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Comment by SCUSKU | Hacker News Reader

The reason PGE is so expensive is because it's a privately owned monopoly with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns. Additionally, the urban areas of California are subsidizing the fire prone rural areas of the state.

The "fake costs" are not primarily from regulation as much as it is from the need to squeeze profit. For comparison, look at Silicon Valley Power which is owned and operated by the city of Santa Clara. SVP charges $0.175/kwh vs PGE $0.425/kwh. [1]

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

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>the urban areas of California are subsidizing the fire prone rural areas of the state

Meanwhile Rural California is where the electricity is actually generated[1]; they're "subsidizing" urban use.

>SVP vs PG&E

This has nothing to do with the ownership model and everything to do with not being obligated to serve rural areas. They get to serve only lower cost dense areas

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali...

True that SVP benefits from not serving a rural area, but we also need to consider again that PGE is a for-profit organization that in 2024 posted $2.5B in profits, which were distributed to shareholders[1]. If PGE were owned by the state with no such fiduciary duty, this money could instead be used to lower rates and/or invest in infrastructure.

[1] - https://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/PCG/income-statement?icid=...

My napkin math is that the $2.5B in profits accounts for about $0.14/kWH.

This is based on total electrical energy production of 17,301 GWh, since PG&E doesn't seem to publish their total distributed energy.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%242.5+billion+%2F+17%2C301+...

https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=CA#tabs-1

Great idea to napkin math it, but I think you're off by a very large margin. CA energy commission shows PG&E's energy consumption to be over 70,000 GWh.

$2,500,000,000 profit/70,000,000,000 kWh consumed is ~$0.035 per kWh.

So not exactly the smoking gun that CA ratepayers are looking for.

site: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

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