8 ms·

San Francisco Weighs PG&E Takeover Amid Soaring Utility Costs

78 points by cdrnsf 4mo ago

cyanydeez 4mo ago
rising costs or inept management.
FrankWilhoit 4mo ago
CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation. This is not a matter of whether PG&E is "privately" or "publicly" owned, because nearly all large utilities are already a weird mixture of both. Public ownership might have different incentives, but not sufficiently different to allow rates to be lowered substantially (unless it were a case of overt and massive subsidies, which would require state legislation and possibly rewriting the charters of CPUC and CAISO). The only way to lower rates is to add cheaper generation; and the way to make generation cheapest, and to bring it on line quickest, is to locate it near demand.
- FrankWilhoit 4mo ago
  Also, too: the primary reason to worry about inadequate generation is not cost, but reliability.
  - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
    The problem in California is not generation nor is it reliability. CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far; under half the cost of Texas. It also hasn't had a blackout since 2020. The problem is retail side. AKA PG&E, its regulation, governance and forced liabilities. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-wholesale-electricity-prices-in-usa/ https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...
    - simoncion 4mo ago
      > CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far Much lower than that provided by the TVA? Ages ago, I used to live in an area served by the TVA, and its power prices were notably cheaper than anywhere else. I'd heard that this was because a huge chunk of its power was provided by fission plants, but never investigated.
      - stonogo 4mo ago
        Yes, CAISO wholesale rates are much lower, but California also has the highest retail cost in the continental US, at over 28c/kWh. If any customer in the TVA paid that much for power there'd be riots.
        simoncion 4mo ago
        Where does one even find wholesale rates for the various regional providers? I -a complete ignoramous- spent like ten whole minutes poking around for wholesale rates. I could find documents about rates for several providers (including TVA) from many years back, complaints about rates increasing for many providers (but no actual mention of the new rates) and some governmental site that provided rates for a selected subset of all providers which included CAISO and one in Texas, but not TVA. You'd think that this would be something that'd be very easy to find on -say- the DoE's website, but apparently you'd be totally wrong.
        stonogo 4mo ago
        EIA doesn't carry TVA data because the TVA doesn't participate in open-market sales or report data to FERC. Wholesale power is auctioned in I(or R)SOs; TVA just sets rates directly during negotiations with power companies.
    - Xorakios 4mo ago
      CAISO claims that and cleantechnica might parrot it, but there are blackouts ALL THE TIME in southern california. In Palm Springs I was down with brownouts 103 times since I bought a sine wave UPS in December, and multi hour blackouts 4 times. My mother in Riverside, brother in Laguna Beach are similar. Last week it was 3 times here over the course of three days. It's lived experience for me. Reliability collapsed two years ago
- Atotalnoob 4mo ago
  PGE charged me more for the same electric usage than SVP. There is definitely greed on PGEs part.
  - jeffbee 4mo ago
    Maybe, but SVP has two massive advantages: it delivers almost all of its energy to a handful of gigantic customers, not homes. Contrary to internet belief, having a customer base dominated by industry makes power cheap to deliver. Secondly, it gets a free pass from expensive things that the state makes PG&E pay for, especially rural service.
    - toast0 4mo ago
      There's very little rural in San Francisco city/county, so a hypothetical sf electric utility wouldn't have to spend a lot on that either.
      - jeffbee 4mo ago
        That wasn't my point. Subsidizing rural service is a state policy. If major cities increasingly divorce from PG&E, and the true cost of rural electrification starts to be charged upon actual rural people, that might not work politically.
- pmalynin 4mo ago
  As others have mentioned, Silicon Valley Power charges about half of PGE, and SF actually already has a power provider for businesses via Hetch Hetchy. It’s probably true that overall they might be a generation shortage but it doesn’t have to be true on a local scale. Plus PGE also needs to pay a lot of money for all the fires they started…which of course just goes back to the rate payers.
- laurencerowe 4mo ago
  My electricity bill is roughly 1/3rd 'CleanPowerSF Electric Generation Charges' vs 2/3rds 'Current PG&E Electric Delivery Charges'. The big problem is that PG&E covers most of rural California so its urban customers have to cover the high costs of compensation and prevention from delivering to fire prone rural areas.
- mirashii 4mo ago
  > CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation The existence of CPUC and CAISO says nothing of their efficacy. Jumping all the way past any question of their efficacy is egregious.
- thebigman433 4mo ago
  > What this means is that there is not enough generation We should generate more, but one of the major issues is how much wildfire prevention PG&E has to do, which then gets passed on to their customers. I am huge into supply side abundance, but that isnt the only driver here for costs.
- plorkyeran 4mo ago
  This is just very straightforwardly incorrect. Last month I paid Ava Energy $26 for electric energy generation, and PG&E $99 for delivery. Cutting the generation cost to $0 would only reduce my bill by 20%. Ava Energy says that 70% of the power I used came from solar located within my city, so it's already located quite close to demand.
infotainment 4mo ago
The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-power-system https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...
- jeffbee 4mo ago
  The other angle that people may not realize is that SF has voted in nine separate elections to not establish a municipal utility. The people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E, given numerous opportunities. SMUD has cheap power because 100 years ago the people of Sacramento invested a lot of money to establish that utility. What the vocal minority of SF public power people want is magical: cheaper rates without all that bothersome investment.
  - m463 4mo ago
    > people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
    - Veliladon 4mo ago
      >Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. This. Lived in Santa Clara. SVP is the best utility in California.
      - hunterpayne 4mo ago
        100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.
jmyeet 4mo ago
In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote The Tragedy of the Commons [1]. This was used as the justification for mass privatization of many government bodies (including utilities) in the 1980s and 1990s. PG&E was always private but it suffers from the same issues as many other privatized utilities. Utilities are a perfect example of a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy, justified by "efficiency". Losses are socialized, profits are privatized, just like in any public-private "partnership". Utilities are worse because their profits are usually guaranteed. This paper was proven to be empirically incorrect by Elinor Ostrom for which she won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics. [1]: https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...
jawiggins 4mo ago
A few months ago I attended an event where a few members of the Board of Supervisors were attending. One person identified themselves as working in this field and pointed out that the current cost plus model incentivizes the company to do all kinds of upgrades that aren't really needed. The BoS member said something like, "Look, we need to just bite the bullet on this one, we're going to overpay, but we are already legally permitted to buy it and doing so will save us a ton of money in the long run because of stuff like that". I have no personal knowledge, but thought I'd share this experience I had with the ongoing debate.
Ancalagon 4mo ago
sdg&e next please
simpsond 4mo ago
PG&E is a profitable, publicly traded company... that issues a dividend. They tried to file for bankruptcy after the paradise fire, but they were too big to fail, so they issued new shares with gov protection. CA created a new insurance backstop for them as well. Corporations should not have government assisted (regulated) monopolies with socialized backstops. Yeah, CPUC is supposed to help, but decision makers probably have exposure. It is the same with Sempra and SDG&E and SCE. SMUD seems like a better organization, but what do I know.
- lokar 4mo ago
  The state should have instead pushed them into liquidation and bought the assets. Run the transmission grid, offer to let big cities and counties take the distribution, keep whatever they don’t want.
winocm 4mo ago
On the note of PG&E, my electric bill averages to about $750 despite only running an air conditioner, several device chargers, a router, some lights and a fridge... Thanks PG&E.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  No wonder people are fleeing California in droves. There is absolutely no justification for a bill that high other than malfeasance or gross mismanagement. That is straight-up theft of your money. For comparison, I have double that plus electric appliances and a home-lab with 6 rack servers that run 24/7 and my bill rarely tops $175 in the dead of summer. And I like the thermostat cold. If you live in a duplex or condo I would consider if your meter is miswired (with your neighbor's meter daisy-chained to yours) and you are being double-billed. It is more common than you think and often goes undiscovered for years.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > No wonder people are fleeing California in droves “Fleeing” is hyperbole. Population is roughly flat [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045224 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045224
    - naturalmovement 4mo ago
      Both can be true. There could be people fleeing that have lived there for some time, while being supplanted with newcomers. That would have a net zero effect.
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        I’m not sure why that counts as a useful definition of fleeing within the context of economic conditions.
    - casey2 4mo ago
      Shrinking every year. Not good. ~40% people under 40 (or ~10% of the population) live with their parents. This is an indirect tax on parents since a majority of this class has no option to evict their kids. North Korea has a stable population, people flee all the time. The comparison is apt. California's 4-walled fences are much tighter around their residents.
throwaway2037 4mo ago
This part bothers me: > Dabit’s energy problems reached a new level in December when a PG&E substation fire caused a three-day power outage for the neighborhood. In addition to losing business, Dabit lost $10,000 to $15,000 worth of ingredients. (1) Why didn't the owner have insurance for food spoilage? Since it is rare event, it is probably very cheap. The old saying: "Buy insurance for (emergency) expenses that you cannot afford." This seems like a text book case. (2) Why didn't the owner immediately run to a hardware store to buy a portable (diesel?) generator to save as much food as possible? At least run one fridge and pack the most expensive ingredients into that one fridge. Overall: My sympathy is low for the owner's situation. If the city buys (or runs) its own (traditional) electricity utility, they will be assuming all of the wildfire risk. That is the primary cause of rises electricity rates by PG&E in the last ten years. However, if SF wants to create some power generation in the form of solar panels and batteries or wind, then sign power trade agreements with PG&E, I think that could be tenable/workable. If they spent 100M USD per year building truly reliable, green power generation, then 10 years later would look much better.
- striking 4mo ago
  1. Spoilage claims are not usually covered by insurance if the power interruption starts at the utility company instead of in your building. It's pretty rare that anyone knows to ask for that particular endorsement, and you're SoL without it. 2. You don't think everyone else was thinking the same thing? Also, you can just have sympathy for people even if it were their own mistake. It doesn't cost you anything.
- lokar 4mo ago
  The fires have been caused by the transmission grid, not the distribution grid. SF would be taking the distribution. There is not a ton of wildfire risk from the electric utility in SF, and it would be fairly easy to manage. Restaurants have very thin margins, they can’t afford that stuff.
  - throwaway2037 4mo ago
    > Restaurants have very thin margins I here this a lot but many pizza pie shops make a killing because ingredients are so cheap.
pengaru 4mo ago
AIUI This relationship between PG&E and SF/CPUC has a corrupt history dating back to the 90s with Willie Brown and later even Kamala Harris. It's a part of why Republicans actually have some grounds for calling Harris corrupt - Willie Brown's office when mayor of SF was notorious for being a pay-to-play situation, she worked there (and even dated him). > Or, as Supervisor Aaron Peskin described it, “mind-boggling.” He said > the “city family” that grew up under Mayor Willie Brown, continued > working under Mayor Gavin Newsom, flourished under Mayor Ed Lee and > stayed on under Breed “were all doing favors for one another and > living in their own little bubble.” > > “They all convinced each other that they were like a family, and > family can give gifts to their children,” Peskin said, noting those > same family members took the city’s required annual ethics training > like everybody else and must have known what they were doing was > wrong. > > “They just got too cozy over too much time, and they lost their way,” > Peskin said. “Now I have to look at everybody going, ‘Are you a > crook?’ It’s not the way I want to see the world.” from: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-F-City-Hall-scandal-Why-were-lavishly-paid-15777995.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-... It's trivial to find articles about the conflicts of interests between Brown and PG&E, I think even to this day he still represents their interests.
quaddoggy 4mo ago
Yes, because the city has proven to be so capable of solving the most basic civic issues it is now time the board of supervisors moves on to more advanced challenges.
hunterpayne 4mo ago
Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.
rahimnathwani 4mo ago
If you move to San Francisco and get electricity (from PG&E) then you will be automatically signed up to buy your electricity from the city, instead of from PG&E. You'll still pay PG&E for delivering the electricity. This results in: - higher cost (because SFPUC charges more for electricity generation than does PG&E) - your PG&E bill being confusing (I've interacted with smart people who couldn't figure out how much they were paying per kWh on average) In 2020, someone in my neighbourhood put in a request (via the official process) for traffic calming on a nearby road where cars drive dangerously fast, and often fail to stop at a marked pedestrian crossing. In December 2024, I had a near miss on that crosswalk and contacted the city. I have followed up with them every 3-4 weeks since then. The last I heard, they might have a public hearing about a potential road hump, in summer 2026. It's hard to believe the city government is capable of running an electric company. (I'm no fan of PG&E BTW. Here in SF I've paid more per kWh and had more power outages per unit time, than anywhere else I've lived.)
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
PG&E is a failure. It’s wild prioritizing its reform and replacement isn’t seen as the existential threat to California Democrats’ national ambitions that it rightfully is. Distribution shouldn’t be this expensive nor cause this many fires. If the cost of distributing power to remote, fire-prone communities isn’t politically feasible to push to them directly, the cities should be put on a separate distribution system to isolate the cost inflation. Silicon Valley buys PG&E power and handles distribution itself. It has some of the only reasonable power rates in California [1]. [1] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
- chrisss395 4mo ago
  Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive part vs. electricity generation given the latter is centralized and scaled? Perhaps this is a fallacy, but that is the thought that crossed my mind.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive I don’t know. What I do know is California spends more on distribution than anyone else in the country. That signals there is a better way to do this.
geor9e 4mo ago
SF's insane electricity prices are the sole reason I bought a Honda Civic Hybrid instead of a Tesla Model 3. They both cost 12 cents per mile here, so it was just the mild hassle of charging that tipped it out of favor. If I lived somewhere with sane electricity prices like Seattle I totally would have switched.
adxl 4mo ago
Great idea. I am sure MORE government intervention will make this so much better. If I lived in San Francisco still I’d be getting a generator.

78 points by cdrnsf 4mo ago

rising costs or inept management.

CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation. This is not a matter of whether PG&E is "privately" or "publicly" owned, because nearly all large utilities are already a weird mixture of both. Public ownership might have different incentives, but not sufficiently different to allow rates to be lowered substantially (unless it were a case of overt and massive subsidies, which would require state legislation and possibly rewriting the charters of CPUC and CAISO). The only way to lower rates is to add cheaper generation; and the way to make generation cheapest, and to bring it on line quickest, is to locate it near demand.

FrankWilhoit 4mo ago
Also, too: the primary reason to worry about inadequate generation is not cost, but reliability.
- bryanlarsen 4mo ago
  The problem in California is not generation nor is it reliability. CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far; under half the cost of Texas. It also hasn't had a blackout since 2020. The problem is retail side. AKA PG&E, its regulation, governance and forced liabilities. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-wholesale-electricity-prices-in-usa/ https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...
  - simoncion 4mo ago
    > CAISO has the lowest wholesale electricity costs in the nation, by far Much lower than that provided by the TVA? Ages ago, I used to live in an area served by the TVA, and its power prices were notably cheaper than anywhere else. I'd heard that this was because a huge chunk of its power was provided by fission plants, but never investigated.
    - stonogo 4mo ago
      Yes, CAISO wholesale rates are much lower, but California also has the highest retail cost in the continental US, at over 28c/kWh. If any customer in the TVA paid that much for power there'd be riots.
      - simoncion 4mo ago
        Where does one even find wholesale rates for the various regional providers? I -a complete ignoramous- spent like ten whole minutes poking around for wholesale rates. I could find documents about rates for several providers (including TVA) from many years back, complaints about rates increasing for many providers (but no actual mention of the new rates) and some governmental site that provided rates for a selected subset of all providers which included CAISO and one in Texas, but not TVA. You'd think that this would be something that'd be very easy to find on -say- the DoE's website, but apparently you'd be totally wrong.
        stonogo 4mo ago
        EIA doesn't carry TVA data because the TVA doesn't participate in open-market sales or report data to FERC. Wholesale power is auctioned in I(or R)SOs; TVA just sets rates directly during negotiations with power companies.
  - Xorakios 4mo ago
    CAISO claims that and cleantechnica might parrot it, but there are blackouts ALL THE TIME in southern california. In Palm Springs I was down with brownouts 103 times since I bought a sine wave UPS in December, and multi hour blackouts 4 times. My mother in Riverside, brother in Laguna Beach are similar. Last week it was 3 times here over the course of three days. It's lived experience for me. Reliability collapsed two years ago
Atotalnoob 4mo ago
PGE charged me more for the same electric usage than SVP. There is definitely greed on PGEs part.
- jeffbee 4mo ago
  Maybe, but SVP has two massive advantages: it delivers almost all of its energy to a handful of gigantic customers, not homes. Contrary to internet belief, having a customer base dominated by industry makes power cheap to deliver. Secondly, it gets a free pass from expensive things that the state makes PG&E pay for, especially rural service.
  - toast0 4mo ago
    There's very little rural in San Francisco city/county, so a hypothetical sf electric utility wouldn't have to spend a lot on that either.
    - jeffbee 4mo ago
      That wasn't my point. Subsidizing rural service is a state policy. If major cities increasingly divorce from PG&E, and the true cost of rural electrification starts to be charged upon actual rural people, that might not work politically.
pmalynin 4mo ago
As others have mentioned, Silicon Valley Power charges about half of PGE, and SF actually already has a power provider for businesses via Hetch Hetchy. It’s probably true that overall they might be a generation shortage but it doesn’t have to be true on a local scale. Plus PGE also needs to pay a lot of money for all the fires they started…which of course just goes back to the rate payers.
laurencerowe 4mo ago
My electricity bill is roughly 1/3rd 'CleanPowerSF Electric Generation Charges' vs 2/3rds 'Current PG&E Electric Delivery Charges'. The big problem is that PG&E covers most of rural California so its urban customers have to cover the high costs of compensation and prevention from delivering to fire prone rural areas.
mirashii 4mo ago
> CPUC exists. CAISO exists. The consumer experience is still bad. What this means is that there is not enough generation The existence of CPUC and CAISO says nothing of their efficacy. Jumping all the way past any question of their efficacy is egregious.
thebigman433 4mo ago
> What this means is that there is not enough generation We should generate more, but one of the major issues is how much wildfire prevention PG&E has to do, which then gets passed on to their customers. I am huge into supply side abundance, but that isnt the only driver here for costs.
plorkyeran 4mo ago
This is just very straightforwardly incorrect. Last month I paid Ava Energy $26 for electric energy generation, and PG&E $99 for delivery. Cutting the generation cost to $0 would only reduce my bill by 20%. Ava Energy says that 70% of the power I used came from solar located within my city, so it's already located quite close to demand.

infotainment 4mo ago

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-power-system https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

jeffbee 4mo ago
The other angle that people may not realize is that SF has voted in nine separate elections to not establish a municipal utility. The people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E, given numerous opportunities. SMUD has cheap power because 100 years ago the people of Sacramento invested a lot of money to establish that utility. What the vocal minority of SF public power people want is magical: cheaper rates without all that bothersome investment.
- m463 4mo ago
  > people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
  - Veliladon 4mo ago
    >Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. This. Lived in Santa Clara. SVP is the best utility in California.
    - hunterpayne 4mo ago
      100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.

jmyeet 4mo ago

In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote The Tragedy of the Commons [1]. This was used as the justification for mass privatization of many government bodies (including utilities) in the 1980s and 1990s. PG&E was always private but it suffers from the same issues as many other privatized utilities. Utilities are a perfect example of a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy, justified by "efficiency". Losses are socialized, profits are privatized, just like in any public-private "partnership". Utilities are worse because their profits are usually guaranteed. This paper was proven to be empirically incorrect by Elinor Ostrom for which she won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics. [1]: https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...

jawiggins 4mo ago

A few months ago I attended an event where a few members of the Board of Supervisors were attending. One person identified themselves as working in this field and pointed out that the current cost plus model incentivizes the company to do all kinds of upgrades that aren't really needed. The BoS member said something like, "Look, we need to just bite the bullet on this one, we're going to overpay, but we are already legally permitted to buy it and doing so will save us a ton of money in the long run because of stuff like that". I have no personal knowledge, but thought I'd share this experience I had with the ongoing debate.

Ancalagon 4mo ago

sdg&e next please

simpsond 4mo ago

PG&E is a profitable, publicly traded company... that issues a dividend. They tried to file for bankruptcy after the paradise fire, but they were too big to fail, so they issued new shares with gov protection. CA created a new insurance backstop for them as well. Corporations should not have government assisted (regulated) monopolies with socialized backstops. Yeah, CPUC is supposed to help, but decision makers probably have exposure. It is the same with Sempra and SDG&E and SCE. SMUD seems like a better organization, but what do I know.

lokar 4mo ago
The state should have instead pushed them into liquidation and bought the assets. Run the transmission grid, offer to let big cities and counties take the distribution, keep whatever they don’t want.

winocm 4mo ago

On the note of PG&E, my electric bill averages to about $750 despite only running an air conditioner, several device chargers, a router, some lights and a fridge... Thanks PG&E.

naturalmovement 4mo ago
No wonder people are fleeing California in droves. There is absolutely no justification for a bill that high other than malfeasance or gross mismanagement. That is straight-up theft of your money. For comparison, I have double that plus electric appliances and a home-lab with 6 rack servers that run 24/7 and my bill rarely tops $175 in the dead of summer. And I like the thermostat cold. If you live in a duplex or condo I would consider if your meter is miswired (with your neighbor's meter daisy-chained to yours) and you are being double-billed. It is more common than you think and often goes undiscovered for years.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > No wonder people are fleeing California in droves “Fleeing” is hyperbole. Population is roughly flat [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045224 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045224
  - naturalmovement 4mo ago
    Both can be true. There could be people fleeing that have lived there for some time, while being supplanted with newcomers. That would have a net zero effect.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      I’m not sure why that counts as a useful definition of fleeing within the context of economic conditions.
  - casey2 4mo ago
    Shrinking every year. Not good. ~40% people under 40 (or ~10% of the population) live with their parents. This is an indirect tax on parents since a majority of this class has no option to evict their kids. North Korea has a stable population, people flee all the time. The comparison is apt. California's 4-walled fences are much tighter around their residents.

throwaway2037 4mo ago

This part bothers me: > Dabit’s energy problems reached a new level in December when a PG&E substation fire caused a three-day power outage for the neighborhood. In addition to losing business, Dabit lost $10,000 to $15,000 worth of ingredients. (1) Why didn't the owner have insurance for food spoilage? Since it is rare event, it is probably very cheap. The old saying: "Buy insurance for (emergency) expenses that you cannot afford." This seems like a text book case. (2) Why didn't the owner immediately run to a hardware store to buy a portable (diesel?) generator to save as much food as possible? At least run one fridge and pack the most expensive ingredients into that one fridge. Overall: My sympathy is low for the owner's situation. If the city buys (or runs) its own (traditional) electricity utility, they will be assuming all of the wildfire risk. That is the primary cause of rises electricity rates by PG&E in the last ten years. However, if SF wants to create some power generation in the form of solar panels and batteries or wind, then sign power trade agreements with PG&E, I think that could be tenable/workable. If they spent 100M USD per year building truly reliable, green power generation, then 10 years later would look much better.

striking 4mo ago
1. Spoilage claims are not usually covered by insurance if the power interruption starts at the utility company instead of in your building. It's pretty rare that anyone knows to ask for that particular endorsement, and you're SoL without it. 2. You don't think everyone else was thinking the same thing? Also, you can just have sympathy for people even if it were their own mistake. It doesn't cost you anything.
lokar 4mo ago
The fires have been caused by the transmission grid, not the distribution grid. SF would be taking the distribution. There is not a ton of wildfire risk from the electric utility in SF, and it would be fairly easy to manage. Restaurants have very thin margins, they can’t afford that stuff.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  > Restaurants have very thin margins I here this a lot but many pizza pie shops make a killing because ingredients are so cheap.

pengaru 4mo ago

AIUI This relationship between PG&E and SF/CPUC has a corrupt history dating back to the 90s with Willie Brown and later even Kamala Harris. It's a part of why Republicans actually have some grounds for calling Harris corrupt - Willie Brown's office when mayor of SF was notorious for being a pay-to-play situation, she worked there (and even dated him). > Or, as Supervisor Aaron Peskin described it, “mind-boggling.” He said > the “city family” that grew up under Mayor Willie Brown, continued > working under Mayor Gavin Newsom, flourished under Mayor Ed Lee and > stayed on under Breed “were all doing favors for one another and > living in their own little bubble.” > > “They all convinced each other that they were like a family, and > family can give gifts to their children,” Peskin said, noting those > same family members took the city’s required annual ethics training > like everybody else and must have known what they were doing was > wrong. > > “They just got too cozy over too much time, and they lost their way,” > Peskin said. “Now I have to look at everybody going, ‘Are you a > crook?’ It’s not the way I want to see the world.” from: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-F-City-Hall-scandal-Why-were-lavishly-paid-15777995.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-... It's trivial to find articles about the conflicts of interests between Brown and PG&E, I think even to this day he still represents their interests.

quaddoggy 4mo ago

Yes, because the city has proven to be so capable of solving the most basic civic issues it is now time the board of supervisors moves on to more advanced challenges.

hunterpayne 4mo ago

Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.

rahimnathwani 4mo ago

If you move to San Francisco and get electricity (from PG&E) then you will be automatically signed up to buy your electricity from the city, instead of from PG&E. You'll still pay PG&E for delivering the electricity. This results in: - higher cost (because SFPUC charges more for electricity generation than does PG&E) - your PG&E bill being confusing (I've interacted with smart people who couldn't figure out how much they were paying per kWh on average) In 2020, someone in my neighbourhood put in a request (via the official process) for traffic calming on a nearby road where cars drive dangerously fast, and often fail to stop at a marked pedestrian crossing. In December 2024, I had a near miss on that crosswalk and contacted the city. I have followed up with them every 3-4 weeks since then. The last I heard, they might have a public hearing about a potential road hump, in summer 2026. It's hard to believe the city government is capable of running an electric company. (I'm no fan of PG&E BTW. Here in SF I've paid more per kWh and had more power outages per unit time, than anywhere else I've lived.)

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JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

PG&E is a failure. It’s wild prioritizing its reform and replacement isn’t seen as the existential threat to California Democrats’ national ambitions that it rightfully is. Distribution shouldn’t be this expensive nor cause this many fires. If the cost of distributing power to remote, fire-prone communities isn’t politically feasible to push to them directly, the cities should be put on a separate distribution system to isolate the cost inflation. Silicon Valley buys PG&E power and handles distribution itself. It has some of the only reasonable power rates in California [1]. [1] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

chrisss395 4mo ago
Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive part vs. electricity generation given the latter is centralized and scaled? Perhaps this is a fallacy, but that is the thought that crossed my mind.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Wouldn't distribution naturally be the more expensive I don’t know. What I do know is California spends more on distribution than anyone else in the country. That signals there is a better way to do this.

geor9e 4mo ago

SF's insane electricity prices are the sole reason I bought a Honda Civic Hybrid instead of a Tesla Model 3. They both cost 12 cents per mile here, so it was just the mild hassle of charging that tipped it out of favor. If I lived somewhere with sane electricity prices like Seattle I totally would have switched.

adxl 4mo ago

Great idea. I am sure MORE government intervention will make this so much better. If I lived in San Francisco still I’d be getting a generator.