8 ms·

California sides with big utilities, trimming incentives for community solar

86 points by photochemsyn 2y ago

azinman2 2y ago
The entire energy model of CA needs to be rethought. From CPUC just doing what the companies want, to monopolies that are on the stock market that increase prices while also making huge profits… it is not serving the people.
- m463 2y ago
  Most companies give you a discount if you use more of their product. California energy works on a scarcity mindset with punitive punishments and now extra charges based on income. sigh. and the CPUC is solely in the hands of PG&E. As a customer it's sort of like wargames - the only winning move is not to play. Unless you live in say, santa clara or palo alto, where they have sane energy companies with reasonable prices (like the outside of california)
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    A lot of cities in california have their own public water and power company. LADWP is probably the largest by far.
  - drno123 2y ago
    “Extra charges based on income” - does this mean that if you earn more, you pay more for electricity?
    - m463 2y ago
      https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/income-based-electric-bills-the-newest-utility-fight-in-california https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/income-ba...
      - leereeves 2y ago
        So you're now required to share your tax documents with the local utility company, and they will charge you a monthly fee just for earning more money?
        jerlam 2y ago
        No, the plan was changed to have a fixed monthly fee in addition to the cost per kWh for all, but lower income households will have a lower fixed monthly fee.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        alwa 2y ago
        How do they distinguish those lower-income households without referring to tax documents?
        dataflow 2y ago
        I have no idea about this particular program, but similar programs already exist for other utilities, you can look at how they do it (open the "What information do I need to provide..." section): https://www.att.com/internet/access/ https://www.att.com/internet/access/
        rnrn 2y ago
        Previous proposals would have required everyone to provide income data to their utility which the utility would verify “somehow” (never fully articulated AFAIK) The latest proposal (which has been accepted by the CPUC) has fixed charges applied for everyone (much lower than previously proposed fixed charges) with discounts available based on existing low-income programs ( https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financial-assistance/california-alternate-rates-for-energy-program.html https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financ... ) So yes in order to get the discount low-income customers need to declare income and may need to verify that income with tax documents (depending on how much fraud these program plan to tolerate) but other customers do not need to provide income information.
    - twiceaday 2y ago
      Yes. But put differently "if you earn less you pay less." It depends one what you call the "normal" price.
  - grecy 2y ago
    > the only winning move is not to play. And with so much sun, that is a very viable option. A roof covered in solar and some batteries and you'll never deal with this nonsense ever again.
    - dmitrygr 2y ago
      It is illegal in California to disconnect a residential house from the grid. It’s ca. They wouldn’t make it THAT easy to opt out of their insanity.
      - orhmeh09 2y ago
        Source?
        alwa 2y ago
        Lawyers argued that Title 24 required that residential buildings be interconnected with the grid [0] [1], but 2022 updates to the code seem to have clarified that standalone solar PV systems with storage are OK (though they should still be meet the same standards as grid-connected systems would) [2] In any case the small number of people who can afford to do so and want to do so seem to be doing so [3] [0] https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/grid-detection-vol10no1.pdf https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/gri... [1] https://klinedinstlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-title-24-is-keeping-california-connected-to-the-grid.pdf https://klinedinstlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-tit... [2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards/online-resource-center/overview https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/build... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/168mlxw/possiblelegal_to_go_completely_off_grid_in/?rdt=63325 https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/168mlxw/possiblelega...
      - reacharavindh 2y ago
        Are there fixed costs to having a connection? As in can one have a connection to the grid as a backup pay negligible amounts every month since they don’t use it?
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible. Actual criticism of real problems in California (which seems to be doing better than most states in most ways, but isn't perfect) gets buried under tribal political nonsense, where everything is an outrage.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible. It isn't crazy, but it is a bad idea. There should be one debate where we work out how much support successful people are expected to provide for their less successful peers, and one transfer payment to cover it. Then everyone pays for things as equals. Setting up multiple parallel societies where everyone has a different experience and financial incentives is wasteful. It ends up in situations where the electricity provider needs to consult with someone's accountant to work out what to charge customers. That is kinda crazy. A customer's tax position has nothing to do with the services they are provided and linking them is going to have weird second order effects. It is the same lunacy as linking paying for medical services and employment together and we have all seen how that worked out for the US. Linking parts of the system together at random is not the path to a high-functioning administrative state.
      - sokoloff 2y ago
        > linking paying for medical services and employment together which was heavily encouraged by tax policies and government-imposed price controls on labor...
      - nrook 2y ago
        When you see really goofy progressive taxes, if you look behind them, you'll usually see a strong legal or political barrier behind more sensible ones. This is why you are always hearing about ridiculous Amazon taxes coming out of the state of Washington; the place has no income tax, and progressive income taxes have been held to be unconstitutional there. So they have to get creative if they want a progressive tax. Of course, the barrier in California is the infamous Proposition 13. You're right that charging people different rates for energy based on their income is silly; if they want to let the poor off the hook they should just tax them less, or even give them money. But the state's lawmakers are operating in a constrained environment. (It's also the case that subsidies and means-tested benefits are trendy in Democratic policy-making circles, despite being dumb and inefficient compared to simpler and less directed benefits.)
  - OptionOfT 2y ago
    You do get a discount when you buy more ahead of time, and guarantee that you will buy it. This is different from wanting a fixed price for a spot-priced product.
    - m463 2y ago
      you cannot do this with PG&E unless there is some plan I haven't heard about?
- philjohn 2y ago
  It's a difficult one. The old net metering model where the utility serves as a battery was never going to be sustainable as distributed renewables grew in popularity. Home batteries are definitely the way forward, but NEM 3.0 is an abomination.
  - Beldin 2y ago
    Home batteries are a terrible idea. As a municipality -- or a neighbour -- you don't want 30 houses with 35 different batteries, installed by some nephew who's handy with DIY-stuff. To just timeshift from daylight to evening/night/morning, you'd need batteries in the 25-35kWh range, 40-50kWh if airco on in the night, another 80kWh if you're driving electric and typically away from home during the day, charge at night. That is a lot of energy to pack, even at the low end. Imagine if everyone finds the cheapest set on AliExpress and DIYs it themselves, and then looks for a new model once current installation no longer matches their needs (capacity loss or use increase)... this must be a fire brigade worst nightmare. Due to generation being more localised, we also need some form of much more local redistribution and/or storage. But not the nightmare that is one or more poorly installed and poorly maintained batteries of dubious origin per house.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      if you have excess solar, you can just run ac during the day. your house is a giant thermal battery. Also 80 kwh is way too much for a car. that's enough to fill your entire battery. an average day of driving is only ~5-10 kwh
    - Panzer04 2y ago
      Beyond fire risks or whatever, I actually don't see a problem with different battery models etc. The interface to the grid isnt exactly complicated, and decentralised storage seems like it would actually be quite robust and useful. In a legal sense, most jurisdictions require some form of certification for such systems anyway, and the true diy versions are never going to be very common regardless.
    - Moto7451 2y ago
dehrmann 2y ago
It wasn't long ago I saw this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/22/california-solar-duck-curve-rooftop/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/2... Maybe we're at the point where solar doesn't need as many incentives.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  It doesn't. Solar is so cheap now that it makes sense to build huge amounts of it, but most of the existing infra still needs to be in place for times where solar doesn't generate. We save some money on fuel costs, but those other generators just make a lot more money when solar isn't generating instead. Battery-backed systems in general are still not really financially justified vs pure solar systems, but the bigger the disparity between dirt cheap daytime energy and super expensive nighttime energy gets, the sooner that will change.
  - JoeAltmaier 2y ago
    Australia has giant batteries for solar farms, and keeps building more. They think it's financially justified.
    - belorn 2y ago
      In locations with very predictable weather it makes perfect financially sense. Knowing when supply is high and when it is low makes predicting prices accurate, and the number of recharge cycles each year are fairly guarantied. Add a large amount of subsidies and it makes sense to continue building more of them. Cutting down on subsidies removes a bit of the enthusiasm, but as long the other aspects are true then there is no reason why people would not build more storage when the financial aspects make sense.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Australia doesn't have winters with lack of sun and extreme energy requirement to heat homes, that makes solar with batteries viable. In any place with winters that will make solar stop producing for months combined with peak energy demands for those months solar will always just be an extra, storing enough power to last through winter will not happen this century using batteries.
mjevans 2y ago
Weren't the power companies Public Utilities decades ago? Entities capable of making long term investments and maintenance, and paying for things like beating back the shrubs from transmission lines so that when they sparked in high wind situations stuff didn't catch fire?
- akira2501 2y ago
  Not detonating entire neighborhoods with dilapidated natural gas pipelines. Not poisoning entire communities and their wells with hexavalent chromium. Not having half your wikipedia page dedicated to Disasters and Controversies. There are other power providers in California that aren't nearly so horrific. It seems that publicly traded companies operating a natural monopolies on behalf of the public is probably just a bad idea.
- fragmede 2y ago
  The Erin Brockovich case was brought 31 years ago, for damage done from a chemical used from 1952-1966. 1966 was 58 years ago. So I don't know about the rest, but as of 6 decades ago, PG&E were capable of grave harm and a cover up.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
This reads as somewhat one sided to me, as the expected thing is for the subsidies to be reduced over time. It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories out of renewables or clean energy subsidies, one when they are introduced and another when they are phased out. The recent reporting around Chinese EV regularly tries to catastrophise the reduction in subsidies which were only ever intended to kick start the market. Of course some subsidies are cut too early or too fast for political reasons, some like carbon fees and internalising pollution costs should probably rise over time. But if they're not interested in that level of conversation then the story is effectively just noise.
- addicted 2y ago
  Well considering fossil fuels continue to receive subsidies centuries after they were first regularly used your claim doesn’t sound correct at all.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  > It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories Journalism, for all the good things it has done and can do, is at the end of the day just another means to attract eyeballs to sell ads to.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > is at the end of the day just another means to attract eyeballs to sell ads to If you’re poor (or stupid), yes, this is the journalism you’re limited to, and that’s a problem. For everyone else, quality subscription-based journalism is an option.
- RetroTechie 2y ago
  > It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories It's called Double Data Rate: one transfer on the rising edge, a 2nd transfer on the falling edge. Gotta keep those ad $$ rolling.
whereismyacc 2y ago
That sounds kind of reasonable? "community solar incentives" sounds like a really strange way to target funding
thelastgallon 2y ago
Utilities are incentivized to increase costs. There is a nexus of generation, transmission and distribution companies, all together in increasing costs. Just the same as healthcare (insurers, pharma and hospitals), hence, band-aids cost $500, which your friendly insurer discounts to $50, and proudly shows on the statement: $500 band-aid, insurance plan rate $50, your deductible/copay $50. We'll pay $5 for the band-aid AFTER you meet 10K deductible! This is why Warren Buffett owns a lot of utilities. They are monopolies that extract a lot of rents, lobby against residential solar. Solar installations are 3 - 5X costlier in US compared to other countries (Ref: posts by HNs in other countries - Australia, Bangladesh, etc). The right thing to do is to let go of this benevolent public utility sham, while monopolizing and extracting huge rents, at the same time publicly crying that your friendly utility can't help everyone, the costs are rising and they can't do maintenance or build transmission lines. Breaking down ATT monopoly was the moment which started the tremendous growth in communications sectors. People used to pay $$/minute, now something magical happened around 2010 -- people can talk to 100 other people around the world on video chat for free! We need something similar for utility monopolies. Costs of energy will come down to nothing, a LOT of people can make money supplying power back to the grid: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... Comment by epistasis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 "More people need to realize that utilities are not at all like normal businesses, so to spell it out in more detail for those that don't know: Normal businesses make more money when they cut costs. Utilities (typically) get to charge a fixed upsell percentage and so they make more money when they increase their costs."
- Retric 2y ago
  The AT&T breakup is a little more complicated. Long distance prices actually dropped tremendously under AT&T especially when you include inflation. Night/Weekend 3.10$ per minute (35.23$ inflation adjusted) in 1955 down to 0.87$ (3.50$ inflation adjusted) in 1980. They benefited from that 90% price drop in 25 years as people would make more and longer calls at lower rates. https://www.scribd.com/document/422152895/FCC-Report-1950-1994-AT-T-US-Long-Distance-Phone-Rates https://www.scribd.com/document/422152895/FCC-Report-1950-19... People often show price drops after the breakup, but AT&T started installing fiber in 1977 so those price drops are mostly a continuation of the same technical advancements rather than competition.
atishay811 2y ago
The entire argument from the utilities is flawed. The solar customers are providing electricity in the middle of the city. So they are doing distribution in the sense that there are almost no transmission losses going to the city from generation. The generation credits are not tou based and therefore they gutted their duck curve argument. And they already had the tou lever if they wanted to control the power curve. Increase the price for evening. Why punish solar customers who actually would have helped by generating power in evening. Sunset is at 8 PM. Shouldn’t regular customers install battery to help with the curve? They should decouple solar and battery.
currents 2y ago
This quasi public-private partnership only makes customers foot the bill. If utilities aren't willing to innovate, what can we do? We can add more distributed energy and go off-grid, but it creates this "death spiral" all the utilities talk about. How about compensating homes for their generation when needed. Distributed energy that is co-located to demand, thus reducing T&D costs. This is the idea of VPPs and DERs. Obviously goes against what monopolistic IOUs want.
- ScoobleDoodle 2y ago
  Please decode your acronyms. Thank you
23B1 2y ago
I'm no ANCAP but the confusing of incentives every time the government steps into a market... almost certainly creates an insane amount of waste every time. Tax incentivization I understand – but in places like CA it always seems to make things so much worse.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

86 points by photochemsyn 2y ago

The entire energy model of CA needs to be rethought. From CPUC just doing what the companies want, to monopolies that are on the stock market that increase prices while also making huge profits… it is not serving the people.

m463 2y ago
Most companies give you a discount if you use more of their product. California energy works on a scarcity mindset with punitive punishments and now extra charges based on income. sigh. and the CPUC is solely in the hands of PG&E. As a customer it's sort of like wargames - the only winning move is not to play. Unless you live in say, santa clara or palo alto, where they have sane energy companies with reasonable prices (like the outside of california)
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  A lot of cities in california have their own public water and power company. LADWP is probably the largest by far.
- drno123 2y ago
  “Extra charges based on income” - does this mean that if you earn more, you pay more for electricity?
  - m463 2y ago
    https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/income-based-electric-bills-the-newest-utility-fight-in-california https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/income-ba...
    - leereeves 2y ago
      So you're now required to share your tax documents with the local utility company, and they will charge you a monthly fee just for earning more money?
      - jerlam 2y ago
        No, the plan was changed to have a fixed monthly fee in addition to the cost per kWh for all, but lower income households will have a lower fixed monthly fee.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        alwa 2y ago
        How do they distinguish those lower-income households without referring to tax documents?
        dataflow 2y ago
        I have no idea about this particular program, but similar programs already exist for other utilities, you can look at how they do it (open the "What information do I need to provide..." section): https://www.att.com/internet/access/ https://www.att.com/internet/access/
        rnrn 2y ago
        Previous proposals would have required everyone to provide income data to their utility which the utility would verify “somehow” (never fully articulated AFAIK) The latest proposal (which has been accepted by the CPUC) has fixed charges applied for everyone (much lower than previously proposed fixed charges) with discounts available based on existing low-income programs ( https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financial-assistance/california-alternate-rates-for-energy-program.html https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financ... ) So yes in order to get the discount low-income customers need to declare income and may need to verify that income with tax documents (depending on how much fraud these program plan to tolerate) but other customers do not need to provide income information.
  - twiceaday 2y ago
    Yes. But put differently "if you earn less you pay less." It depends one what you call the "normal" price.
- grecy 2y ago
  > the only winning move is not to play. And with so much sun, that is a very viable option. A roof covered in solar and some batteries and you'll never deal with this nonsense ever again.
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    It is illegal in California to disconnect a residential house from the grid. It’s ca. They wouldn’t make it THAT easy to opt out of their insanity.
    - orhmeh09 2y ago
      Source?
      - alwa 2y ago
        Lawyers argued that Title 24 required that residential buildings be interconnected with the grid [0] [1], but 2022 updates to the code seem to have clarified that standalone solar PV systems with storage are OK (though they should still be meet the same standards as grid-connected systems would) [2] In any case the small number of people who can afford to do so and want to do so seem to be doing so [3] [0] https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/grid-detection-vol10no1.pdf https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/gri... [1] https://klinedinstlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-title-24-is-keeping-california-connected-to-the-grid.pdf https://klinedinstlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-tit... [2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards/online-resource-center/overview https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/build... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/168mlxw/possiblelegal_to_go_completely_off_grid_in/?rdt=63325 https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/168mlxw/possiblelega...
    - reacharavindh 2y ago
      Are there fixed costs to having a connection? As in can one have a connection to the grid as a backup pay negligible amounts every month since they don’t use it?
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible. Actual criticism of real problems in California (which seems to be doing better than most states in most ways, but isn't perfect) gets buried under tribal political nonsense, where everything is an outrage.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible. It isn't crazy, but it is a bad idea. There should be one debate where we work out how much support successful people are expected to provide for their less successful peers, and one transfer payment to cover it. Then everyone pays for things as equals. Setting up multiple parallel societies where everyone has a different experience and financial incentives is wasteful. It ends up in situations where the electricity provider needs to consult with someone's accountant to work out what to charge customers. That is kinda crazy. A customer's tax position has nothing to do with the services they are provided and linking them is going to have weird second order effects. It is the same lunacy as linking paying for medical services and employment together and we have all seen how that worked out for the US. Linking parts of the system together at random is not the path to a high-functioning administrative state.
    - sokoloff 2y ago
      > linking paying for medical services and employment together which was heavily encouraged by tax policies and government-imposed price controls on labor...
    - nrook 2y ago
      When you see really goofy progressive taxes, if you look behind them, you'll usually see a strong legal or political barrier behind more sensible ones. This is why you are always hearing about ridiculous Amazon taxes coming out of the state of Washington; the place has no income tax, and progressive income taxes have been held to be unconstitutional there. So they have to get creative if they want a progressive tax. Of course, the barrier in California is the infamous Proposition 13. You're right that charging people different rates for energy based on their income is silly; if they want to let the poor off the hook they should just tax them less, or even give them money. But the state's lawmakers are operating in a constrained environment. (It's also the case that subsidies and means-tested benefits are trendy in Democratic policy-making circles, despite being dumb and inefficient compared to simpler and less directed benefits.)
- OptionOfT 2y ago
  You do get a discount when you buy more ahead of time, and guarantee that you will buy it. This is different from wanting a fixed price for a spot-priced product.
  - m463 2y ago
    you cannot do this with PG&E unless there is some plan I haven't heard about?
philjohn 2y ago
It's a difficult one. The old net metering model where the utility serves as a battery was never going to be sustainable as distributed renewables grew in popularity. Home batteries are definitely the way forward, but NEM 3.0 is an abomination.
- Beldin 2y ago
  Home batteries are a terrible idea. As a municipality -- or a neighbour -- you don't want 30 houses with 35 different batteries, installed by some nephew who's handy with DIY-stuff. To just timeshift from daylight to evening/night/morning, you'd need batteries in the 25-35kWh range, 40-50kWh if airco on in the night, another 80kWh if you're driving electric and typically away from home during the day, charge at night. That is a lot of energy to pack, even at the low end. Imagine if everyone finds the cheapest set on AliExpress and DIYs it themselves, and then looks for a new model once current installation no longer matches their needs (capacity loss or use increase)... this must be a fire brigade worst nightmare. Due to generation being more localised, we also need some form of much more local redistribution and/or storage. But not the nightmare that is one or more poorly installed and poorly maintained batteries of dubious origin per house.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    if you have excess solar, you can just run ac during the day. your house is a giant thermal battery. Also 80 kwh is way too much for a car. that's enough to fill your entire battery. an average day of driving is only ~5-10 kwh
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    Beyond fire risks or whatever, I actually don't see a problem with different battery models etc. The interface to the grid isnt exactly complicated, and decentralised storage seems like it would actually be quite robust and useful. In a legal sense, most jurisdictions require some form of certification for such systems anyway, and the true diy versions are never going to be very common regardless.
  - Moto7451 2y ago

dehrmann 2y ago

It wasn't long ago I saw this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/22/california-solar-duck-curve-rooftop/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/2... Maybe we're at the point where solar doesn't need as many incentives.

Panzer04 2y ago
It doesn't. Solar is so cheap now that it makes sense to build huge amounts of it, but most of the existing infra still needs to be in place for times where solar doesn't generate. We save some money on fuel costs, but those other generators just make a lot more money when solar isn't generating instead. Battery-backed systems in general are still not really financially justified vs pure solar systems, but the bigger the disparity between dirt cheap daytime energy and super expensive nighttime energy gets, the sooner that will change.
- JoeAltmaier 2y ago
  Australia has giant batteries for solar farms, and keeps building more. They think it's financially justified.
  - belorn 2y ago
    In locations with very predictable weather it makes perfect financially sense. Knowing when supply is high and when it is low makes predicting prices accurate, and the number of recharge cycles each year are fairly guarantied. Add a large amount of subsidies and it makes sense to continue building more of them. Cutting down on subsidies removes a bit of the enthusiasm, but as long the other aspects are true then there is no reason why people would not build more storage when the financial aspects make sense.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    Australia doesn't have winters with lack of sun and extreme energy requirement to heat homes, that makes solar with batteries viable. In any place with winters that will make solar stop producing for months combined with peak energy demands for those months solar will always just be an extra, storing enough power to last through winter will not happen this century using batteries.

mjevans 2y ago

Weren't the power companies Public Utilities decades ago? Entities capable of making long term investments and maintenance, and paying for things like beating back the shrubs from transmission lines so that when they sparked in high wind situations stuff didn't catch fire?

akira2501 2y ago
Not detonating entire neighborhoods with dilapidated natural gas pipelines. Not poisoning entire communities and their wells with hexavalent chromium. Not having half your wikipedia page dedicated to Disasters and Controversies. There are other power providers in California that aren't nearly so horrific. It seems that publicly traded companies operating a natural monopolies on behalf of the public is probably just a bad idea.
fragmede 2y ago
The Erin Brockovich case was brought 31 years ago, for damage done from a chemical used from 1952-1966. 1966 was 58 years ago. So I don't know about the rest, but as of 6 decades ago, PG&E were capable of grave harm and a cover up.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

This reads as somewhat one sided to me, as the expected thing is for the subsidies to be reduced over time. It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories out of renewables or clean energy subsidies, one when they are introduced and another when they are phased out. The recent reporting around Chinese EV regularly tries to catastrophise the reduction in subsidies which were only ever intended to kick start the market. Of course some subsidies are cut too early or too fast for political reasons, some like carbon fees and internalising pollution costs should probably rise over time. But if they're not interested in that level of conversation then the story is effectively just noise.

addicted 2y ago
Well considering fossil fuels continue to receive subsidies centuries after they were first regularly used your claim doesn’t sound correct at all.
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
> It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories Journalism, for all the good things it has done and can do, is at the end of the day just another means to attract eyeballs to sell ads to.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > is at the end of the day just another means to attract eyeballs to sell ads to If you’re poor (or stupid), yes, this is the journalism you’re limited to, and that’s a problem. For everyone else, quality subscription-based journalism is an option.
RetroTechie 2y ago
> It feels like journalism often gets two scare stories It's called Double Data Rate: one transfer on the rising edge, a 2nd transfer on the falling edge. Gotta keep those ad $$ rolling.

whereismyacc 2y ago

That sounds kind of reasonable? "community solar incentives" sounds like a really strange way to target funding

thelastgallon 2y ago

Utilities are incentivized to increase costs. There is a nexus of generation, transmission and distribution companies, all together in increasing costs. Just the same as healthcare (insurers, pharma and hospitals), hence, band-aids cost $500, which your friendly insurer discounts to $50, and proudly shows on the statement: $500 band-aid, insurance plan rate $50, your deductible/copay $50. We'll pay $5 for the band-aid AFTER you meet 10K deductible! This is why Warren Buffett owns a lot of utilities. They are monopolies that extract a lot of rents, lobby against residential solar. Solar installations are 3 - 5X costlier in US compared to other countries (Ref: posts by HNs in other countries - Australia, Bangladesh, etc). The right thing to do is to let go of this benevolent public utility sham, while monopolizing and extracting huge rents, at the same time publicly crying that your friendly utility can't help everyone, the costs are rising and they can't do maintenance or build transmission lines. Breaking down ATT monopoly was the moment which started the tremendous growth in communications sectors. People used to pay $$/minute, now something magical happened around 2010 -- people can talk to 100 other people around the world on video chat for free! We need something similar for utility monopolies. Costs of energy will come down to nothing, a LOT of people can make money supplying power back to the grid: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... Comment by epistasis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 "More people need to realize that utilities are not at all like normal businesses, so to spell it out in more detail for those that don't know: Normal businesses make more money when they cut costs. Utilities (typically) get to charge a fixed upsell percentage and so they make more money when they increase their costs."

Retric 2y ago
The AT&T breakup is a little more complicated. Long distance prices actually dropped tremendously under AT&T especially when you include inflation. Night/Weekend 3.10$ per minute (35.23$ inflation adjusted) in 1955 down to 0.87$ (3.50$ inflation adjusted) in 1980. They benefited from that 90% price drop in 25 years as people would make more and longer calls at lower rates. https://www.scribd.com/document/422152895/FCC-Report-1950-1994-AT-T-US-Long-Distance-Phone-Rates https://www.scribd.com/document/422152895/FCC-Report-1950-19... People often show price drops after the breakup, but AT&T started installing fiber in 1977 so those price drops are mostly a continuation of the same technical advancements rather than competition.

atishay811 2y ago

The entire argument from the utilities is flawed. The solar customers are providing electricity in the middle of the city. So they are doing distribution in the sense that there are almost no transmission losses going to the city from generation. The generation credits are not tou based and therefore they gutted their duck curve argument. And they already had the tou lever if they wanted to control the power curve. Increase the price for evening. Why punish solar customers who actually would have helped by generating power in evening. Sunset is at 8 PM. Shouldn’t regular customers install battery to help with the curve? They should decouple solar and battery.

currents 2y ago

This quasi public-private partnership only makes customers foot the bill. If utilities aren't willing to innovate, what can we do? We can add more distributed energy and go off-grid, but it creates this "death spiral" all the utilities talk about. How about compensating homes for their generation when needed. Distributed energy that is co-located to demand, thus reducing T&D costs. This is the idea of VPPs and DERs. Obviously goes against what monopolistic IOUs want.

ScoobleDoodle 2y ago
Please decode your acronyms. Thank you

23B1 2y ago

I'm no ANCAP but the confusing of incentives every time the government steps into a market... almost certainly creates an insane amount of waste every time. Tax incentivization I understand – but in places like CA it always seems to make things so much worse.

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