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> The new California charge will be $24 for most customers, but lower income households, who already qualify for discounted electric rates, will see fees of eit
by koolba 2y ago
> The new California charge will be $24 for most customers, but lower income households, who already qualify for discounted electric rates, will see fees of either $6 or $12.
This will never go down. It will only go up.
And the real idea here is to get a min fixed amount from net zero customers with their own generation (ie solar).
- rapsin4 2y agoI'd be fine if this was a true fixed fee, that gets increased when infrastructure is gets improved, similar how water is billed. But I know it won't because ya know corruption and waste.
- erulabs 2y agoAt first this seemed ludicrous, but there is some rationality in charging net zero customers right? To put it another way: assuming the customer is only using the grid as an emergency backup and as a discharging service - isn’t that still a service? Even if the transmission lines are only taking power from my property, they still need maintenance? Presumably maintenance costs that would be overcome trivially by my generating a bit of excess power - but still non-zero?
- jerlam 2y agoPG&E (dunno about the others) is not a public utility, it is a private company that has been granted a monopoly by the local government. They made 2.2 billion dollars profit in 2023, after going bankrupt in 2019. There is no incentive to reduce prices since there aren't really any competitors. Every fee increase has to be granted by a regulatory agency (CPUC) which clearly hasn't been doing much regulation, and gives us odd pricing strategies like this one. One small city (Alameda) in the Bay Area, surrounded by PG&E customers, has its own municipal utility and they pay a third of the cost.