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In addition to that, spreading the costs evenly across the 40 million residents of California, it’s a whopping $500 per person. Not exactly cheap, but also not

In addition to that, spreading the costs evenly across the 40 million residents of California, it’s a whopping $500 per person. Not exactly cheap, but also not a political nightmare to find the funding.

lazide 2y ago
Keep in mind, many areas of California already have absurd electrical pricing and rising ($.50+/kwh) and everyone was promised a long time already that there would not need to be grid upgrades to support EV’s. Which was transparent BS. So here we are again, likely going to get more out of proportion increases due to things that were promised to not be needed.
- bombcar 2y ago
  There was a short time where people were making an argument (and it wasn't entirely impossible, either) that on-home solar would "balance out" EV charging so that the overall increased load on the grid would be minimal. That didn't pan out for various reasons.
  - lazide 2y ago
    I remember many of these pronouncements recently being during rolling brownout/blackouts due to high loads in summer AND after PG&E had stopped providing decent pricing for infeed from home solar systems. I agree that some of the discussion was before the BS was apparent, but a lot of it was well after it was obviously not how this was going to work. Still possible (if in a setup with good insolation!) to provision your own home solar setup and charge off that - and high income folks, it would likely pay off pretty quickly due to the current insane rates - but then that’s why the utility companies seem dead set on trying to stop it too.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      What I've seen is that where it used to be quite worth connecting to the grid and "feeding back" because you'd get paid the current retail price, now it is complicated enough and paid little enough that many people just don't bother feeding back at all.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Yeah, it was part of the short term incentives to get people to roll out solar. Now they pay wholesale prices when buying it back (often zero or even negative during peak insolation) and charge retail when selling it - any by retail I mean ‘crazy high usage based numbers which make no sense’. I know a bunch of folks which installed solar themselves to cover their AC costs because the utility still charges crazy high rates during peak insolation - even while they are having to load shed - and their electric bill dropped to almost nothing afterwards. They didn’t even need batteries.
  - ericmcornelius 2y ago
    For starters - many of the utilities charge more for daytime and "peak" usage hours in the TOU plans. Which is also when they're overproducing solar and having to shed load. But hey, no sense looking for logic here.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Plenty of logic if you assume their goal is to be paid as much $$ as possible, while throwing up the maximum smokescreen possible. Near as I can tell, the CPUC is in on it for many reasons. Some, like PG&E being paying the tab on their numerous past misdeeds without formally declaring bankruptcy/putting the state on the hook. But also if for no other reason than it's the only way the various green mandates can actually be hit, since costs to actually deliver a kwh when needed are far, far higher and require much larger capital outlays than the public would be willing to accept if it was obvious to them. It's frog boiling/gaslighting the public - 'oh it won't cost anything extra - it'll probably save us money!', 'oh, we might need to add some restrictions', 'oh it won't cost that much more really, it will be worth it', 'oh, you've already paid for most of it, it will just be a bit extra', 'oh, yeah it is a bit expensive but what are you going to do about it', etc. For some reason it seems to work REALLY well in California.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    "for various reasons"... they killed home solar with net metering charges!
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  The PV is about ~$300 per person (when spread out over decades). You're fighting a losing battle living in California if you're going to complain about spending ~$0.03 per day to have electric cars...
  - lazide 2y ago
    That’s the claim, right now. Originally it was $0. I left California awhile ago. My current (peak) electrical rates are less than $.15/kwh, and i’m not far from the border though.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      Who ever claimed $0? I get why you left California. Up here in Seattle we pay 10-13 cents? But I probably wouldn’t notice much if we paid 50 cents.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Pre ~ 2023 the party line was 'we don't need to do anything in generation/distribution infrastructure, we just need to roll out more chargers'. With hints or even promises of REDUCED electric rates, not increased rates. Search seems to be prioritizing more recent articles, so harder to find references, but there are plenty out there. I remember reading dozens of articles at the time which all insisted that costs would stay the same or go down, and we didn't need to make more generation capacity because EV use would never be a meaningful portion of electrical demand. "In addition, by including new rate structures in the pilot programs, California may be able to shift load in ways that defers expensive new generation or transmissions assets. This remains to be seen, but could result in lower rates overall." [https://www.csis.org/analysis/utility-involvement-electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-california-vanguard https://www.csis.org/analysis/utility-involvement-electric-v...] Here is the California Legislative bill passed on the topic in 2022 - and the focus is on building more chargers. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2700 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...] Here is also the mandate to increase more charging infrastructure too, and assess effectiveness. [https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/reports/electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-assessment-ab-2127 https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/reports/electric-vehi...] By 2022, they were trying to get folks to switch to grid controlled charging [https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/new-california-rule-will-cut-costs-of-home-ev-charging https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/new-califor...] which is a bit crazy for the end consumer, and could even be a large scale safety issue. Essentially centralized rationing. In 2023 is when supply/demand issues got so obvious that people started to call BS [https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-electric-cars-grid/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-electr...]. Notably, around then is also when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant decommissioning got canned (despite it being past it's design life, with known and expensive to remediate radiation leaks). Seattle doesn't need AC, but a lot of housing does have electric baseboard heating. Those folks would definitely notice if electricity ~quadrupled in cost!

lazide 2y ago

Keep in mind, many areas of California already have absurd electrical pricing and rising ($.50+/kwh) and everyone was promised a long time already that there would not need to be grid upgrades to support EV’s. Which was transparent BS. So here we are again, likely going to get more out of proportion increases due to things that were promised to not be needed.

bombcar 2y ago
There was a short time where people were making an argument (and it wasn't entirely impossible, either) that on-home solar would "balance out" EV charging so that the overall increased load on the grid would be minimal. That didn't pan out for various reasons.
- lazide 2y ago
  I remember many of these pronouncements recently being during rolling brownout/blackouts due to high loads in summer AND after PG&E had stopped providing decent pricing for infeed from home solar systems. I agree that some of the discussion was before the BS was apparent, but a lot of it was well after it was obviously not how this was going to work. Still possible (if in a setup with good insolation!) to provision your own home solar setup and charge off that - and high income folks, it would likely pay off pretty quickly due to the current insane rates - but then that’s why the utility companies seem dead set on trying to stop it too.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    What I've seen is that where it used to be quite worth connecting to the grid and "feeding back" because you'd get paid the current retail price, now it is complicated enough and paid little enough that many people just don't bother feeding back at all.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Yeah, it was part of the short term incentives to get people to roll out solar. Now they pay wholesale prices when buying it back (often zero or even negative during peak insolation) and charge retail when selling it - any by retail I mean ‘crazy high usage based numbers which make no sense’. I know a bunch of folks which installed solar themselves to cover their AC costs because the utility still charges crazy high rates during peak insolation - even while they are having to load shed - and their electric bill dropped to almost nothing afterwards. They didn’t even need batteries.
- ericmcornelius 2y ago
  For starters - many of the utilities charge more for daytime and "peak" usage hours in the TOU plans. Which is also when they're overproducing solar and having to shed load. But hey, no sense looking for logic here.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Plenty of logic if you assume their goal is to be paid as much $$ as possible, while throwing up the maximum smokescreen possible. Near as I can tell, the CPUC is in on it for many reasons. Some, like PG&E being paying the tab on their numerous past misdeeds without formally declaring bankruptcy/putting the state on the hook. But also if for no other reason than it's the only way the various green mandates can actually be hit, since costs to actually deliver a kwh when needed are far, far higher and require much larger capital outlays than the public would be willing to accept if it was obvious to them. It's frog boiling/gaslighting the public - 'oh it won't cost anything extra - it'll probably save us money!', 'oh, we might need to add some restrictions', 'oh it won't cost that much more really, it will be worth it', 'oh, you've already paid for most of it, it will just be a bit extra', 'oh, yeah it is a bit expensive but what are you going to do about it', etc. For some reason it seems to work REALLY well in California.
- fragmede 2y ago
  "for various reasons"... they killed home solar with net metering charges!
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
The PV is about ~$300 per person (when spread out over decades). You're fighting a losing battle living in California if you're going to complain about spending ~$0.03 per day to have electric cars...
- lazide 2y ago
  That’s the claim, right now. Originally it was $0. I left California awhile ago. My current (peak) electrical rates are less than $.15/kwh, and i’m not far from the border though.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Who ever claimed $0? I get why you left California. Up here in Seattle we pay 10-13 cents? But I probably wouldn’t notice much if we paid 50 cents.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Pre ~ 2023 the party line was 'we don't need to do anything in generation/distribution infrastructure, we just need to roll out more chargers'. With hints or even promises of REDUCED electric rates, not increased rates. Search seems to be prioritizing more recent articles, so harder to find references, but there are plenty out there. I remember reading dozens of articles at the time which all insisted that costs would stay the same or go down, and we didn't need to make more generation capacity because EV use would never be a meaningful portion of electrical demand. "In addition, by including new rate structures in the pilot programs, California may be able to shift load in ways that defers expensive new generation or transmissions assets. This remains to be seen, but could result in lower rates overall." [https://www.csis.org/analysis/utility-involvement-electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-california-vanguard https://www.csis.org/analysis/utility-involvement-electric-v...] Here is the California Legislative bill passed on the topic in 2022 - and the focus is on building more chargers. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2700 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...] Here is also the mandate to increase more charging infrastructure too, and assess effectiveness. [https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/reports/electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-assessment-ab-2127 https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/reports/electric-vehi...] By 2022, they were trying to get folks to switch to grid controlled charging [https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/new-california-rule-will-cut-costs-of-home-ev-charging https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/ev-charging/new-califor...] which is a bit crazy for the end consumer, and could even be a large scale safety issue. Essentially centralized rationing. In 2023 is when supply/demand issues got so obvious that people started to call BS [https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-electric-cars-grid/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-electr...]. Notably, around then is also when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant decommissioning got canned (despite it being past it's design life, with known and expensive to remediate radiation leaks). Seattle doesn't need AC, but a lot of housing does have electric baseboard heating. Those folks would definitely notice if electricity ~quadrupled in cost!