rates are much higher because there is undersupply. Whereas the power source causing the supply fluctuations can't, because its ability to supply power inversely correlates with the price.

The ratio of revenue to area served here is radically different though and the other states are significantly better. We can make a prediction to double check this that people in those states pay lower rates on average, which is also true.

If you want to go and add up the customers directly, PG&E serves 5.5M. The others serve around 8.3M people collectively from some quick searches. I don't have info on actual service area, nor do I really want to spend months writing an industry report on it.

The fire triangle is fuel, oxygen and heat. Oxygen is in the air at all times. When the fuel is on the ground, the only thing remaining is heat, and there are both artificial and natural sources of heat. Which means there is going to be a fire whether there is an artificial source or not.

> Of course it is. We're talking about liability and costs. It's extremely relevant.

We're talking about snookering the electric ratepayer for the cost of inevitable fires by pretending that removing one source of heat could have prevented the fire.

There is a plausible case that having more frequent fires is less damaging because it prevents fuel from accumulating. The more fuel is allowed to accumulate the bigger and faster spreading the next fire is when it happens, and the more difficult it is for firefighters to prevent it from spreading into populated areas.

> Then no one should live in California at all.

There aren't that many fires in modern urban areas because the urban areas aren't full of dead vegetation.

The people who choose to live in fire-prone woods are making a different choice.

> Do you honestly expect this wouldn't be the _norm_?

The issue is that decisions should be made using reason rather than political machinations. Because it isn't actually the power utility paying for this, it's the rate payers. When it should be the people buying houses in a tinder box.

> We're talking about millions of people here representing billions of dollars of economic activity.

Which seems like a dumb thing to put in places that are inevitably going to be incinerated?

> Do we want to measure risk realistically?

The way you do this is by putting the cost of the fires on the insurance companies rather than the utility companies, and in turn the insurance premiums of the people who live there rather than the utility bills of the people who live somewhere else.

> What about those who inherited that land and home?

You're not required to use something dangerous just because you got it from your parents.