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> PG&E, who -- despite not making the electricity -- has responsibility to charge the consumer. Of course, PG&E charges a 'convenience and distribution' fee I
by danans 8y ago
> PG&E, who -- despite not making the electricity -- has responsibility to charge the consumer. Of course, PG&E charges a 'convenience and distribution' fee
I understand your frustration that the amount of the fee cancels out the cheaper cost of renewables in your case, but providing local distribution has a cost (maintenance of poles, wires, etc) over and above the actual energy generation cost, so there will always be a fee for this, unless you figure out a way to get the renewables to your house without the local distributor (and assuming that you don't put solar/batteries on your house).
Also, there is a cost (for storage, load dispatching, frequency regulation, etc) to turning the variability of renewables into the steady stream of available power that consumers expect.
Again, it's possible even including the cost of all of these necessary services, the renewables should still be cheaper than the non-renewables, but it's never going to be zero.
- frakr 8y agoDo you work in PR?
- danans 8y agoNo, but I did work for a bit on simulating renewable energy integration into the grid. That's where I learned about things like storage, load dispatching, frequency regulation, and local power distribution.
- npunt 8y agoPeople like you commenting in threads like this are the reason I keep coming back to HN. Thanks for your insights.
- dang 8y agoThis crosses into personal attack and also breaks the site rule against insinuating astroturfing without evidence. Could you please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not do this again?
- bdamm 8y agoThis all makes sense, but why then is the "standard" (coal-fired?) electricity the same price as the "renewable" electricity? Why does the utility "waive" the distribution fee? In fact, passing it on to the consumer as an option doesn't make any sense to me. The utility negotiates bulk price and averages it out for consumers. If anything the conversation with the utility should be entirely about matching behavior to supply and/or dynamic pricing, and not at all about renewable vs non-renewable voltage.
- danans 8y agoI think the post I answered was referring to PGE's Solar Choice program, which I agree is not a good deal for a consumer. But it's marketed specifically as a program where you pay a premium to fund the greening of the grid [1][2]. It actually states that you will pay a premium for this plan. 1. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/options/solar/solar-choice/solar-choice.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_solarchoice https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/opt... 2. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/PG-E-s-eco-friendly-offer-Pay-more-and-6805020.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/PG-E-s-eco-friendly-...
- tathougies 8y agoI am not referring to PGE's solar choice program. Marin county runs its own green energy, independent of PG&E. PG&E owns the wires. I get it costs money to run the wires. However, it is wrong to waive the fee for those using PG&E services. It's anti-competitive and bad for the state.
- azernik 8y agoMostly because of the historical way the business model worked - the portion of your bill that varies based on energy usage is all out of proportion to the portion of the cost to the energy company that comes from varies based on energy usage. Basically, the electric companies' business model is like the cell phone companies' - build infrastructure, charge by usage - which means that low-cost energy sources, especially out of PG&E's control, are disastrous for their business model. It's a serious problem I've heard a lot of talk about in renewable energy policy circles, and the generally accepted idea of a functional market structure in this new world is to have a grid company, which charges only that distribution fee, and a generation company, which charges you for the cost of generation. But we're not there yet, so PG&E needs to find ways to not lose money on the grid hookup for customers who buy cheap forms of energy (or are, godforbid, energy-neutral with relation to the grid).