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California utilities break rates down into territories, so someone in San Jose does have different rates than Sierra foothills. My understanding is this based

California utilities break rates down into territories, so someone in San Jose does have different rates than Sierra foothills. My understanding is this based more off weather-driven demands (Marin has much less AC needs than Davis), but still, there are regional differences in pricing. Here's the real crux of what you're suggesting though: utilities are extremely regulated in what they can do, so it's quite possible the utilities commission said they can do price discrimination off of regional load differences but not off of a more nebulous "grid impact / risk score". The latter opens up all sorts of thorny equity questions (eg is what you're describing just redlining poorer rural communities through another mechanism?)

bluejekyll 3y ago
It doesn’t seem that hard. Just calculate the number of end users served by transmission lines and divide the costs accordingly. Don’t even need to factor in risk. This would make denser areas less costly on a per home basis, which is exactly what you want to encourage, and in CA would also generally translate to risk as well.
sagarm 3y ago
Redlining was bad because it was explicit racial discrimination. Setting prices based on costs is not redlining. If we want to subsidize poorer people in rural communities, we can do that through a means-tested program just like we do for the urban poor.