[eigenstuff]

What makes you think it's only corporate power companies out to make a profit that are the bad guys? It's all of them, including the public utilities. I live in the Tennessee Valley, TVA is consistently the WORST utility in the South in terms of green energy initiatives, and they're a quasi-governmental agency with a complete monopoly over the region they serve. They don't make profits. Their green power program is a sham and in fact they killed our budding green energy manufacturing economy back around 2005 with absurd, arbitrary restrictions on who could get solar panels and hook them up to the grid because those were a threat to their coal buddies' bottom line. Freaking DUKE POWER, whose history includes the blood of who knows how many coal miners, blows us out of the water. (Not that TVA doesn't have blood on its hands, either, but that's another story.)

Anyway, to all the people who wonder why Appalachia won't do the obvious and just replace coal with green energy: oh, we tried, and the powers that be shut that shit down cuz they weren't gonna have none of that. Coal owns us and they aren't gonna let go without a fight.

[linuxftw]

It's almost like government-enforced monopolies are bad. You want the regulators to be in charge, until they do something you don't like, funny how that works. You want democracy until democracy votes in people that don't represent you, funny how that works.

If there wasn't a ubiquitous subsidized power grid already, at-home solar installs would be cheaper. Large utilities are only competitive because they can externalize their costs via state-enforced mechanisms (absolving responsibility for pollution, stealing property aka eminent domain).

[cobookman]

For all the crap I give the Cali government. Their high cost of gas made me buy an ev as it was cheaper.

Now with the PGE bankruptcy, rates will increase and I'll likely buy solar.

Capitalism works. people optimize for what's cheapest for themselves

[MR4D]

People always optimize, whether in capitalism or communism, or anything else. It's a survival function - even ants do it [1].

And what you're calling capitalism is more "fascism-lite" due to excessive regulation. (see [2] for "...severe economic and social regimentation, ...")

[1] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140526182749.h... [2] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

[tomjakubowski]

> I live in the Tennessee Valley, TVA is consistently the WORST utility in the South in terms of green energy initiatives

Really? Of TVA's energy sales in 2017, 7.09% were from "green sources", good for #4 of all power utilities, private or public, in the country.

https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/assets/pdfs/utility-green-powe...

[strommen]

I think you misunderstand the linked doc.

Oak Ridge Electric Company, which is a tiny municipal utility that sources electricity from TVA, has 7.09% participation in its green pricing program (which presumably bypasses TVA). This has nothing to do with TVA itself and how it generates power.