7 ms·

If the "we" means California, that that also includes me, and it's pretty clear that we don't have high costs because of the generation side, but because CPUC k

If the "we" means California, that that also includes me, and it's pretty clear that we don't have high costs because of the generation side, but because CPUC keeps on approving massive rate increases for grid costs. It costs ~$0.13/kWh to generate the electricity (which includes any battery costs), but $0.25-$0.50/kWh to deliver the energy across the grid. The utilities get guaranteed profits from rate-basing all the grid stuff, but the generation side is a more competitive market. Batteries could be used to greatly reduce grid costs by flattening peaks and decreasing grid congestion. If CPUC mandated that utilities took those cost-saving measures...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
aidenn0 1y ago
Yeah, compare the Sacramento municipal rate[1] is compared to what SCE or PG&E prices things, and it's crazy. Average in California is $0.32[2]; I pay about $0.28, but I have a TOU plan and charge my car during super-off-peak so that brings my average down. 1: https://www.smud.org/Rate-Information/Residential-rates#Price-plans https://www.smud.org/Rate-Information/Residential-rates#Pric... 2: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- secabeen 1y ago
  Sacramento municipal has a lot of customers in a small space. Running a grid in and around a major city is significantly different than covering an entire state with lots of mountains and forests from Oregon to San Luis Obispo.
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    PG&E is expensive even when compared to the entire Western grid. I went and added up the revenues for all the major utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah. That's APS, NV Energy, Pacificorp, PSCo, PSCNM, and SRP. All of their 2024 revenues combined are ~$22B vs PG&E's $24.4B, to cover an area 3x larger with just over half the population and even drier climates. All of those states have lower average rates as well. PG&E is uniquely expensive for no legitimate reason that I've ever been able to discern.
    - wahern 1y ago
      The jump in PG&E prices over the past 10 years is mostly to cover the cost of wildfire mitigation. LA, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and the Imperial Valley have their own local utilities that charge customers 1/2 to 1/4 of what PG&E charges.[1] But PG&E covers the entire northern half of the state. Bay Area PG&E customers are subsidizing all those small communities nestled in the forests. Southern California Edison and San Diego have a mix of urban and forested rural closer to PG&E, with significant wildfire mitigation costs of their own, and their rates reflect that--2/3 to 3/4 of PG&E prices). Despite approving the cost increases, state regulators are now complaining that PG&E is spending too much on wildfire mitigation. For example, they're telling PG&E to shift from burying transmission lines to using covered conduction (i.e. plastic shielding around overhead transmission lines). But PG&E is pushing back because they're on the hook for the wildfire civil claims and argue the less costly mitigations are too risky. [1] See https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/196kjtu/pge_rates_vs_other_ca_utilities/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/196kjtu/pge_rates_...
      - AlotOfReading 1y ago
        All of that also applies to pacificorp, which covers the Jefferson area of California. I'm actually double counting a bit in PG&E's favor as a result.
        wahern 1y ago
        The wildfire hazards aren't equivalent, nor the political pressures regarding those hazards. But it seems Pacific Power isn't too far behind: https://oregoncub.org/news/blog/pacific-power-asks-for-21.6-rate-increase-for-2025/2979/ https://oregoncub.org/news/blog/pacific-power-asks-for-21.6-...
    - glompers 1y ago
      It seems to an outsider like California involves exceptional biodiversity, and exceptional habitat protection laws, coupled with the electorate's vocal idealism about the possibility of preventing preventable animal suffering, plus the distaste of many voters for a schedule of very frequent controlled burns in all parts of the state in order to thin the constant buildup of combustible underbrush. These leave PG&E unable to avoid being liable for interactions of transmission lines with the wildfire kindling they have to route through. Even though California may not be more mountainous than those other Western states, its development pattern may have more wildland-subdivision interface overall, which adds up.
secabeen 1y ago
> Batteries could be used to greatly reduce grid costs by flattening peaks and decreasing grid congestion. If CPUC mandated that utilities took those cost-saving measures... Can you math this out somewhat? I certainly can see some grid cost reductions from batteries, but we still need a pretty extensive grid to support baseline load and maintenance of rural lines. How would shaving the load peak from 100% over baseline down to a lower number help? Given that we are nearing the normal lifespan of much of our rural electric infrastructure that was installed in the mid-20th century, it's not surprising that we have a lot of spend to do. Private utilities love to defer maintenance, especially when it takes 80 years to notice.
- epistasis 1y ago
  The math will be extremely dependent on each particular transmission alternative. The overarching term is "non-wires alternatives" of which storage is just one alternative. NYISO has a slide deck here, but unfortunately there's not much quantitation to the savings in their examples: https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/40044890/2%20Storage%20as%20Transmission%20Use%20Cases_20230918.pdf/0ee0027e-d194-24ff-68fd-1dee041d14c5 https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/40044890/2%20Storage%2...
zdragnar 1y ago
I'm in the upper Midwest; you're paying more to generate than I do on my residential bill. 10.9 cents /kwh in winter, 12.3 cents in summer. 1/3 coal, 1/3 gas, 1/3 assorted renewables.
nielsbot 1y ago
Rates should be lowered until PG&E profits are $0.
- epistasis 1y ago
  While that's an interesting proposition, that could at most reduce our rates by their profit rate, which is not nearly enough. We need systematic changes to fundamentally lower costs to more reasonable rates, like what other smaller municipal utilities deliver in California, which are 1/3-1/2 the cost. The problem is not profit, but how profit is established. PG&E takes a fixed rate of profit of the total cost, so they are incentivized to make everything as expensive as possible. This is in contrast to most market based systems, where a new competitor with lower costs gets to directly take the lowered cost as profit. We instead use regulatory boards, Public Utility Commissions, to determine which investments utilities can make and what prices they can charge customers. This is highly regulated, but the outcomes have been terrible. Even Arizona, whose equivalent of the PUC has been disastrously corrupt, or places like Ohio, which has sent state legislators to prison for their corruption on utility matters, have far lower rates than we do in California. We have bad regulation in California. That's the fundamental problem. Gavin Newsom, and all the governors who came before, have failed us on our electrical grid. That said, clearly high electricity prices are not a huge problem for our economy, and the high cost of living from high housing costs is clearly a driver of expense for everything a utility does, but we fundamentally have not had the right controls on the grid to keep costs reasonable. We have not set up a system where PG&E profits from delivering lowered costs. Our regulation prevents us from achieving what Marx calls the "falling rate of profit" as we would usually see with a market. Something must change, but simply eliminating PG&E profits won't do it, it's not enough.
const_cast 1y ago
Also California is somewhat unique because it has the extreme energy demand of the likes of Texas coupled with natural disasters like wildfires. California gets really hot and AC needs to be blasting. Factor in that California also has a huge economy (datacenters...) and it's clear the grid is under an amount of stress that is not typical.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

aidenn0 1y ago

Yeah, compare the Sacramento municipal rate[1] is compared to what SCE or PG&E prices things, and it's crazy. Average in California is $0.32[2]; I pay about $0.28, but I have a TOU plan and charge my car during super-off-peak so that brings my average down. 1: https://www.smud.org/Rate-Information/Residential-rates#Price-plans https://www.smud.org/Rate-Information/Residential-rates#Pric... 2: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

secabeen 1y ago
Sacramento municipal has a lot of customers in a small space. Running a grid in and around a major city is significantly different than covering an entire state with lots of mountains and forests from Oregon to San Luis Obispo.
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  PG&E is expensive even when compared to the entire Western grid. I went and added up the revenues for all the major utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah. That's APS, NV Energy, Pacificorp, PSCo, PSCNM, and SRP. All of their 2024 revenues combined are ~$22B vs PG&E's $24.4B, to cover an area 3x larger with just over half the population and even drier climates. All of those states have lower average rates as well. PG&E is uniquely expensive for no legitimate reason that I've ever been able to discern.
  - wahern 1y ago
    The jump in PG&E prices over the past 10 years is mostly to cover the cost of wildfire mitigation. LA, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and the Imperial Valley have their own local utilities that charge customers 1/2 to 1/4 of what PG&E charges.[1] But PG&E covers the entire northern half of the state. Bay Area PG&E customers are subsidizing all those small communities nestled in the forests. Southern California Edison and San Diego have a mix of urban and forested rural closer to PG&E, with significant wildfire mitigation costs of their own, and their rates reflect that--2/3 to 3/4 of PG&E prices). Despite approving the cost increases, state regulators are now complaining that PG&E is spending too much on wildfire mitigation. For example, they're telling PG&E to shift from burying transmission lines to using covered conduction (i.e. plastic shielding around overhead transmission lines). But PG&E is pushing back because they're on the hook for the wildfire civil claims and argue the less costly mitigations are too risky. [1] See https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/196kjtu/pge_rates_vs_other_ca_utilities/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/196kjtu/pge_rates_...
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      All of that also applies to pacificorp, which covers the Jefferson area of California. I'm actually double counting a bit in PG&E's favor as a result.
      - wahern 1y ago
        The wildfire hazards aren't equivalent, nor the political pressures regarding those hazards. But it seems Pacific Power isn't too far behind: https://oregoncub.org/news/blog/pacific-power-asks-for-21.6-rate-increase-for-2025/2979/ https://oregoncub.org/news/blog/pacific-power-asks-for-21.6-...
  - glompers 1y ago
    It seems to an outsider like California involves exceptional biodiversity, and exceptional habitat protection laws, coupled with the electorate's vocal idealism about the possibility of preventing preventable animal suffering, plus the distaste of many voters for a schedule of very frequent controlled burns in all parts of the state in order to thin the constant buildup of combustible underbrush. These leave PG&E unable to avoid being liable for interactions of transmission lines with the wildfire kindling they have to route through. Even though California may not be more mountainous than those other Western states, its development pattern may have more wildland-subdivision interface overall, which adds up.

secabeen 1y ago

> Batteries could be used to greatly reduce grid costs by flattening peaks and decreasing grid congestion. If CPUC mandated that utilities took those cost-saving measures... Can you math this out somewhat? I certainly can see some grid cost reductions from batteries, but we still need a pretty extensive grid to support baseline load and maintenance of rural lines. How would shaving the load peak from 100% over baseline down to a lower number help? Given that we are nearing the normal lifespan of much of our rural electric infrastructure that was installed in the mid-20th century, it's not surprising that we have a lot of spend to do. Private utilities love to defer maintenance, especially when it takes 80 years to notice.

epistasis 1y ago
The math will be extremely dependent on each particular transmission alternative. The overarching term is "non-wires alternatives" of which storage is just one alternative. NYISO has a slide deck here, but unfortunately there's not much quantitation to the savings in their examples: https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/40044890/2%20Storage%20as%20Transmission%20Use%20Cases_20230918.pdf/0ee0027e-d194-24ff-68fd-1dee041d14c5 https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/40044890/2%20Storage%2...

zdragnar 1y ago

I'm in the upper Midwest; you're paying more to generate than I do on my residential bill. 10.9 cents /kwh in winter, 12.3 cents in summer. 1/3 coal, 1/3 gas, 1/3 assorted renewables.

nielsbot 1y ago

Rates should be lowered until PG&E profits are $0.

epistasis 1y ago
While that's an interesting proposition, that could at most reduce our rates by their profit rate, which is not nearly enough. We need systematic changes to fundamentally lower costs to more reasonable rates, like what other smaller municipal utilities deliver in California, which are 1/3-1/2 the cost. The problem is not profit, but how profit is established. PG&E takes a fixed rate of profit of the total cost, so they are incentivized to make everything as expensive as possible. This is in contrast to most market based systems, where a new competitor with lower costs gets to directly take the lowered cost as profit. We instead use regulatory boards, Public Utility Commissions, to determine which investments utilities can make and what prices they can charge customers. This is highly regulated, but the outcomes have been terrible. Even Arizona, whose equivalent of the PUC has been disastrously corrupt, or places like Ohio, which has sent state legislators to prison for their corruption on utility matters, have far lower rates than we do in California. We have bad regulation in California. That's the fundamental problem. Gavin Newsom, and all the governors who came before, have failed us on our electrical grid. That said, clearly high electricity prices are not a huge problem for our economy, and the high cost of living from high housing costs is clearly a driver of expense for everything a utility does, but we fundamentally have not had the right controls on the grid to keep costs reasonable. We have not set up a system where PG&E profits from delivering lowered costs. Our regulation prevents us from achieving what Marx calls the "falling rate of profit" as we would usually see with a market. Something must change, but simply eliminating PG&E profits won't do it, it's not enough.

const_cast 1y ago

Also California is somewhat unique because it has the extreme energy demand of the likes of Texas coupled with natural disasters like wildfires. California gets really hot and AC needs to be blasting. Factor in that California also has a huge economy (datacenters...) and it's clear the grid is under an amount of stress that is not typical.