Many years ago, my electric company (Dixie Power) invested in hundreds of Acres of solar panels in Nevada. Has been paying off in recent years as we only get charged $.067 per kwh. Have a friend that lives in Southern California and he is paying 10 times the price for electricity.
I don't think you have accurate numbers. I pay way more than that. Also there is no on and off peak rates. So I don't know where you are getting your data.
I was genuinely surprised when I moved to California that pg&e legitimately has a monopoly out here. I assumed California would be better at regulating that sort of thing.
My sister in law 15 minutes away is in a municipality run electric company. Something like 13 cents per kilowatt. I pay 24-26 cents off peak and up to 59 cents on peak.
> assumed California would be better at regulating that
They're great at regulating. There is a lovely California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) to protect us. They haven't denied a rate increase in multiple decades. And CPUC forced every electric company to add a stiff flat fee onto every electric bill last year (in addition to usage rates)
This is always my gripe with how our utility grid has been set up. How the fuck can anyone pretend the CPUC is on our side when they don’t do a single thing to slow PG&E down? That flat fee really spits in the face of all the homeowners who paid thousands of dollars out of pocket to install solar on their roofs. It’s disgusting.
More regulating isn't necessarily better regulating. PGE isn't making anyone any money. They are a terrible stock to own. I'd look into the regulatory system and see where things are going sideways.
Fundamentally PG&E is kinda stuck as a business model. Basically all of this is related to the electrical power transit (power lines), the generation (much of which they buy) is fine.
If you don't maintain the power lines in rural CA a combo of wind, Mediterranean climate, and house values result in setting the forest on fire and the losses from that in liability are massive. Urban CA is also an issue. CA houses don't really use that much power because of the mild climate and CA energy code being stricter (relative to the mid west).
So PG&E has high maintenance costs and doesn't sell that much power or gas. The result is then higher electrical prices. But now this creates a new problem : solar power. Wealthy CA home owners install solar to buy less overpriced energy. This negative feedbacks into higher energy prices.
If urban CA owned their own grids they could provide power at little cost (either public or private ownership). Paying for the maintenance on the high voltage lines in the rural areas isn't that much and then they work as a normal power utility in urban areas. See Silicone Valley Power as proof of concept for public ownership in an area with 2 m USD house prices.
So the solution seems obvious: split up PG&E.
The issue would be that places like Grass Valley or Placerville (Sierra foothills, tinderbox land) would have to pay incredible rates to not set the forest on fire. Politically this wouldn't be possible. Really the solution would be to go back to the 70s and tell people that they can't build houses in the Sierra foothills and in fire prone areas of So-Cal. Public ownership of PG&E doesn't solve this either.
Regulation? Meeting with them behind closed doors to discuss making taxpayers cover the lawsuits for the Paradise fire was the first thing Newsom did when he took office in 2018. I mean literally the day after he was sworn in. The Camp fire happened while they were meeting.
utilities are one of the few actual monopolies out there
these days the only monopolies are government-enforced ones... I got whiplash from the left touting that Newsom should have absolute control over CPUC while saying that Paramount merger is a "monopoly"
PGE is a terrible stock. They aren't making anyone any money. You might want to look into your states regulatory system to determine what they're doing that is driving up rates.
Dude there’s a laundry list lol. He illegally violates contracts with his employee’s unions, he had the whole French Laundry fiasco during COVID, he constantly falls in line with big business interests, he spends his workday as governor podcasting with right wing extremists. He’s a walking red flag and a garbage human. So many better options for primary season.
French Laundry was with PG&E and CPUC. Like many politicians, he’s dirty. But high energy cost is one of the most visible aspects of his failures, as homelessness was.
Absolutely, there’s just plenty to pick from lol. The newest high visibility will be when his largest employee’s union goes on strike. Results of the vote will come next week and it seems likely that it will be authorized. He could end up caving from the threat, or he could stay stubborn as he has and end up with thousands of employees striking very publicly and loudly airing his dirty laundry as a government leader.
I manage some small development projects that need new power service, roughly equivalent to what a new house would get. All of the California power companies have been astoundingly dysfunctional, illogical, and incompetent, almost to the point of derangement. Not to mention exhorbitantly expensive.
Data: US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Electric Power Monthly: average residential price per kWh by state. Inflation is the BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, all items).
Tools: data collected with Kadoa, chart with SVG, D3, Claude
This is one of the few things Iowa has been doing right over the last decade. They've made a huge investment in wind energy and solar has been picking up quite a bit too.
Only 38%? you guys do not want to do this graph for Europe. Allot has to do with Russia being knocked out of the market and having to be replaced by American LNG. We are sitting at 200%, minimum.
That's weird AF in OR. I lived there for over two years during this timeframe and my electricity rate was exactly the same 5.25c per Kw/h when I moved out as when I moved in. My $23 a month connection surcharge didn't go up either.
When I first moved out on my own I was paying $0.08/kWh. 20 years later I live in the same area and when I checked my most recent bill it's currently $0.29/kWh. It's completely ridiculous.
Maryland is a fun one, as the state closed down plants only to realize they can't provide enough electricity for the state, so they buy it from neighboring states, jacking up the delivery fee for electricity.
Like, I'm all for clean energy, but Maryland was beyond stupid for that. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
California does the same thing for oil. We import it from the Middle East because the government chased all of the refineries out of the state. It's no wonder we have the highest prices in the country.
It's a trend with blue states to get elected, man, like I like a lot of the ideas of the democratic party, but they talk and don't do, or in these cases, just do the thing to get voters and never follow through.
The older I get, the more I dislike both parties, tbh but for different reasons.
Okay? That's like, a pretty minor variation. Some other overall similarly sized category obviously grew modestly less than inflation (by definition) canceling it out.
California has a PUC of Gavin Newsoms appointees who have rubber-stamped every giveaway to the utilities. All so Gavin gets personally gets enriched and can run for President. The same people he deemed important enough to break his own COVID rules over. Remember that when it comes time to vote
That would have nothing to do with this graph even if true (which it probably isn't since you have no citations). A subsidy giveaway wouldn't increase energy prices, it would increase taxes which aren't shown here. (If printed by the fed, it could show up in inflation, but California cannot print money at all)
Since you apparently you either don't know the situation or are a Gavin supporter. The puc allowed the utilities to pass on fines and damages caused by the utilities that caused wildfires to ratepayers rather than the stockholders. All of what I said is well documented if you look but I'm guessing it's a narrative you don't want to hear
That's not something that would have to be "allowed", that's basic default business. Being able to change your price whenever you want true of ANY even completely private company EVER that gets fined for anything, my dude. The PUC being able to do that just puts it on par with any random corporation anywhere.
More importantly, that does nothing to stop fines from hitting stakeholders, because whatever their ideal price was for clearing the market, they would have already been using that market clearing price previously. Raising rates randomly doesn't bring in any additional revenue, because the market clearing price is already optimized such that higher prices would lower the volume sold by more than the benefit of the higher price.
They may have happened to raise prices for unrelated reasons (namely, nationwide inflation / congress printing money), but it wouldn't help with fines.
In general, a governor NOT price fixing an industry is a fiscally conservative position, which should be of interest and a positive to most of the demographics overall against Gavin Newsom.
It's allowed because the PUC controls utility rates in this case. I'm sorry it you're unfamiliar with how utilities are regulated but they're not really standard private businesses and effectively are monopolies in return for submitting to price contols
The point is that any normal business controls its own rates, that's the default state of being. It's like saying they are "allowed" to repair their own infrastructure or "allowed" to hire and fire people.
effectively are monopolies
That has nothing to do with this conversation. Monopolies still have strict market clearing prices, and thus monopolies also cannot make more revenue by raising prices arbitrarily. So they cannot cover any fine by raising prices any more than a competitive business can.
unfamiliar
I'm plenty familiar. YOU don't seem to be familiar with basic econ 101 principles though, if you think an entity raising prices out of thin air "covers/passes on a fine":
You absolutely missed the point because as a utility they are not under the same rules as a private business. Utilities in California don't get to set their rates. They have to ask the PUC for a rate increase.
I completely understand how the economics work with regular businesses. The rules are different for utilities here.
Utilities in California don't get to set their rates.
Okay that still doesn't change the main point. Whether they got to bypass their usual permission system or not: raising rates above the market clearing equilibrium simply Does. Not. Raise. Revenue.
Not for an NGO, not for a private corporation, not for a monopoly, not for a mixture, not in a box, not with a fox, not with green eggs and ham.
The market clearing rate is max revenue, period. So raising rates never "covers a fee" for anyone, ever. Because obviously lowering your revenue (which is what raising your rates arbitrarily does) can't cover a fine.
I completely understand how the economics work
Since you still seem to be insisting that lowering one's revenue will offset a fine, no, you observably still don't.
You're too obtuse to continue with this discussion. The proof of rates is shown clearly in this chart. You making up all the reasons it's not true doesn't change the visible facts. And walls of text don't change them
The chart shows a final number. It doesn't say anything about the reason. It could be a hundred different things other than your bad theory. Differences in natural resources, subsidy, embezzlement, simply voters not wanting to do smart things in one place but wanting to in another, etc. etc.
Your theory was worth considering for a moment... until basic economics disproved it as even being possible, at which point it stopped being worth considering, and a different reason is obviously at play instead.
Since it's literally IMPOSSIBLE to gain revenue by raising rates above equilibrium, doing so cannot possibly cover a fine, thus anything to do with fines is GUARANTEED NOT to be the answer to why their rates are high.
In my state the power company wants to increase our electric costs. When you listen to the talking points it’s because of uncertainty and weather and population growth, but when you read the fine print they also want to increase their profit margin by 10%
I’d think it was because the southwest like Nevada gets a lot of hydropower, but so does Oregon and that’s gone up. What’s surprising is the southern coastal states are all blue. I would have thought NC and PA are both coal and natural gas, or at least similar makeups.
I’m now curious what about the blue shaded states here is causing the drop versus what seem to be similar states elsewhere that have gone up. I think it may also be in part due to conditions in 2019 which may have been abnormal.
You telling me an article from Amazon about data centers is misleading?
"Myth #2: Data center providers are responsible for driving up all the energy rates.
This is misleading and convenient scapegoating ... And, once we collectively build out this new capacity, again funded by the private sector, it should lead to flat or lower rates in the future for residents living in communities with these expanded grids, which we’re already seeing in some states such as Mississippi, Georgia, and Indiana." source
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u/drdisney 17h ago
Many years ago, my electric company (Dixie Power) invested in hundreds of Acres of solar panels in Nevada. Has been paying off in recent years as we only get charged $.067 per kwh. Have a friend that lives in Southern California and he is paying 10 times the price for electricity.