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Comment by Veliladon | Hacker News Reader

>Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates.

This. Lived in Santa Clara. SVP is the best utility in California.

100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.

> 100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance

Sounds like we have a solution! Get PG&E out of distribution. They can keep running power plants, where there is at least competition.

Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.

> remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too

Crazy thought—dedicate the resources to maintaining them. From what I can tell, this tolerance of power-sparked wildfires is uniquely American (and concentrated, fairly and unfairly, in California).

Also, you don’t have to put it straight on the municipal balance sheet. Stick it in a distribution subsidiary with a little outside capital. (Hell, make it a member-owned co-operative.)

Alternative: sell off that transmission to someone else. Just handle last-mile distribution. Not transmission.

I thought PG&E bought their generation wholesale (~ 3-4c/kwh)

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices

Some generation PG&E owns, some is in a shared vehicle split between PG&E and a group of private investors, some is owned by other utilities (Edison) and some is just privately owned. Remember that generation was built up over 70 years. Different plants at different times with different politics ends up with different ownership arrangements. They all bid into CAISO and independently choose to produce or not based upon prices. The generators sell futures contracts and PG&E (and Edison) buy them either in 1 day cycles or 15 minute cycles (almost always some of both).

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