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PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

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Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#11

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr »

saltcured wrote: post #6

While I understand the desire to have a progressive pricing scheme to offset some of the criticism around solar subsidies being "subsidies for the rich", I think this would be a terrible precedent as far as invasion of privacy. I think it is cynical overreach. There is absolutely no reason that the utility company should gain access to household income data of their entire market. If the CA government thinks we shoul…

The US is an increasingly transparent kleptocracy. How do you even start to unwind from this level of regulatory capture?

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#12

Post by concerned_ »

JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #11
saltcured wrote: post #6

While I understand the desire to have a progressive pricing scheme to offset some of the criticism around solar subsidies being "subsidies for the rich", I think this would be a terrible precedent as far as invasion of privacy. I think it is cynical overreach. There is absolutely no reason that the utility company should gain access to household income data of their entire market. If the CA government thinks we shoul…

The US is an increasingly transparent kleptocracy. How do you even start to unwind from this level of regulatory capture?

More like unregulated capture. There is simply no way it legal for a utility to means test people. Regardless of where the data originated.

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#13

Post by balderdash »

Isn’t this just going to incentivize the people can afford to, to install residential solar/battery and go off grid? Which probably has negative consequences for the low/moderate income people who will have to share a larger portion of the fixed costs?

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#14

Post by thegrim33 »

gbtw wrote: post #3

So rich people who can afford their accountant fees to hide their income, like with taxes, will pay almost nothing for energy, while the essentially broke person will pay more.

What percentage of the population do you believe is both rich and hires accountants to hide all of their income? What percentage of people serviced by PG&E do you think fall into that category? From my perspective you're referring to a number of people that I could count on one hand. Do you think it's some significant portion of the population?

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#16

Post by shadowfu »

balderdash wrote: post #13

Isn’t this just going to incentivize the people can afford to, to install residential solar/battery and go off grid? Which probably has negative consequences for the low/moderate income people who will have to share a larger portion of the fixed costs?

This was the first response when I shared this with someone else.

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#17

Post by 1123581321 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #14
gbtw wrote: post #3

So rich people who can afford their accountant fees to hide their income, like with taxes, will pay almost nothing for energy, while the essentially broke person will pay more.

What percentage of the population do you believe is both rich and hires accountants to hide all of their income? What percentage of people serviced by PG&E do you think fall into that category? From my perspective you're referring to a number of people that I could count on one hand. Do you think it's some significant portion of the population?

What makes you confident it’s between one and five individuals?

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#18

Post by zamalek »

balderdash wrote: post #13

Isn’t this just going to incentivize the people can afford to, to install residential solar/battery and go off grid? Which probably has negative consequences for the low/moderate income people who will have to share a larger portion of the fixed costs?

Technology Connections has a really interesting (as always) video on this. Supposedly 10-20% of your power bill goes to power, the rest is for grid maintenance. The poor are going to have to pay more and more to maintain the grid, unless there is a radical change in how grid-tied is priced.

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#19

Post by MrFoof »

davidandgoliath wrote: post #4
lsaferite wrote: post #2

Is PG&E electricity super cheap already or something? I pay 2x-3x the top tier they are talking about in FL for electricity.

.47c a kWh. Highest outside of Hawaii, third or fourth highest in the world. You're not paying that in Florida.

For CA, depends very much on where you are. $0.47 is not the highest in CA, nor in the continental US.

Here in Boston, my rate is $0.14479/Kwh for delivery with a $0.33891/kWh supply charge, or $0.4837 per kWh. Yep, higher than you're paying. That excludes a fixed standing charge of $7/mo. About 53% of our base load (IIRC) is natural gas, so when natural gas wholesale prices spiked, so did our rates by 80+ percent back in October 2022.

My electric bill nearly doubled over the course of 6 weeks. I'm fortunate that over the years I had always driven my power consumption into the ground. Certainly paid off. Back in 2017, the rate was legitimately under half what I paid now.

Again, I believe there might be some parts of CA where the delivery+supply rate might be approaching $0.60/kWh at some points in time, but it'll be location dependent.

Re: PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

#20

Post by pengaru »

What business does the power company have knowing my income level? I already get offers to sign up for substantial low-income discounts from SCE, and it never strikes me as a good idea to pursue despite likely qualifying on my long sabbatical style stints of self-employment. My usage is so low in general it's just not an optimization worth further compromising my privacy for.

Furthermore why would we want to disconnect cost from utilization? This seems ridiculous on the face of it, and the rates they're describing for the high-earners strike me as low compared to how wasteful such households tend to be.

Am I missing something? Is some millionaire with an electric heated outdoor pool going to be paying $92/mo in this scheme? That's madness and incentivizing the wrong things entirely.

Or are those figures listed just averages expected under the new scheme, but still scaled by utilization?

Also what happens if you refuse to provide proof of income level under this scheme? Does it just default to the highest bracket? Many actual low-income folks won't be filing paperwork proving their taxed income level with the power company, will this just fuck them over by treating them as high earners?

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