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San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

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Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#11

Post by mirashii »

FrankWilhoit wrote: post #3

CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation . This is not a matter of whether PG&E is "privately" or "publicly" owned, because nearly all large utilities are already a weird mixture of both. Public ownership might have different incentives, but not sufficiently different to allow rates to be lowered substantially (unless it were a case of ove…

> CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation

The existence of CPUC and CAISO says nothing of their efficacy. Jumping all the way past any question of their efficacy is egregious.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#12

Post by jeffbee »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #5
FrankWilhoit wrote: post #3

CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation . This is not a matter of whether PG&E is "privately" or "publicly" owned, because nearly all large utilities are already a weird mixture of both. Public ownership might have different incentives, but not sufficiently different to allow rates to be lowered substantially (unless it were a case of ove…

PGE charged me more for the same electric usage than SVP. There is definitely greed on PGEs part.

Maybe, but SVP has two massive advantages: it delivers almost all of its energy to a handful of gigantic customers, not homes. Contrary to internet belief, having a customer base dominated by industry makes power cheap to deliver. Secondly, it gets a free pass from expensive things that the state makes PG&E pay for, especially rural service.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#13

Post by jeffbee »

infotainment wrote: post #7

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

The other angle that people may not realize is that SF has voted in nine separate elections to not establish a municipal utility. The people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E, given numerous opportunities.

SMUD has cheap power because 100 years ago the people of Sacramento invested a lot of money to establish that utility. What the vocal minority of SF public power people want is magical: cheaper rates without all that bothersome investment.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#14

Post by simoncion »

infotainment wrote: post #7

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam).

My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but...

If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption.

Your link [2] claims Hetch Hetchy Power System provides something like 395 MW of power generation capacity. I'm going to assume that that's a misprint and they meant to write MWh because that's the only thing that makes sense to me for a measure of power generation. While the last page of this PDF [3] indicates that the hydro generation component is capable of powering a bit more than twice the city's municipal demand, it seems like it's not enough to satisfy even 1/1000th of the demand of the entire city.

Perhaps I've totally fucked up my unit conversions (or relied on garbage data), but it looks like only the tiniest fraction of the city's power demands can be satisfied by the Hetch Hetchy dam. (Though, we could easily electrify way more of the Muni lines with the surplus capacity.)

[0] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...>

[1] SF City and County are -AFAICT- the same thing. It's a little weird.

[2] https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...>

[3] https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/about-us/WeDeliver...> (found via [4]

[4] https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/storage-and-deliv...>

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#15

Post by thebigman433 »

FrankWilhoit wrote: post #3

CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation . This is not a matter of whether PG&E is "privately" or "publicly" owned, because nearly all large utilities are already a weird mixture of both. Public ownership might have different incentives, but not sufficiently different to allow rates to be lowered substantially (unless it were a case of ove…

> What this means is that there is not enough generation

We should generate more, but one of the major issues is how much wildfire prevention PG&E has to do, which then gets passed on to their customers. I am huge into supply side abundance, but that isnt the only driver here for costs.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#16

Post by toast0 »

jeffbee wrote: post #12
Atotalnoob wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGE charged me more for the same electric usage than SVP. There is definitely greed on PGEs part.

Maybe, but SVP has two massive advantages: it delivers almost all of its energy to a handful of gigantic customers, not homes. Contrary to internet belief, having a customer base dominated by industry makes power cheap to deliver. Secondly, it gets a free pass from expensive things that the state makes PG&E pay for, especially rural service.

There's very little rural in San Francisco city/county, so a hypothetical sf electric utility wouldn't have to spend a lot on that either.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#17

Post by jeffbee »

simoncion wrote: post #14
infotainment wrote: post #7

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims He…

You did this wrong but drew the right conclusion. Hetch Hetchy system exists but it is nowhere near the scale of powering the entire city of San Francisco.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#18

Post by [deleted] »

simoncion wrote: post #14
infotainment wrote: post #7

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims He…

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#19

Post by simoncion »

jeffbee wrote: post #17
simoncion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims He…

You did this wrong but drew the right conclusion. Hetch Hetchy system exists but it is nowhere near the scale of powering the entire city of San Francisco.

Mmkay, so what were my core mistakes? Unit conversion failures? Order-of-magnitude errors? Sign problems (somehow)?

Both Wolfram Alpha and units(1) indicated that conversion between MW and MWh was totally nonsensical, so I presumed either that that was a typo, or that 1MW of power generation run for one hour will satisfy 1MWh of demand... assuming that either that demand is evenly spread throughout the hour, or that you can smooth over spikes with storage.

Re: San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

#20

Post by NewJazz »

simoncion wrote: post #14
infotainment wrote: post #7

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims He…

Power generation facilities are typically quoted in terms of Watts, not Watt-hours. From an era where these were fossil fuel or nuclear plants or dams that provided a pretty steady level of energy. It indicates what the generation facility/asset can produce at any given moment, although if rivers run dry hydro output can decrease.

I think the numbers you cite in [0] are in terms of total annual consumption.

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