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California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

calmatters.org

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Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#41

Post by talldatethrow »

beached_whale wrote: post #31
Spivak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all pay 41¢?! That's insane, the highest priced energy provider where I'm at is 7¢. Does your electricity come with foot massages? If you take the default electric provider you pay 5¢, and 5.5¢ if you want 100% renewables.

I do wonder if everyone is using the same rate structures when they compare, things like fixed fees for consumption/delivery, delivery charges, and actual usage.

If I included the base fees and all that, it would be higher. The 41 cents is the fee for energy alone. So yes even if I just used 100kwh being out of town or something, my bill would be even higher than $41.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#42

Post by jerlam »

koolba wrote: post #19

> The new California charge will be $24 for most customers, but lower income households, who already qualify for discounted electric rates, will see fees of either $6 or $12. This will never go down. It will only go up. And the real idea here is to get a min fixed amount from net zero customers with their own generation (ie solar).

PG&E (dunno about the others) is not a public utility, it is a private company that has been granted a monopoly by the local government. They made 2.2 billion dollars profit in 2023, after going bankrupt in 2019. There is no incentive to reduce prices since there aren't really any competitors.

Every fee increase has to be granted by a regulatory agency (CPUC) which clearly hasn't been doing much regulation, and gives us odd pricing strategies like this one.

One small city (Alameda) in the Bay Area, surrounded by PG&E customers, has its own municipal utility and they pay a third of the cost.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#43

Post by talldatethrow »

nothercastle wrote: post #17
throwup238 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0.41/kWh is a good price. I pay at least $0.50/kWh and I have family in the exurbs paying as much as $0.91/kWh in San Diego county. That doesn't include the fixed hook up costs that are constantly going up. We have plans that charge a lot less over night ($0.10-0.20/kWh) to charge EVs though.

Is it cheaper to run a gas generator at some point?

You could just run a plugin hybrid vehicle with an inverter and power a house for around around 50 cents a kwh, at $5.00 a gallon gas.

So soon yes I think people may start just using cheap gasoline generator, or their plugin hybrids, to power their houses if electric companies go crazy.

It's already common for people to not want to pay for electric hookup when building new developments. Solar, batteries, and generators are cheaper by a wide margin.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#44

Post by hagbard_c »

Sounds like inhabitants of that state need to get together in local groups where everyone has solar panels on the roof, some have wind generators, some have ICE-powered generators and maybe some even have some small-scale hydro (does that exist there?) into local 'microgrids' and just go 'off-grid'. From what I read here even running natural gas powered generators end up being less expensive per produced kWh so it should easily be less expensive than pulling power from the grid. If the grid does not want you, why would you want the grid?

Call your local groups 'electrical power councils' (Электроэнергетические советы or 'Elektroenergeticheskiye soviety') - and it should go down quite well with the more 'progressive' sections of that state.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#45

Post by talldatethrow »

more_corn wrote: post #32
gregschlom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually yes, I did the math a few months ago and if you have a gas generator such as [1], you can produce electricity from PG&E's gas for cheaper than PG&E's own electrical rates. Details: The generator linked below can produce 17 kWh of electricity by burning 307 cubic feet of natural gas. That translates to 3.07 therms of gas, and looking at my bill PG&E charges around $2.3 / therm, so the generator would produce…

I hate to be that guy, but instead of running a generator why not deploy rooftop solar? If we’re already ignoring upfront costs it generates your electricity for zero dollars.

You can also use a plugin hybrid as a quiet generator and battery bank. My Chevy volt kicks out 2kw into the 12v system bus when on, and then you just need an inverter. Once you use up the available 10kwh battery pack, the gas engine will just turn on and it makes about 10kwh per gallon.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#46

Post by [deleted] »

talldatethrow wrote: post #5

My rate in California is now 41 cents per kwh. My friends in Idaho are paying 10 cents. When (if) gasoline drops below $4.50-4.75 a gallon, it'll make more sense to just run my Chevy Volt on gasoline than electricity. Californian's like to complain we pay 50-100% more than gasoline than the rest of the country, but it I think if more people knew they'd be really annoyed they pay 4x more for electricity.

[deleted]

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#47

Post by rzazueta »

erulabs wrote: post #4

I love California for so many reasons, but charging me more for using less is not one of them. If we can’t cut costs by running on pure renewables because we need to “make up for lost profits”, this whole green plan will never work. Will we pay oil companies for lost profit from EVs? Just make usage below some threshold free and keep the same rates (or raise them) for high users. Simple and fair.

Remember: PG&E is a for-profit company. The CPUC consists of folks pretty much entirely in bed with PG&E.

I also love California - it's beautiful here, and the people are generally wonderful. But our state government, despite claiming to be blue, is pretty damned conservative across the board. Corporations first, then - if we still have time - the people.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#49

Post by rickydroll »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #39
more_corn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be that guy, but instead of running a generator why not deploy rooftop solar? If we’re already ignoring upfront costs it generates your electricity for zero dollars.

And then buy the generator for nights. Last I checked, batteries were prohibitively expensive.

You can get 30 kW (EG4-LifePower4) for $9000. Depending on your handyman skills, you can assemble most of the system yourself and have an electrician check it over, tie it into your electrical service, and sign off on the project.

If I were doing solar and batteries today, I would not try to feed any power to the grid except as part of a virtual power plant that pays me peak rates.

Re: California's electricity rates will shift to a fixed fee based on income

#50

Post by nothercastle »

throwup238 wrote: post #29
nothercastle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it cheaper to run a gas generator at some point?

Yes and a lot of people around here already have propane generators because SDGE kept turning off power once or twice a week during the day for the infrastructure upgrades that took years.

Cali is trying hard to ban gas generators too
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