5 ms·

29p / kWh doesn't hold a candle to PG&E costs in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's ironic that it's quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas here, since we're sup

29p / kWh doesn't hold a candle to PG&E costs in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's ironic that it's quite a bit cheaper to use natural gas here, since we're supposed to convert to electricity to save the planet.

barbazoo 2y ago
I would say it's tragic, not ironic.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
The cost of bailing out owners of burnt down homes in Paradise, CA worth $0 for $700k is rolled into every San Francisco PG&E bill.
- tristor 2y ago
  I think that's a bit of color on that, since those homes weren't worth $0 until PG&E caused a fire that burnt them down by neglecting required maintenance.
  - tehlike 2y ago
    In a way it's subsidizing people in the country side.
    - tristor 2y ago
      No, it's making people whole for real monetary and property damages caused by PG&E's negligence. It's the settlement of a lawsuit, because PG&E was negligent and caused damage. Whether those people rebuild in Paradise, CA or move somewhere else with the money they received from the settlement is an entirely different proposition. This is not "subsidizing people in the country side". PG&E fucked up and now they have to pay. PG&E is choosing to pass the cost to its customers rather than eating into its profits, which is a decision that California allowed them to make. EDIT: You and the GP I originally replied to seem to be making the argument that after PG&E burned all these people's homes down they should have been allowed to just tell them to get bent so your utility bill wouldn't go up in the city? What happens when it's /your/ home that gets burnt down? "Sorry bucko, but your house is worth $0 as it's just now a smoldering ruin. No soup for you. - Thanks PG&E"
      - tehlike 2y ago
        I am actually not saying PGE shouldn't have to pay etc. But this dynamic is part of being a country. In some ways, it's similar to the insurance industry where we get a pool of very healthy or young and sick or old people. What PGE did was terrible, but also there's a lot to blame on CA directly too.
      - cogman10 2y ago
        I'm not saying PG&E shouldn't pay out, they were directly responsible. But I will say that Paradise was in a bad state prior to the fire, simply nobody knew how bad. While a wildfire like that wasn't guaranteed, they were just one bad lightning strike away from the same disaster. Funding FEMA, forest management services, and wildfire fighters something that isn't always prioritized and it should be.
        tehlike 2y ago
        +1
        akira2501 2y ago
        > simply nobody knew how bad It was a 100 year old C hook that caused the fire. Which failed in high winds. Which drove the fire. It was PG&E's responsibility to know "how bad" this was. They literally lost track of their own transmission lines.
        ericd 2y ago
        If it wasn’t that, wouldn’t it have been a lightning strike, or something else? Fundamentally, the problem is that the houses were in an area that has become incredibly flammable. It’s not all PG&E’s fault.
        akira2501 2y ago
        Those have been known to start smaller fires before. Management strategies for them and recognition of the conditions that give rise to them were implemented. This fire burned worse than before because of poor maintenance on and around the line and because they did not shut it off quickly enough to prevent additional damage. The line was in a remote location and access to it was severely degraded. Fundamentally the problem can be solved with management and engineering. It's entirely PG&E's fault. This was adjudicated and settled.
    - akira2501 2y ago
      You've apparently never had power run out to a new property that's not had it before. You pay for that. The poles, the lines, the installation. The power company doesn't just run power to you because you ask. They subsidize themselves. Then PG&E takes the money, leaves 100 year old equipment in place, which inevitably breaks, and burns down an entire forest along with their homes. You genuinely think these people are being "subsidized" by all this? That it's their fault the PG&E top brass didn't earn a bonus that year?
      - tehlike 2y ago
        Subsidizing in an insurance sense. It's a high risk area, insurance should have covered it. If it was too high risk, insurance shouldn't have covered it, or charge much more etc.
        akira2501 2y ago
        Insurance premiums are different for different people and are decided by underwriters based on expected risk. What subsidy are they receiving on those premiums? They were previously paying a special property tax to cover the additional fire services required for the area. This is not a particularly high income area. Meanwhile everyone in Sacramento can buy federally subsidized flood insurance. The federal government also built the levees surrounding the county. The entire downtown core had to be jacked up several feet due to persistent flooding. Should everyone in Sacramento move too? Should we end the insurance subsidy?
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    Did PG&E cause the fire? They are legally obligated to serve those customers. It would be safer if they simply didn’t do that no? Wait till you read the facts behind this $41m bailout for 20 homes in one of the richest burbs of LA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/feds-to-spend-42-million-buying-landslide-damaged-homes-in-rancho-palos-verdes https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/feds-to-... You could argue that nobody should be living in a place guaranteed to be destroyed, whether by landslides or wildfires, but the government tried that in Palos Verdes and got sued, lost, and now is bailing out those homeowners to get out of services obligations all the same. Suffice it to say, you have bought into a very well marketed point of view. There was a lot of ceremony to enact procedural blame on PG&E, but it obscures all the far simpler solutions, that are far more just. People in San Francisco are paying higher rates, no? So PG&E may have been responsible for something somewhere, but the liability is being borne functionally by taxpayers, via a compulsory payment for energy, to balance the books on assholes living in places at risk of wildfires with overinflated asset values. Ultimately, the government here has decided that you should get government-guaranteed-risk-free market rate returns on owner occupied real estate.
    - tristor 2y ago
      > Did PG&E cause the fire? Yes. As I recall it, the fire was caused by downed lines that were energized during a dry spell, and the reason the lines were downed was due to negligence around maintaining the C-Hooks holding their high voltage transmission lines. PG&E knew that they needed to be replaced every so often, had a policy that dictated when they needed to be replaced, and then ignored that policy which ultimately allowed a C-Hook to fail and the energized line to start the fire. In fact, PG&E had commissioned a study as far back as 1987 to look into this issue and confirmed that these hooks had a limited lifespan. They had clear knowledge of the issue. They had a responsibility to maintain the system to prevent the issue. They set policies around how that maintenance should be conducted. Then they willfully ignored their own policies, which lead to the issue they were responsible to prevent. That's textbook negligence. So, yes, PG&E /did/ cause the fire. They were negligent in doing so. They are liable for the damages.
      - 2y ago
- riversflow 2y ago
  That's just factually incorrect. Paradise was forced to take PGE stock (at some unrealistic valuation) as a repayment. The settlement is years in the rear view mirror now. I actually live in the area and meet people from Paradise. Most people involved got absolutely shafted and the money is mostly going to lawyers and accountants in San Francisco. Surprise. PGE costs have gone up because the state's Public Utilities Commission and many of our leaders in Sacramento are in bed with PGE. PGE has been vastly underinvesting in infrastructure development and maintenance for the last 50 years, which is at least partially the PUC's fault by letting them take profits instead of forcing them to either lower rates or reinvest. The Camp Fire shined a light on the neglect, now they have to play catch up on 50 years of deferred maintenance in many quite remote areas. Local Sacramento ABC Station actually does some decent investigative report on this. If you are interested there is a fair amount of content to go through, as they started the investigation in 2022, the series is called Fire Power Money. Link here https://www.abc10.com/search?q=fire+power+money https://www.abc10.com/search?q=fire+power+money
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    I appreciate your wisdom to use ChatGPT's search to verify your facts about the Paradise settlements. If you're asking me, is it a good idea to administer a settlement between PG&E and the Camp Fire victims? No. We agree there. I don't doubt for a second that ratepayers and victims are getting a bad deal! I don't think we should have ever agreed to the settlement, and Sacramento made a huge mistake. But: the settlement's law traded on the exact empathy you do right now. Here's where we disagree: what evidence do you need to see to be convinced that nobody should be living in your community? Harsh words right? It's the exact opposite of the empathy you are trying to get through, that I appreciate. I think smart people struggle with climate science, viewing it as strictly a set of facts, when in fact it is deeply political: it is telling us where we can and cannot live, which is as powerful as violence-protected borders. We have pretty unequivocal evidence that tells us on the time scales of realizing real estate returns, some communities will be "worth" "$0." Do you think we should have insurance of last resort in California? Insurers read the same scientific studies and don't protect people's homes from wildfires. It is basically immaterial in the long term which human activity causes the wildfire - as you say, the settlement is in the rear view mirror - it could have been a gender reveal party that started the flame, and then, what would you do, make that person personally liable for billions of dollars? It would be bailout all the same, poorly administered, because it is simply impossible to not "absolutely shaft" someone who says their home is worth $700k when it is actually worth $0. It costs $42m to just bail out 20 homes in Palos Verdes, a community with very politically powerful people. It's a slow motion crisis in California. Do you think we should bail out all the home owners in San Francisco, who bought their homes at $40,000, pay tiny Prop 13 dynastically protected rates and therefore pay little taxes to their own community, and have things nominally worth $1.4m, when an earthquake hits? That's not your community, and suddenly, oh man, that sounds expensive, man, you don't have bottomless empathy for that community. Should nobody be living in San Francisco because of the earthquake risk? Tough question. So what if I spin some narrative that someone somewhere is responsible or liable? It is impossible for any entity to pay off all those people, including the government - it couldn't even compensate the 10x fewer victims of Camp Fire. The solution to me is simple: don't buy a house, and if you do, don't make it your only means of savings. I can escape a wildfire, and I think I can escape an earthquake, but my life will not be ruined, as long as I do not own an overpriced home. You are talking about leaders in bed with PG&E or whatever, conspiracies, and right in front of you, you are surrounded, in your community, by people who believe their real estate gives market returns risk free.
- inferiorhuman 2y ago
  And Hinkley, and San Bruno, and Santa Rosa, and elsewhere in Sonoma County, and a few billion in stock buybacks, another few billion in dividends, another few hundred million in executive bonuses, etc., etc., etc. Buying off the guy doing research into hexavalent chromium wasn't cheap either. Nor was keeping Willie Brown on their payroll.
tehlike 2y ago
For reference, I think we get around 60-65c/kWh here... I sometimes hangout on /r/homelab, and people are talking about their 600-700W homelab setup. That would cost about 300-350$/month here.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  That'd be GBP 0.48-0.52
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago
  People are screaming from the rooftops here when we occasionally hit 15 c/kWh in winter. In August this year our electricity cost was $15 for the whole house. Hydropower is nice like that. My homelab in the basement is running an old Dell R730. It draws 200-300W depending on load. I could get something much more efficient, but then I would need to run a space heater in that room for most of the year...
- wil421 2y ago
  Yikes, my rate is $0.0825/kWH in the southern US. Part Nuclear but too much Natural Gas in my opinion.
  - tehlike 2y ago
    That's a great rate. My homelab excluding poe stuff I suspect will end up using 300-500W. Not a lot of money but still annoying to be paying. 1. 56G mellanox switch - 35W 2. An old box I made a router - 50W 3. A two node server - 220W each Replacing (2) with something that idles at 10W Will probably do one node for (3) so got more ram to try out. I wish we had cheap energy. I could add much more stuff to this lol.
    - wil421 2y ago
      My UniFi mad PoE setup draws about 100w and my NAS another 100w or so. The i3 in my Supermicro board has been quite the efficient little CPU. My AMD 7950 and a 4070ti had to be taken off one my UPS because it was going over 1000w at times. Not sure what the full draw is while gaming. The thing that kept me away from retired server hardware isn’t so much the power draw as it is the fan noise.
vladslav 2y ago
I sometimes catch myself thinking about whether it’s worth collecting wood by the road to burn as a way to heat the house.
- tehlike 2y ago
  Some people on craigslist sometimes are giving away wood for free (you just need to arrange transport). So yes, in some ways, it'd be whole lot cheaper, and nostalgic too.
- inferiorhuman 2y ago
  Sounds great until you check an air quality map. It's been miserable here in the Bay Area between the storms. AQI of 100–150 depending.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
secondcoming 2y ago
That's the charge for energy usage, but there's another charge - the Standing Charge - that's charged per day just for having a connection to the grid. In 2021, for me this was £0.236 per day, today it's £0.60 per day.

barbazoo 2y ago

I would say it's tragic, not ironic.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

The cost of bailing out owners of burnt down homes in Paradise, CA worth $0 for $700k is rolled into every San Francisco PG&E bill.

tristor 2y ago
I think that's a bit of color on that, since those homes weren't worth $0 until PG&E caused a fire that burnt them down by neglecting required maintenance.
- tehlike 2y ago
  In a way it's subsidizing people in the country side.
  - tristor 2y ago
    No, it's making people whole for real monetary and property damages caused by PG&E's negligence. It's the settlement of a lawsuit, because PG&E was negligent and caused damage. Whether those people rebuild in Paradise, CA or move somewhere else with the money they received from the settlement is an entirely different proposition. This is not "subsidizing people in the country side". PG&E fucked up and now they have to pay. PG&E is choosing to pass the cost to its customers rather than eating into its profits, which is a decision that California allowed them to make. EDIT: You and the GP I originally replied to seem to be making the argument that after PG&E burned all these people's homes down they should have been allowed to just tell them to get bent so your utility bill wouldn't go up in the city? What happens when it's /your/ home that gets burnt down? "Sorry bucko, but your house is worth $0 as it's just now a smoldering ruin. No soup for you. - Thanks PG&E"
    - tehlike 2y ago
      I am actually not saying PGE shouldn't have to pay etc. But this dynamic is part of being a country. In some ways, it's similar to the insurance industry where we get a pool of very healthy or young and sick or old people. What PGE did was terrible, but also there's a lot to blame on CA directly too.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      I'm not saying PG&E shouldn't pay out, they were directly responsible. But I will say that Paradise was in a bad state prior to the fire, simply nobody knew how bad. While a wildfire like that wasn't guaranteed, they were just one bad lightning strike away from the same disaster. Funding FEMA, forest management services, and wildfire fighters something that isn't always prioritized and it should be.
      - tehlike 2y ago
        +1
      - akira2501 2y ago
        > simply nobody knew how bad It was a 100 year old C hook that caused the fire. Which failed in high winds. Which drove the fire. It was PG&E's responsibility to know "how bad" this was. They literally lost track of their own transmission lines.
        ericd 2y ago
        If it wasn’t that, wouldn’t it have been a lightning strike, or something else? Fundamentally, the problem is that the houses were in an area that has become incredibly flammable. It’s not all PG&E’s fault.
        akira2501 2y ago
        Those have been known to start smaller fires before. Management strategies for them and recognition of the conditions that give rise to them were implemented. This fire burned worse than before because of poor maintenance on and around the line and because they did not shut it off quickly enough to prevent additional damage. The line was in a remote location and access to it was severely degraded. Fundamentally the problem can be solved with management and engineering. It's entirely PG&E's fault. This was adjudicated and settled.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    You've apparently never had power run out to a new property that's not had it before. You pay for that. The poles, the lines, the installation. The power company doesn't just run power to you because you ask. They subsidize themselves. Then PG&E takes the money, leaves 100 year old equipment in place, which inevitably breaks, and burns down an entire forest along with their homes. You genuinely think these people are being "subsidized" by all this? That it's their fault the PG&E top brass didn't earn a bonus that year?
    - tehlike 2y ago
      Subsidizing in an insurance sense. It's a high risk area, insurance should have covered it. If it was too high risk, insurance shouldn't have covered it, or charge much more etc.
      - akira2501 2y ago
        Insurance premiums are different for different people and are decided by underwriters based on expected risk. What subsidy are they receiving on those premiums? They were previously paying a special property tax to cover the additional fire services required for the area. This is not a particularly high income area. Meanwhile everyone in Sacramento can buy federally subsidized flood insurance. The federal government also built the levees surrounding the county. The entire downtown core had to be jacked up several feet due to persistent flooding. Should everyone in Sacramento move too? Should we end the insurance subsidy?
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Did PG&E cause the fire? They are legally obligated to serve those customers. It would be safer if they simply didn’t do that no? Wait till you read the facts behind this $41m bailout for 20 homes in one of the richest burbs of LA: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/feds-to-spend-42-million-buying-landslide-damaged-homes-in-rancho-palos-verdes https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/feds-to-... You could argue that nobody should be living in a place guaranteed to be destroyed, whether by landslides or wildfires, but the government tried that in Palos Verdes and got sued, lost, and now is bailing out those homeowners to get out of services obligations all the same. Suffice it to say, you have bought into a very well marketed point of view. There was a lot of ceremony to enact procedural blame on PG&E, but it obscures all the far simpler solutions, that are far more just. People in San Francisco are paying higher rates, no? So PG&E may have been responsible for something somewhere, but the liability is being borne functionally by taxpayers, via a compulsory payment for energy, to balance the books on assholes living in places at risk of wildfires with overinflated asset values. Ultimately, the government here has decided that you should get government-guaranteed-risk-free market rate returns on owner occupied real estate.
  - tristor 2y ago
    > Did PG&E cause the fire? Yes. As I recall it, the fire was caused by downed lines that were energized during a dry spell, and the reason the lines were downed was due to negligence around maintaining the C-Hooks holding their high voltage transmission lines. PG&E knew that they needed to be replaced every so often, had a policy that dictated when they needed to be replaced, and then ignored that policy which ultimately allowed a C-Hook to fail and the energized line to start the fire. In fact, PG&E had commissioned a study as far back as 1987 to look into this issue and confirmed that these hooks had a limited lifespan. They had clear knowledge of the issue. They had a responsibility to maintain the system to prevent the issue. They set policies around how that maintenance should be conducted. Then they willfully ignored their own policies, which lead to the issue they were responsible to prevent. That's textbook negligence. So, yes, PG&E /did/ cause the fire. They were negligent in doing so. They are liable for the damages.
    - 2y ago
riversflow 2y ago
That's just factually incorrect. Paradise was forced to take PGE stock (at some unrealistic valuation) as a repayment. The settlement is years in the rear view mirror now. I actually live in the area and meet people from Paradise. Most people involved got absolutely shafted and the money is mostly going to lawyers and accountants in San Francisco. Surprise. PGE costs have gone up because the state's Public Utilities Commission and many of our leaders in Sacramento are in bed with PGE. PGE has been vastly underinvesting in infrastructure development and maintenance for the last 50 years, which is at least partially the PUC's fault by letting them take profits instead of forcing them to either lower rates or reinvest. The Camp Fire shined a light on the neglect, now they have to play catch up on 50 years of deferred maintenance in many quite remote areas. Local Sacramento ABC Station actually does some decent investigative report on this. If you are interested there is a fair amount of content to go through, as they started the investigation in 2022, the series is called Fire Power Money. Link here https://www.abc10.com/search?q=fire+power+money https://www.abc10.com/search?q=fire+power+money
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  I appreciate your wisdom to use ChatGPT's search to verify your facts about the Paradise settlements. If you're asking me, is it a good idea to administer a settlement between PG&E and the Camp Fire victims? No. We agree there. I don't doubt for a second that ratepayers and victims are getting a bad deal! I don't think we should have ever agreed to the settlement, and Sacramento made a huge mistake. But: the settlement's law traded on the exact empathy you do right now. Here's where we disagree: what evidence do you need to see to be convinced that nobody should be living in your community? Harsh words right? It's the exact opposite of the empathy you are trying to get through, that I appreciate. I think smart people struggle with climate science, viewing it as strictly a set of facts, when in fact it is deeply political: it is telling us where we can and cannot live, which is as powerful as violence-protected borders. We have pretty unequivocal evidence that tells us on the time scales of realizing real estate returns, some communities will be "worth" "$0." Do you think we should have insurance of last resort in California? Insurers read the same scientific studies and don't protect people's homes from wildfires. It is basically immaterial in the long term which human activity causes the wildfire - as you say, the settlement is in the rear view mirror - it could have been a gender reveal party that started the flame, and then, what would you do, make that person personally liable for billions of dollars? It would be bailout all the same, poorly administered, because it is simply impossible to not "absolutely shaft" someone who says their home is worth $700k when it is actually worth $0. It costs $42m to just bail out 20 homes in Palos Verdes, a community with very politically powerful people. It's a slow motion crisis in California. Do you think we should bail out all the home owners in San Francisco, who bought their homes at $40,000, pay tiny Prop 13 dynastically protected rates and therefore pay little taxes to their own community, and have things nominally worth $1.4m, when an earthquake hits? That's not your community, and suddenly, oh man, that sounds expensive, man, you don't have bottomless empathy for that community. Should nobody be living in San Francisco because of the earthquake risk? Tough question. So what if I spin some narrative that someone somewhere is responsible or liable? It is impossible for any entity to pay off all those people, including the government - it couldn't even compensate the 10x fewer victims of Camp Fire. The solution to me is simple: don't buy a house, and if you do, don't make it your only means of savings. I can escape a wildfire, and I think I can escape an earthquake, but my life will not be ruined, as long as I do not own an overpriced home. You are talking about leaders in bed with PG&E or whatever, conspiracies, and right in front of you, you are surrounded, in your community, by people who believe their real estate gives market returns risk free.
inferiorhuman 2y ago
And Hinkley, and San Bruno, and Santa Rosa, and elsewhere in Sonoma County, and a few billion in stock buybacks, another few billion in dividends, another few hundred million in executive bonuses, etc., etc., etc. Buying off the guy doing research into hexavalent chromium wasn't cheap either. Nor was keeping Willie Brown on their payroll.

tehlike 2y ago

For reference, I think we get around 60-65c/kWh here... I sometimes hangout on /r/homelab, and people are talking about their 600-700W homelab setup. That would cost about 300-350$/month here.

barbazoo 2y ago
That'd be GBP 0.48-0.52
semi-extrinsic 2y ago
People are screaming from the rooftops here when we occasionally hit 15 c/kWh in winter. In August this year our electricity cost was $15 for the whole house. Hydropower is nice like that. My homelab in the basement is running an old Dell R730. It draws 200-300W depending on load. I could get something much more efficient, but then I would need to run a space heater in that room for most of the year...
wil421 2y ago
Yikes, my rate is $0.0825/kWH in the southern US. Part Nuclear but too much Natural Gas in my opinion.
- tehlike 2y ago
  That's a great rate. My homelab excluding poe stuff I suspect will end up using 300-500W. Not a lot of money but still annoying to be paying. 1. 56G mellanox switch - 35W 2. An old box I made a router - 50W 3. A two node server - 220W each Replacing (2) with something that idles at 10W Will probably do one node for (3) so got more ram to try out. I wish we had cheap energy. I could add much more stuff to this lol.
  - wil421 2y ago
    My UniFi mad PoE setup draws about 100w and my NAS another 100w or so. The i3 in my Supermicro board has been quite the efficient little CPU. My AMD 7950 and a 4070ti had to be taken off one my UPS because it was going over 1000w at times. Not sure what the full draw is while gaming. The thing that kept me away from retired server hardware isn’t so much the power draw as it is the fan noise.

vladslav 2y ago

I sometimes catch myself thinking about whether it’s worth collecting wood by the road to burn as a way to heat the house.

tehlike 2y ago
Some people on craigslist sometimes are giving away wood for free (you just need to arrange transport). So yes, in some ways, it'd be whole lot cheaper, and nostalgic too.
inferiorhuman 2y ago
Sounds great until you check an air quality map. It's been miserable here in the Bay Area between the storms. AQI of 100–150 depending.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

secondcoming 2y ago

That's the charge for energy usage, but there's another charge - the Standing Charge - that's charged per day just for having a connection to the grid. In 2021, for me this was £0.236 per day, today it's £0.60 per day.