Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

kevin.burke.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 411 posts

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#91

Post by AnotherGoodName »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than 20c per kWh for my local city power - https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/public/v/5/utili... About half the price of PG&E. This is in an otherwise PG&E area. People should be demanding their city handle power. It leads to half the price.

> People should be demanding their city handle power. It leads to half the price. My power is significantly cheaper than yours but it comes from a private company. Picking random cities doesn’t tell us anything at all about costs or efficiency. Different areas have different costs and expenses. You have to compare apples to apples.

This is a PG&E area as stated charging ~40c per kWh as stated by the post above?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#92

Post by aqueueaqueue »

locallost wrote: post #45
tristanb wrote: post #7

I am so sick of PG&E - our energy bills are nearly $1,000/mo. It's absolutely bonkers.

This can't be true. Every month?? How many kwh per month do you use, and on what?

Sounds like an inefficient house and lots of heating or cooling.

Or some kind of production / workshop / datacentre / business usage.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#93

Post by jf »

Aurornis wrote: post #46

The author estimates that electricity prices would be reduced by up to 33% (from $0.45 blended rate to $0.30), but PG&E’s profit margins are only 11%. That’s a good hint that this hypothetical is missing some important details The article hedges against someone pointing this out by admitting that Walnut Creek is an unusually optimistic location and that PG&E is also recognizing large expenses related to ongoing infra…

The highest price that the city owned electric utility in Alameda, CA charges on the standard rate schedule is $0.29453 / kWh

https://www.alamedamp.com/DocumentCenter/View/1268/FY25-Rate...

Edit: Oh, this utility runs at a profit and has for decades. The profits have been going into undergrounding transmission lines

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#95

Post by UncleEntity »

aqueueaqueue wrote: post #87
payne92 wrote: post #59

> It costs a lot of money to deliver power to rural customers Utilities (generally) have a universal service obligation. If someone can cherry-pick just the denser areas with lower distribution costs, of course they could "undercut" the utility with the requirement to serve everyone. (I'm not saying that PG&E couldn't be better managed. I'm saying that there's a much, much deeper policy issue at stake here.)

They made the point that this is the plan. Encourage people to live in cities.

The more people that leave the rural areas for the cities makes it less profitable to serve the existing rural folks.

I grew up in the Bay Area, lived in 'rural' Humboldt and Placer counties, and can say I would never move back to the bay no matter how much the technocrats would desire it.

Pretty happy with my ~30k town nowhere near California TBH...

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#96

Post by UncleEntity »

marssaxman wrote: post #33
CobaltFire wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bang this drum all the time, but you are the first other person I've seen state it online. If we stop subsidizing the foothills by creating urban utility districts it would solve the PG&E problem. We would have a new problem of causing a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas without some kind of off-grid program. Long term I think this is the only sane way forward though.

> a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas That sounds like more of a solution than a problem: those places are going to burn, so it's better that people stop living there.

Ironically, if they just let them naturally burn in the first place there wouldn't be even a fraction of damage caused by these modern wildfires.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#97

Post by gamblor956 »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #52
Aurornis wrote: post #46

The author estimates that electricity prices would be reduced by up to 33% (from $0.45 blended rate to $0.30), but PG&E’s profit margins are only 11%. That’s a good hint that this hypothetical is missing some important details The article hedges against someone pointing this out by admitting that Walnut Creek is an unusually optimistic location and that PG&E is also recognizing large expenses related to ongoing infra…

I don’t think profit margin is the correct way to calculate their expenses. For one, it includes expenses outside of the municipality. For another, corporations are often okay overspending on executive compensation and other lavish business expenses for tax purposes.

162(m) limits a company's deduction for executives (and other highly compensated employees) compensation to $1m per exec/employee.

Or in other words, companies aren't overspending on exec compensation for tax purposes. They're doing so because the board is not exercising proper financial control over the company.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#98

Post by tokioyoyo »

chasd00 wrote: post #83
bitmasher9 wrote: post #50

This is absolutely a no-brainer for municipalities. The private companies are charging a premium that they return to shareholders and give to executives. Municipalities have excellent access to credit at rates significantly lower than the premium charged by utility companies. The residents get cheaper access and more influence in how the utility is ran. The number of people that pay for-profit companies for natural g…

City municipalities aren’t exactly staffed with the sharpest knives in the drawer. Few have the ability to manage the basics of street maintenance let alone stand something up like a utility. A fool and their money are soon separated, color me skeptical.

That just sounds like a mismanaged city? Like obviously it might go wrong as well, just like how a private company might not have the sharpest knives.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#99

Post by MichaelZuo »

dv_dt wrote: post #90
Aurornis wrote: post #46

The author estimates that electricity prices would be reduced by up to 33% (from $0.45 blended rate to $0.30), but PG&E’s profit margins are only 11%. That’s a good hint that this hypothetical is missing some important details The article hedges against someone pointing this out by admitting that Walnut Creek is an unusually optimistic location and that PG&E is also recognizing large expenses related to ongoing infra…

Profit margins don't reflect how efficiently they manage costs. It could as easily be the case the PG&E mismanages resources and costs more to deliver the same power.

Is there any evidence for how they’re wasting such a huge amount of money year after year?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#100

Post by tokioyoyo »

rsync wrote: post #62
abeppu wrote: post #12

The author mentions the cost of buying out the distribution network, and cites SF's failed attempt to do this. The author tries to figure out the price for Walnut Creek's grid based on inflation and population -- but the $2.5B figure this is based off was rejected by PG&E. The messed up thing is PG&E as a monopoly can set the price wherever they like -- and they can demand substantial continuing payments to connect t…

Why use eminent domain to seize their garbage, crumbling infrastructure? Instead, slowly build out, in parallel, the upgraded – which is to say, underground – infrastructure that PG&E refuses to build. A community could do this opportunistically on a schedule that tracks the normal repaving of roads.

Recent public infrastructure and construction history in the states is full of failures, missed deadlines and projects running over budget. Unfortunately this causes a loss of appetite when it comes to long term slow builds.
Post reply on HN