12 ms·

State regulators vote to keep utility profits high angering customers across CA

128 points by connor11528 10mo ago

frugalmail 10mo ago
Just purchased a replacement gas stove/oven because electricity prices in LA are INSANE.
- pclmulqdq 10mo ago
  People don't realize how much electric heating costs in comparison to the fossil fuel alternatives. Gas so much cheaper per joule it more than makes up for the efficiency losses. This is true even without California's insane electricity economy.
  - amluto 10mo ago
    The US average residential electricity price is 18.07 c/kWh [0]. Natural gas is $15.39/thousand cubic ft [1]. 1k cubic feet of gas is about 300kWh (this varies because natural gas is not always the same and because the higher heating value and lower heating value are different. So the US average is about 5c/kWh of natural gas. In decent weather, one should not use resistive electric heat — one should use a heat pump. In decent weather, a COP of 4 is about par for the course, making electric heat a bit cheaper. So I don’t believe your assertion that “gas is so much cheaper per joule”. Obviously this varies by what you do with your heat and the conditions. Gas stoves are wildly inefficient, but induction can exceed a COP of 100%. In very very cold weather, heat pump COP drops, so gas will win. Gas tankless water heaters are reasonably priced and can reach well over 90% efficiency, whereas heat pump water heaters need a tank, which is somewhat lossy. But gas has a major downside (aside from CO2 and other emissions): you need to pipe the stuff to the endpoint, and a lot of communities, especially new developments, have decided that this is not worth the expense or danger. [0] September 2025: 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... [1] https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/monthly/pdf/table_20.pdf https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/monthly/pdf/table_20.pdf
    - pclmulqdq 10mo ago
      I'm not sure what physics you're using to get a COP > 1 for an induction stove. I'm pretty sure you could put a Stirling engine on that stove and have a perpetual motion machine. Most of them run about 80-90% compared to 30-40% for gas equivalents, about 2-2.5x more efficient. And this is with expensive, high-end cooktops. I think heat pumps make sense to use when available, but that's kind of separate from electric heat sources. If you actually have to source your heat from the power source itself, it's cheaper to get it cookies. I have a heat pump on my house, but there's also a high-efficiency furnace and its COP is over 90% combusting gas.
      - amluto 10mo ago
        Whoops, that was a typo. Gas stoves really are kind of absurdly inefficient, though. You can buy silly pots with heat exchangers on the bottom that do better, though.
RheingoldRiver 10mo ago
Archive link: https://archive.is/LkHqZ https://archive.is/LkHqZ
fusslo 10mo ago
difficult to find the reasoning behind the 10% being considered "reasonable" from the article. It sounds like Edison has a lot of risk mitigation of wildfires, and is dealing wit a lot of litigation. Is part of the 10% profit going to these costs? Or since they're an expense it's not apart of the 10% profit?
- vkou 10mo ago
  Pussyfooting around this issue is the worst of both worlds. Why on earth is a government-protected monopoly entitled to 10% margins? Or even 6% margins? It's risk-free money with a captive market. What is the point of all this bullshit? Why not just call it a day, and run it as a crown corporation? > The companies pointed to the January wildfires in Los Angeles County, saying they needed to provide their shareholders with more profit to get them to continue to invest in their stock because of the threat of utility-caused fires in California. What utter nonsense. The shareholders need nothing. Take out a bloody loan. The firm's entire concern, as reflected in the article - is it's stock price. > Under the state’s system for setting electric rates, investors provide part of the money needed to build the infrastructure and then earn an annual return on that investment over the assets’ life, which can be 30 or 40 years. Wait, why is this financed by investors and not lenders, like it is in the rest of the civilized world? Is this some kind of novel California-specific innovation, and if it is, what value has it produced for the world?
  - roenxi 10mo ago
    > Why on earth is a government-protected monopoly entitled to 10% margins? Indeed, how do they pick any margin? If higher is better, why not pick 1000%? If lower is better, why not pick 0%? If we want something reasonable, why not make it market based to figure out what people think when they have to stump up real resources themselves? Once profit margins are set by committee decision there is little point trying to claim that the concern is profit motivated. The profits aren't doing much useful signalling. It just sounds stupid.
  - skybrian 10mo ago
    It’s certainly not risk-free. PG&E went bankrupt twice. There will be more wildfires. It could happen again. Also, much of the point of having shareholders is that they take the risk. If something goes wrong, they lose their money first.
doctorpangloss 10mo ago
california has its minuses - wildfires, nimbys - but also its plusses: solar makes sense for the SFH community people want. the best escape valve against PG&E and Edison is installing solar panels and a battery.
- JohnMakin 10mo ago
  sure, if you're not in the majority of the population that rents instead of owns a home.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Rebelgecko 10mo ago
    Hopefully California hops on the balcony plug-in solar train in the coming years
- kelnos 10mo ago
  I tried to do it a few years ago (condo building). Most installers wouldn't touch buildings with more than 2 floors (we have 5). I assume it's an insurance issue, but was super weird to me since SF has so many buildings (even SFHs) taller than 2 floors. I did find an installer who claimed they'd do it, but after a site visit -- where the guy taking measurements said everything looked fine -- my sales rep emailed to say they were dropping me as a prospective client, and bizarrely refused to tell me why when I asked. Then NEM3 took effect and solar-only (with no battery storage) became financially infeasible. I should look around again, probably, since battery prices have gone down... though I'll probably have to wait until reasonable people are in power again nationally, who restore financial incentives for this stuff.
aidenn0 10mo ago
So they are limited in their RoR on capital expenditures. Are they limited in their capital expenditures in the first place? That is, if they overspend on everything they build, do they make more profit than if they engineered things more carefully? I assume there must be some limitation here or they would use gold instead of copper in their MV transmission lines...
- jeffbee 10mo ago
  No, that is the obvious problem and it happens right out in front of everyone.
- Rebelgecko 10mo ago
  I think technically CPUC approves at least a subset of expenditures, but yes there's the weird incentive where wasting money can actually increase profits
  - aidenn0 10mo ago
    If the government has to approve expenditures and profit margins, there seems to be little reason for a private utility to exist?
    - danans 10mo ago
      Without the private sector utility company, there wouldn't be a mechanism to raise funds from and pay profits to shareholders.
      - xboxnolifes 10mo ago
        Sure there would be; raise funds: tax, pay profits: reduce tax / tax breaks. The real differentiator is in the ability to choose who your shareholders are with less scrutiny.
        danans 10mo ago
jeffbee 10mo ago
People are mad about this but, in the end, not really mad enough to do anything. California has high volumetric, margin rates for electricity but the typical monthly electric bill just isn't that high, because we don't need that much of it. The median bill is estimated to be $135 – $165/month, that's in the middle of the pack for the 50 states. Moreover, the people who can effectively get mad about this — rich people and retirees — don't suffer from it because they are protected by rooftop solar, special rates for seniors, etc. The people most exposed to the marginal prices are the ones renting old, inefficient dwellings, and they don't get a voice.
- youarentrightjr 10mo ago
  > The median bill is estimated to be $135 – $165/month I have a hard time believing this; in the Bay Area, the privilege of simply having a 200A connection is $130/month.
  - verteu 10mo ago
    FWIW, one source is https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/table_5A.pdf https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/tabl...
    - labcomputer 10mo ago
      That includes government-run utilities, like LADWP, Silicon Valley Power, and SMUD, which have much lower rates than private utilities (And, no, the rate difference is not made up by taxpayer subsidies. They’re just run more efficiently).
  - stahtops 10mo ago
    Where? My minimum delivery charge is $0.41 a day.
  - amluto 10mo ago
    Excuse me? This is the basic rate: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED... You pay $0.40317/day for the connection but you get back $58.23 twice per year. That’s $30.70 per year. It’s the price of the electricity that’s ridiculous in PG&E territory, not the price of the connection. Note that many commercial users have a very different structure and pay monthly for their peak usage, measured over a 15 minute interval, and separately for their actual energy usage. So if you get a commercial 200A connection, max it out for 15 minutes, and then leave it idle for the rest of the month, you may pay something silly.
ursAxZA 10mo ago
It’s strange that in 2025 we still don’t have even a minimal, per-capita baseline tier for electricity. If a household uses less than the monthly per-capita average, why not cap that baseline at something like $10? Yes — that gap would need to be subsidized, probably through taxes. But that’s already how grid maintenance works: we socialize the fixed costs while pretending rates are purely volumetric.(and I might be overstating this slightly). Right now we punish low-usage consumers and reward structural inefficiency. A baseline tier would at least make the incentives coherent.
- labcomputer 10mo ago
  So PG&E already has something like this. It’s called either E-1 or TOU-C, depending on whether time-of-use billing applies. The price for the baseline tier is higher than you’d expect, though.
  - ursAxZA 10mo ago
    That makes sense — but it feels like the balance could be better. If we treat baseline access as a kind of ‘civilization tax,’ the pricing shouldn’t feel punitive for low-usage households.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- nospice 10mo ago
  That's more or less the system that exists today? You pay a lower rate up to a certain threshold and then a higher rate kicks in. The problem with PG&E isn't the rate structure, which isn't all that different from utilities anywhere else in the world. It's that their costs are exceedingly high, through a combination of regulatory pressures and grift. This is exacerbated by municipal and state regulators who are pushing consumers to be more reliant on electric power (bans on gas appliances in new construction, pushes toward EVs, etc). There are vast swathes of the country where people pay 5-10x less for electricity.
  - 10mo ago
aschobel 10mo ago
I logged into my PGE and saw this https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/energy-savings/pg-e-electric-bills-down-from-last-year--expected-to-drop-again-.html https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/energy-savings/pg-e... shrug they claim prices re going down?
benced 10mo ago
California's average residential electricity rate is almost twice the US average (32 cents vs 18 cents) despite being in a state with abundant energy resources. Even if advocates got everything they wanted here (6% margin vs 10% margin), that would lower rates by... 1.2 cents. PG&E desperately needs to be reformed into a competent organization, something that nobody in (Newsom) or adjacent to (these advocates) power in California seems to want to do. 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...
- nebula8804 10mo ago
  I guess we will have a total whitewashing effort for Newsom coming up in 2028. Same nonsense as Kamala. Its funny how we can now predict the controversies.
  - twoodfin 10mo ago
    The redirect on the French Laundry thing is going to be epic.
    - kyboren 10mo ago
      It is, but you're really talking about the same thing: Gavin Newsom is corrupt and comfortably ensconced within the investor-owned utilities' pocket. Recall that it was so important for Newsom to attend that dinner at the height of COVID because it was Jason Kinney's 50th birthday party, a PG&E lobbyist and close advisor to Newsom.
    - nebula8804 10mo ago
      Ha! I totally forgot about that! The only saving grace is that in 2028 new media will have increased even further than in 2024 and it already played a significant role in that election. It will be interesting to see the tactics used to bury things like the French Laundry moment because the opponents have been learning all the tricks that the Democrats like to use and plan for them.
- autoexec 10mo ago
flave 10mo ago
American/California confuses my tiny English brain >be freedom-loving capitalist America >be freedom-loving state of California and electrical engineering centre of the world >the government tells utility companies exactly how much yield they can make >down to a tenth of a percent >don’t worry bro this is about protecting_customers >the yield is on infrastructure and is extremely non-cyclical and effectively backstopped by the state of California. It’s a 30y investment at a time when 30y t bills are at ~5% >sets the yield at 10.3% What am I missing?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
kelnos 10mo ago
The utilities' profit margin should be 0%. There is absolutely no reason why they should be run as profit-seeking enterprises.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > The utilities' profit margin should be 0% Yet much of America has utilities run for profit with far cheaper rates than California, where PG&E operates as a vertically-integrated regulated monopoly.
  - kelnos 10mo ago
    As a California resident, I'm well aware. But that doesn't change anything; I still believe utilities should be run as non-profits (or co-ops or even just as government agencies, depending on what works best for local conditions). The real problem in CA is that our governor is in PG&E's pocket, and the body that regulates the utility (with members appointed by the governor) is a textbook example of regulatory capture. I'm not sure why the legislature hasn't done anything about this, but I assume it has something to do with money, there, as well. At this point I want SF to own its own grid, like Santa Clara and Palo Alto do. Of course, PG&E refuses to play ball with any plan/offer the city has put forth.
    - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > that doesn't change anything; I still believe utilities should be run as non-profits That's a valid position. My utility is a member-owned coöperative [1]. It pays me a dividend every year that I have the option of investing back into it for a return. But that's not why its power is 10x cheaper than California's, despite my buying exclusively wind and hydro. [1] https://www.lvenergy.com/my-account/unclaimed-patronage-capital/ https://www.lvenergy.com/my-account/unclaimed-patronage-capi...

128 points by connor11528 10mo ago

frugalmail 10mo ago

Just purchased a replacement gas stove/oven because electricity prices in LA are INSANE.

pclmulqdq 10mo ago
People don't realize how much electric heating costs in comparison to the fossil fuel alternatives. Gas so much cheaper per joule it more than makes up for the efficiency losses. This is true even without California's insane electricity economy.
- amluto 10mo ago
  The US average residential electricity price is 18.07 c/kWh [0]. Natural gas is $15.39/thousand cubic ft [1]. 1k cubic feet of gas is about 300kWh (this varies because natural gas is not always the same and because the higher heating value and lower heating value are different. So the US average is about 5c/kWh of natural gas. In decent weather, one should not use resistive electric heat — one should use a heat pump. In decent weather, a COP of 4 is about par for the course, making electric heat a bit cheaper. So I don’t believe your assertion that “gas is so much cheaper per joule”. Obviously this varies by what you do with your heat and the conditions. Gas stoves are wildly inefficient, but induction can exceed a COP of 100%. In very very cold weather, heat pump COP drops, so gas will win. Gas tankless water heaters are reasonably priced and can reach well over 90% efficiency, whereas heat pump water heaters need a tank, which is somewhat lossy. But gas has a major downside (aside from CO2 and other emissions): you need to pipe the stuff to the endpoint, and a lot of communities, especially new developments, have decided that this is not worth the expense or danger. [0] September 2025: 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... [1] https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/monthly/pdf/table_20.pdf https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/monthly/pdf/table_20.pdf
  - pclmulqdq 10mo ago
    I'm not sure what physics you're using to get a COP > 1 for an induction stove. I'm pretty sure you could put a Stirling engine on that stove and have a perpetual motion machine. Most of them run about 80-90% compared to 30-40% for gas equivalents, about 2-2.5x more efficient. And this is with expensive, high-end cooktops. I think heat pumps make sense to use when available, but that's kind of separate from electric heat sources. If you actually have to source your heat from the power source itself, it's cheaper to get it cookies. I have a heat pump on my house, but there's also a high-efficiency furnace and its COP is over 90% combusting gas.
    - amluto 10mo ago
      Whoops, that was a typo. Gas stoves really are kind of absurdly inefficient, though. You can buy silly pots with heat exchangers on the bottom that do better, though.

RheingoldRiver 10mo ago

Archive link: https://archive.is/LkHqZ https://archive.is/LkHqZ

fusslo 10mo ago

difficult to find the reasoning behind the 10% being considered "reasonable" from the article. It sounds like Edison has a lot of risk mitigation of wildfires, and is dealing wit a lot of litigation. Is part of the 10% profit going to these costs? Or since they're an expense it's not apart of the 10% profit?

vkou 10mo ago
Pussyfooting around this issue is the worst of both worlds. Why on earth is a government-protected monopoly entitled to 10% margins? Or even 6% margins? It's risk-free money with a captive market. What is the point of all this bullshit? Why not just call it a day, and run it as a crown corporation? > The companies pointed to the January wildfires in Los Angeles County, saying they needed to provide their shareholders with more profit to get them to continue to invest in their stock because of the threat of utility-caused fires in California. What utter nonsense. The shareholders need nothing. Take out a bloody loan. The firm's entire concern, as reflected in the article - is it's stock price. > Under the state’s system for setting electric rates, investors provide part of the money needed to build the infrastructure and then earn an annual return on that investment over the assets’ life, which can be 30 or 40 years. Wait, why is this financed by investors and not lenders, like it is in the rest of the civilized world? Is this some kind of novel California-specific innovation, and if it is, what value has it produced for the world?
- roenxi 10mo ago
  > Why on earth is a government-protected monopoly entitled to 10% margins? Indeed, how do they pick any margin? If higher is better, why not pick 1000%? If lower is better, why not pick 0%? If we want something reasonable, why not make it market based to figure out what people think when they have to stump up real resources themselves? Once profit margins are set by committee decision there is little point trying to claim that the concern is profit motivated. The profits aren't doing much useful signalling. It just sounds stupid.
- skybrian 10mo ago
  It’s certainly not risk-free. PG&E went bankrupt twice. There will be more wildfires. It could happen again. Also, much of the point of having shareholders is that they take the risk. If something goes wrong, they lose their money first.

doctorpangloss 10mo ago

california has its minuses - wildfires, nimbys - but also its plusses: solar makes sense for the SFH community people want. the best escape valve against PG&E and Edison is installing solar panels and a battery.

JohnMakin 10mo ago
sure, if you're not in the majority of the population that rents instead of owns a home.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- Rebelgecko 10mo ago
  Hopefully California hops on the balcony plug-in solar train in the coming years
kelnos 10mo ago
I tried to do it a few years ago (condo building). Most installers wouldn't touch buildings with more than 2 floors (we have 5). I assume it's an insurance issue, but was super weird to me since SF has so many buildings (even SFHs) taller than 2 floors. I did find an installer who claimed they'd do it, but after a site visit -- where the guy taking measurements said everything looked fine -- my sales rep emailed to say they were dropping me as a prospective client, and bizarrely refused to tell me why when I asked. Then NEM3 took effect and solar-only (with no battery storage) became financially infeasible. I should look around again, probably, since battery prices have gone down... though I'll probably have to wait until reasonable people are in power again nationally, who restore financial incentives for this stuff.

aidenn0 10mo ago

So they are limited in their RoR on capital expenditures. Are they limited in their capital expenditures in the first place? That is, if they overspend on everything they build, do they make more profit than if they engineered things more carefully? I assume there must be some limitation here or they would use gold instead of copper in their MV transmission lines...

jeffbee 10mo ago
No, that is the obvious problem and it happens right out in front of everyone.
Rebelgecko 10mo ago
I think technically CPUC approves at least a subset of expenditures, but yes there's the weird incentive where wasting money can actually increase profits
- aidenn0 10mo ago
  If the government has to approve expenditures and profit margins, there seems to be little reason for a private utility to exist?
  - danans 10mo ago
    Without the private sector utility company, there wouldn't be a mechanism to raise funds from and pay profits to shareholders.
    - xboxnolifes 10mo ago
      Sure there would be; raise funds: tax, pay profits: reduce tax / tax breaks. The real differentiator is in the ability to choose who your shareholders are with less scrutiny.
      - danans 10mo ago

jeffbee 10mo ago

People are mad about this but, in the end, not really mad enough to do anything. California has high volumetric, margin rates for electricity but the typical monthly electric bill just isn't that high, because we don't need that much of it. The median bill is estimated to be $135 – $165/month, that's in the middle of the pack for the 50 states. Moreover, the people who can effectively get mad about this — rich people and retirees — don't suffer from it because they are protected by rooftop solar, special rates for seniors, etc. The people most exposed to the marginal prices are the ones renting old, inefficient dwellings, and they don't get a voice.

youarentrightjr 10mo ago
> The median bill is estimated to be $135 – $165/month I have a hard time believing this; in the Bay Area, the privilege of simply having a 200A connection is $130/month.
- verteu 10mo ago
  FWIW, one source is https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/table_5A.pdf https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/tabl...
  - labcomputer 10mo ago
    That includes government-run utilities, like LADWP, Silicon Valley Power, and SMUD, which have much lower rates than private utilities (And, no, the rate difference is not made up by taxpayer subsidies. They’re just run more efficiently).
- stahtops 10mo ago
  Where? My minimum delivery charge is $0.41 a day.
- amluto 10mo ago
  Excuse me? This is the basic rate: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED... You pay $0.40317/day for the connection but you get back $58.23 twice per year. That’s $30.70 per year. It’s the price of the electricity that’s ridiculous in PG&E territory, not the price of the connection. Note that many commercial users have a very different structure and pay monthly for their peak usage, measured over a 15 minute interval, and separately for their actual energy usage. So if you get a commercial 200A connection, max it out for 15 minutes, and then leave it idle for the rest of the month, you may pay something silly.

ursAxZA 10mo ago

It’s strange that in 2025 we still don’t have even a minimal, per-capita baseline tier for electricity. If a household uses less than the monthly per-capita average, why not cap that baseline at something like $10? Yes — that gap would need to be subsidized, probably through taxes. But that’s already how grid maintenance works: we socialize the fixed costs while pretending rates are purely volumetric.(and I might be overstating this slightly). Right now we punish low-usage consumers and reward structural inefficiency. A baseline tier would at least make the incentives coherent.

labcomputer 10mo ago
So PG&E already has something like this. It’s called either E-1 or TOU-C, depending on whether time-of-use billing applies. The price for the baseline tier is higher than you’d expect, though.
- ursAxZA 10mo ago
  That makes sense — but it feels like the balance could be better. If we treat baseline access as a kind of ‘civilization tax,’ the pricing shouldn’t feel punitive for low-usage households.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
nospice 10mo ago
That's more or less the system that exists today? You pay a lower rate up to a certain threshold and then a higher rate kicks in. The problem with PG&E isn't the rate structure, which isn't all that different from utilities anywhere else in the world. It's that their costs are exceedingly high, through a combination of regulatory pressures and grift. This is exacerbated by municipal and state regulators who are pushing consumers to be more reliant on electric power (bans on gas appliances in new construction, pushes toward EVs, etc). There are vast swathes of the country where people pay 5-10x less for electricity.
- 10mo ago

aschobel 10mo ago

I logged into my PGE and saw this https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/energy-savings/pg-e-electric-bills-down-from-last-year--expected-to-drop-again-.html https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/energy-savings/pg-e... shrug they claim prices re going down?

benced 10mo ago

California's average residential electricity rate is almost twice the US average (32 cents vs 18 cents) despite being in a state with abundant energy resources. Even if advocates got everything they wanted here (6% margin vs 10% margin), that would lower rates by... 1.2 cents. PG&E desperately needs to be reformed into a competent organization, something that nobody in (Newsom) or adjacent to (these advocates) power in California seems to want to do. 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...

nebula8804 10mo ago
I guess we will have a total whitewashing effort for Newsom coming up in 2028. Same nonsense as Kamala. Its funny how we can now predict the controversies.
- twoodfin 10mo ago
  The redirect on the French Laundry thing is going to be epic.
  - kyboren 10mo ago
    It is, but you're really talking about the same thing: Gavin Newsom is corrupt and comfortably ensconced within the investor-owned utilities' pocket. Recall that it was so important for Newsom to attend that dinner at the height of COVID because it was Jason Kinney's 50th birthday party, a PG&E lobbyist and close advisor to Newsom.
  - nebula8804 10mo ago
    Ha! I totally forgot about that! The only saving grace is that in 2028 new media will have increased even further than in 2024 and it already played a significant role in that election. It will be interesting to see the tactics used to bury things like the French Laundry moment because the opponents have been learning all the tricks that the Democrats like to use and plan for them.
autoexec 10mo ago

flave 10mo ago

American/California confuses my tiny English brain >be freedom-loving capitalist America >be freedom-loving state of California and electrical engineering centre of the world >the government tells utility companies exactly how much yield they can make >down to a tenth of a percent >don’t worry bro this is about protecting_customers >the yield is on infrastructure and is extremely non-cyclical and effectively backstopped by the state of California. It’s a 30y investment at a time when 30y t bills are at ~5% >sets the yield at 10.3% What am I missing?

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

kelnos 10mo ago

The utilities' profit margin should be 0%. There is absolutely no reason why they should be run as profit-seeking enterprises.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> The utilities' profit margin should be 0% Yet much of America has utilities run for profit with far cheaper rates than California, where PG&E operates as a vertically-integrated regulated monopoly.
- kelnos 10mo ago
  As a California resident, I'm well aware. But that doesn't change anything; I still believe utilities should be run as non-profits (or co-ops or even just as government agencies, depending on what works best for local conditions). The real problem in CA is that our governor is in PG&E's pocket, and the body that regulates the utility (with members appointed by the governor) is a textbook example of regulatory capture. I'm not sure why the legislature hasn't done anything about this, but I assume it has something to do with money, there, as well. At this point I want SF to own its own grid, like Santa Clara and Palo Alto do. Of course, PG&E refuses to play ball with any plan/offer the city has put forth.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > that doesn't change anything; I still believe utilities should be run as non-profits That's a valid position. My utility is a member-owned coöperative [1]. It pays me a dividend every year that I have the option of investing back into it for a return. But that's not why its power is 10x cheaper than California's, despite my buying exclusively wind and hydro. [1] https://www.lvenergy.com/my-account/unclaimed-patronage-capital/ https://www.lvenergy.com/my-account/unclaimed-patronage-capi...