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

301–310 of 411 posts

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#301

Post by XorNot »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #213
nocoiner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Now you’ve just undone 70 years of rural electrification in the United States. Optimizing for factors other than universal service is completely valid, but I’m guessing each of those municipal power systems pre-dated rural electrification and thereby get to somewhat free ride on the system more than anyone would reasonably allow Walnut Creek to do in the year 2025.

Rural electrification was needed at the time. In many cases, it no longer is (distributed generation, microgrids, etc vs large, distant generators having to transport power to residential load centers). This is very similar to how Africa will leapfrog the legacy model with cheap solar and batteries. In Australia, they have a model of colocating stationary battery storage in neighborhoods to balance buffer solar produ…

In Australia that policy was rolled out basically this year and is still in the trial stage.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#302

Post by rsynnott »

maxerickson wrote: post #298
rsynnott wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if cities don’t pay for that, who will? Just abandoning electricity for rural areas isn’t _really_ an option, but it would likely be uneconomic without the effective subsidy from urban areas.

The area I live in has utilities that service the small town population centers and a utility that services most of the outlying rural area. The rural operator is expensive, but not unaffordable. Density including the towns is about 3.2 people per square km.

Who paid for the infra, and how old is it? If it was inherited from a prior larger utility, this is the sort of thing you can get away with, for a while, until it needs serious maintenance. But ultimately spreading the true lifetime cost of electrical infrastructure over that sort of population density without subsidy is going to lead to absurdly high prices.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#303

Post by maxerickson »

rsynnott wrote: post #302
maxerickson wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The area I live in has utilities that service the small town population centers and a utility that services most of the outlying rural area. The rural operator is expensive, but not unaffordable. Density including the towns is about 3.2 people per square km.

Who paid for the infra, and how old is it? If it was inherited from a prior larger utility, this is the sort of thing you can get away with, for a while, until it needs serious maintenance. But ultimately spreading the true lifetime cost of electrical infrastructure over that sort of population density without subsidy is going to lead to absurdly high prices.

It formed from smaller utilities ~1950. We have harsh winters and some small thunderstorms, but that's about it for weather.

Looks like people end up paying close to $0.30 per kwh. There's probably some cross subsidies coming from the state, I don't know.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#304

Post by screye »

rsynnott wrote: post #290
kevinburke wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author here. The cost savings come from not having people who live in cities pay for undergrounding lines and maintaining power lines in rural areas. Maintaining the city networks is much cheaper. This is why Santa Clara, Palo Alto and Alameda's power companies can deliver power for half of what PG&E can. You can just copy their cost structure.

The problem is, if cities don’t pay for that, who will? Just abandoning electricity for rural areas isn’t _really_ an option, but it would likely be uneconomic without the effective subsidy from urban areas.

Story of America. There's a reason only this continent has excessive sprawl.

Ideally, rural areas pay up. Good forcing functions for change. Maybe people move closer together (similar to European villages) or they become energy-independent (solar panels).

If that's politically untenable, then I'd like to see the cost reflected as a city2rural subsidy. Cities get enough hate in the US. I'd like explicit recognition of their generosity.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#305

Post by sgarland »

lostlogin wrote: post #182
sgarland wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing somet…

> This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. It’s funnier if we alter it a little, is it more or less true this way? >> It's also clear that rural voting was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision government (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20…

I don’t see how voting works as an analogy. Suburbs would be more apt. I live in one, but I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no defensible reason to do so beyond “I want to.” They’re typically a net negative for counties in terms of tax revenue, they perpetuate car-first infrastructure, they contribute to high housing costs, and they don’t produce anything of value, like rural areas can (farms, land preservation).

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#306

Post by gojomo »

Aurornis wrote: post #124
gojomo wrote: post #117

PG&E's absurdly high rates are how they finance the careers of Governor Newsom & his wife, and "donations" to a giant array of other pet project "charities" for politicians & their favored cronies/causes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helpe... https://www.sacbee.com/article251851903.html Why would any of California's uniparty establishment want to refund all that money to random utility custo…

> But over the past two decades, Newsom (D) and his wife have accepted more than $700,000 from the Pacific Gas & Electric $700,000 over 20 years is $35,000 per year (not to mention Newsom wasn’t governor for most of that time) PG&E revenues are $25,000,000,000 per year. Regardless of what you think about the arrangement, it’s not why rates are high. > In neighboring Nevada, the utility serving its major metros NV Ene…

Of course it's not the 1:1 expense passthrough of PG&E's multidecade sponsorship of just Newsom's family that alone causes higher rates.

It's the tens of millions in political contributions to not just Newsom at every stage if his career but also his allies & ilk.

Plus tens of millions more in donations to favored "charitable" projects of family & cronies of politicians like Newsom & his allies.

Plus harder-to-tally overpriced jobs & contracts steered to the "right" (regime-aligned) consultants, firms, & unions. (Did you notice how the glowing character reference in the Wapo article, about how immune to influence Newsom is, comes from a former Newsom advisor – & member of his wife's nonprofit board – who currently has PG&E as a paying client of his PR firm?)

All the cash & favors are then topped off with a showy cheerfulness to "accept the responsibility" of extra costs from those state-idiosyncratic "regulations" you mention.

But of course that's the quid pro quo of their monopoly remaining unchallenged, & all costs more-than-passed-on to ratepayers – so the ruling machine including Newsom can keep getting their beaks wet in all PG&E's spending & donation fountains.

To look at only the formal campaign contributions against revenues, & accept as excuse a cover-story for extra corrupt expenditures ("regulations are very different"), & then conclude "no problem" is exactly why milking ratepayers this way, spreading the loot widely, is such a enduringly great racket.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#307

Post by ty6853 »

jncfhnb wrote: post #246
ty6853 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hilarious city folks think rural power is subsidized. I recently extended a line about 1000 feet. For this, I paid $13000 -- primary transmission, poles, anchors, electricians, transformers, all at full rates. And it was a required donation, as in the power coop owns everything and it goes on public easement on to the next guy when they extend from mine. When they finished, I worked myself silly digging secondary…

The cost of installing that stuff is way more than 13k

Then they committed fraud.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#308

Post by Chris2048 »

threeseed wrote: post #275
andy_ppp wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can extrapolate this to why governments all over the world are effectively bankrupt, if you have no assets and instead rent them back from the rich it's extremely difficult to balance your books and the tax burden will go up forever. No amount of cost cutting will restore all public assets being owned by someone else and rented back at ever increasing costs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II1GOhoNpms

In that video Brexit was not mentioned once. Even though the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 because of it [1]. A decision that can't be blamed on the rich but instead is owned by the ordinary voter. Who then demands the same quality of life they had previously with the same taxation levels. It's delusional thinking and unfortunately no one has the political capital nor guts to correct them on it. And it's a very…

Who "demand[ed] the same quality of life they had"?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#309

Post by LtWorf »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #250
tmnvix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but somehow I doubt that those with decision making power that were in favour of selling at the time regret much. Our modern political economy is almost entirely focused on ensuring that everything that can be sold to private entities (read, the market) is. In this ideology the sale would be viewed as a success regardless of any practical downsides.

Don’t blame this on the market. A true market won’t have a heavy handed regulator in bed with a govt approved monopoly.

A true market doesn't exist.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#310

Post by sgarland »

ty6853 wrote: post #187
sgarland wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing somet…

Its hilarious city folks think rural power is subsidized. I recently extended a line about 1000 feet. For this, I paid $13000 -- primary transmission, poles, anchors, electricians, transformers, all at full rates. And it was a required donation, as in the power coop owns everything and it goes on public easement on to the next guy when they extend from mine. When they finished, I worked myself silly digging secondary…

On the flip side, practically everything else about rural areas is subsidized. Most crops have price floors. Dairy is massively subsidized. Rural school districts siphon funding from cities.

Much / all of this is arguably necessary for national security viz. food production, but I dislike when people in red states (not saying you’ve done this, just making a tangential point) make comments like, “let’s see how long the city lasts if we stop exporting food.” Uhhh how long do you think you’d last without practically every aspect of your life being subsidized?

We need both groups in the country, and we need to support each other as each needs, but part of that dynamic being healthy means acknowledging that we’re receiving help.

Post reply on HN