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

San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

kqed.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 92 posts

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

#71

Post by hunterpayne »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
hunterpayne wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.

> 100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance Sounds like we have a solution! Get PG&E out of distribution. They can keep running power plants, where there is at least competition.

Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.

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

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

casey2 wrote: post #70
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No wonder people are fleeing California in droves “Fleeing” is hyperbole. Population is roughly flat [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045224

Shrinking every year. Not good. ~40% people under 40 (or ~10% of the population) live with their parents. This is an indirect tax on parents since a majority of this class has no option to evict their kids. North Korea has a stable population, people flee all the time. The comparison is apt. California's 4-walled fences are much tighter around their residents.

> North Korea has a stable population

How could you possibly know this.

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

#73

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hunterpayne wrote: post #71
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance Sounds like we have a solution! Get PG&E out of distribution. They can keep running power plants, where there is at least competition.

Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.

> remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too

Crazy thought—dedicate the resources to maintaining them. From what I can tell, this tolerance of power-sparked wildfires is uniquely American (and concentrated, fairly and unfairly, in California).

Also, you don’t have to put it straight on the municipal balance sheet. Stick it in a distribution subsidiary with a little outside capital. (Hell, make it a member-owned co-operative.)

Alternative: sell off that transmission to someone else. Just handle last-mile distribution. Not transmission.

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

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chrisss395 wrote: post #67
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

PG&E is a failure. It’s wild prioritizing its reform and replacement isn’t seen as the existential threat to California Democrats’ national ambitions that it rightfully is. Distribution shouldn’t be this expensive nor cause this many fires. If the cost of distributing power to remote, fire-prone communities isn’t politically feasible to push to them directly, the cities should be put on a separate distribution system…

Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive part vs. electricity generation given the latter is centralized and scaled? Perhaps this is a fallacy, but that is the thought that crossed my mind.

> Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive

I don’t know. What I do know is California spends more on distribution than anyone else in the country. That signals there is a better way to do this.

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

#75

Post by Xorakios »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6
FrankWilhoit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, too: the primary reason to worry about inadequate generation is not cost, but reliability.

The problem in California is not generation nor is it reliability. CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far; under half the cost of Texas. It also hasn't had a blackout since 2020. The problem is retail side. AKA PG&E, its regulation, governance and forced liabilities. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...

CAISO claims that and cleantechnica might parrot it, but there are blackouts ALL THE TIME in southern california.

In Palm Springs I was down with brownouts 103 times since I bought a sine wave UPS in December, and multi hour blackouts 4 times. My mother in Riverside, brother in Laguna Beach are similar.

Last week it was 3 times here over the course of three days. It's lived experience for me. Reliability collapsed two years ago

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

#77

Post by bryanlarsen »

Xorakios wrote: post #75
bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in California is not generation nor is it reliability. CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far; under half the cost of Texas. It also hasn't had a blackout since 2020. The problem is retail side. AKA PG&E, its regulation, governance and forced liabilities. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...

CAISO claims that and cleantechnica might parrot it, but there are blackouts ALL THE TIME in southern california. In Palm Springs I was down with brownouts 103 times since I bought a sine wave UPS in December, and multi hour blackouts 4 times. My mother in Riverside, brother in Laguna Beach are similar. Last week it was 3 times here over the course of three days. It's lived experience for me. Reliability collapsed tw…

And none of those made the national news, which would have happened if the blackout was due to grid generation problems.

Your problem is local grid distribution. Local distribution has lots of single points of failure, unlike the state grid.

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

#78

Post by marnett »

joeblubaugh wrote: post #53
m463 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

I have some doubts about San Francisco’s ability to run a provider well, given the long history of corruption in city service providers and permitting agencies.

Airport is run well.

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

#79

Post by jeffbee »

toast0 wrote: post #16
jeffbee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That wasn't my point. Subsidizing rural service is a state policy. If major cities increasingly divorce from PG&E, and the true cost of rural electrification starts to be charged upon actual rural people, that might not work politically.

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

#80

Post by stonogo »

simoncion wrote: post #59
stonogo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, CAISO wholesale rates are much lower, but California also has the highest retail cost in the continental US, at over 28c/kWh. If any customer in the TVA paid that much for power there'd be riots.

Where does one even find wholesale rates for the various regional providers? I -a complete ignoramous- spent like ten whole minutes poking around for wholesale rates. I could find documents about rates for several providers (including TVA) from many years back, complaints about rates increasing for many providers (but no actual mention of the new rates) and some governmental site that provided rates for a selected su…

EIA doesn't carry TVA data because the TVA doesn't participate in open-market sales or report data to FERC. Wholesale power is auctioned in I(or R)SOs; TVA just sets rates directly during negotiations with power companies.
Post reply on HN