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PG&E's most transparent fraud is by forcing people to move everything to electricity and then forcing them to use less electricity, and then complaining they ar
by reenorap 11mo ago
PG&E's most transparent fraud is by forcing people to move everything to electricity and then forcing them to use less electricity, and then complaining they aren't making enough money so that they raise electricity rates. Last year, PG&E raised rates 6 times. I'm now paying double the per kWh rates from only 4 years ago.
PG&E now wants to charge solar panel owners $100+/month just for the privilege of being connected to the grid. This is on top of their $0.41-54/kWh they already charge, the highest in the nation.
PG&E is a government-supported scam that is charging people whatever prices they want with no protection from our politicians because they are all on the take.
- rconti 11mo agoI would expand our solar installation as we expand our house over the next few months, but PG&E would force us into a less advantageous electricity scheme if we add panels, so shrug
- jeffbee 11mo agoNEM eligibility is controlled by CPUC, not PG&E
- reenorap 11mo agoThe CPUC is fighting on behalf of PG&E. It is headed by Newsom's buddy and they have let PG&E raise prices without pushback.
- jeffbee 11mo agoNewsom is the governor of California and has been for quite a while. The President of CPUC was the long-time climate advisor to Jerry Brown and Deputy Attorney General under Schwarzenegger. The constitution guarantees PG&E rates that offer a return on investment. It's silly to try to make it a personalist conspiracy.
- reenorap 11mo agohttps://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners/page-content/profile-list/president-alice-reynolds https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners/page-conten... I'm not engage in a "conspiracy". She was appointed by Newsom in 2021. This coincides to when the prices started skyrocketing.
- linkregister 11mo agoThen she is part of the conspiracy to lower rates in 2026. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
- reenorap 11mo agoIf the electricity bills ever drop I will eat my hat. Even if they drop the rates, they will increase the connection fees to make up for it.
- jeffbee 11mo agoGet out your fork and knife I guess because the PG&E bill of the median residential account is down 10% in the last year.
- teachrdan 11mo agoSome light googling shows "The average combined [gas + electric] bill has increased from approximately $179 in 2020 to around $300 by October 2025". I'm not sure what cherry-picking of data PG&E is doing, but it does not seem that there's a real life 10% decrease in bills being paid by California consumers.
- rconti 11mo agothey mailed me a thing a few months ago saying "we're lowering rates!" and then another thing more recently saying "See, we're lowering rates and plan to lower them again soon!" I haven't actually looked at the real bills to see if it's happening, but the expectation they're setting up is that 2026 will be lower than 2025. we'll see!
- pavel_lishin 11mo ago> forcing people to move everything to electricity Can you say more about this? I don't live in California, so I'm not familiar with what you mean.
- RandallBrown 11mo agoI'm guessing they're talking about phasing out natural gas in some places?
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoI read it as promoting electric cars and heat pumps over ICE vehicles and furnaces.
- Rebelgecko 11mo agoA lot of new homes don't have natural gas hookups, and there's been various state and local regulations wrt natty gas applicances
- reenorap 11mo agoAlso, they charge natural gas rates that are ridiculous compared to the current price of natural gas. They give rebates on electrically powers appliances and then jack up the prices on electricity, and then tell us not to charge our cars during the summer because the grid can't handle it. These are all excuses on how to keep raising electricity prices instead of dropping them.
- vladgur 11mo agoIn my area, the government passed the law prohibiting replacement or installation of new gas appliances starting a year and a few months from now. https://www.finegroupre.com/blog/no-more-gas/ https://www.finegroupre.com/blog/no-more-gas/ This is all the while cost of the alternative -- electric power -- goes up at least 10% YOY
- jeffbee 11mo agoPG&E should be expropriated by the state, but your 2nd point is just homeowner propaganda. NEM account holders really are free-riding on the grid in a way that is deeply unfair to the rest of PG&E ratepayers.
- BriggyDwiggs42 11mo agoWhy so?
- adrr 11mo agoGrid costs a lot more money than power generation. It’s 60+% of the bill. Really wish they went with fixed grid hookup costs that includes delivery and usage for power generation.
- BriggyDwiggs42 11mo agoThat would fuck over poor rural households right?
- pfdietz 11mo agoAt this point many should just be given a check to convert to solar. Maybe microgrids in small clustered enclaves.
- bell-cot 11mo agoI'm not familiar with Cali's NEM scheme...but does it work like this? - Electric utility must make up to _forward_maximum_kW of electrical energy available to customer, 24x7, at _rate - Customer may force electrical utility to accept up to _reverse_maximum_kW - without notice, at his sole discretion, and without regard for electrical utility's needs or wishes, at _rate If so, just talk to any sane businessman about the viability of being stuck on the utility's end of such a deal.
- jeffbee 11mo ago
- emtel 11mo agoI live in CA, but am lucky enough not to be a PG&E customer. My winter off-peak rates are $0.12, compared to $0.43 for PG&E. On the other end, my summer peak is $0.36, vs $0.56. Absolutely absurd.
- js2 11mo agoI thought maybe you were in Santa Clara, but you've got even better rates than that. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
- AnotherGoodName 11mo agoPalo Alto municipal power right? I moved across the road from this government owned power company so i was just out of Palo Alto municipality and suddenly had to pay 4x the price. Sigh. It's a weird thing moving to the USA. Everyone's been brainwashed "anything government run is more expensive" yet every example I've ever looked into proved the opposite to a dramatic extent. Government run institutions lead to lower overall costs.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- lsaferite 11mo agoI never understand how people can't see that private companies have a "must make a profit" motive while a non-captured government has a "must help citizenry" motive. Essential services being privately owned means they are incentivized to squeeze more profit in any way they can, to the detriment of their captive customers.
- embedding-shape 11mo agoI'm guessing the upper-class managed to convince people of that as well as they managed to convince them of "the dangers of unions". There seems to be (at this point) almost an innate reaction to just hearing "union" or "general strike" that makes people recoil, even though they're necessary part of a society where capitalism exists, otherwise there is no way of stopping it when it outgrows any other concerns.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo agoIsn't a lot of this the government insisting that PG&E act as the de facto California wildfire insurance provider and collect the premiums out of everyone's electric bill? You have wildfires caused by, basically, climate change causing there to be an abundance of fuel (dead wood) waiting for any spark, exacerbated by decades of the government putting out every wildfire when in the natural environment the last fire would have cleared out the dead wood before the next one, causing fuel to accumulate even more. At that point it doesn't matter what the ignition source is, that much fuel is going to burn, soon. If it isn't some piece of PG&E equipment it will be a lightning strike or something else. But if you can pin it on the power company because a tree caught fire from falling on a power line then the fire insurance companies can sue the power company instead of filing for bankruptcy, and then all you have to do is pass on the cost to ordinary people as $500/month electric bills.
- colechristensen 11mo agoThere are a bunch of places in California where humans shouldn't live that PG&E is required to provide electricity to and then getting blamed for setting fires... which I suppose it did set those fires but much of the state is being required to subsidize these inhabited uninhabitable places either through paying for fire damage or paying the incredibly expensive process of burying power lines which doesn't fundamentally alter the risk or rate of wildfires. One of the many questionable political situations in California.
- pfdietz 11mo agoRenewables could be used to power these remote locations, or at least allow utilities to abandon them (with some warning.)
- colechristensen 11mo agoIf pigs had wings they could fly, but here and in a lot of California politics rational solutions aren't what is lacking.