[johnea]

Corporate capture in California is WAY bigger than just the DMV.

Just do some scroogling on CPUC (California Public Utility Commision) and their treatment of net metering and other utility reforms.

California is a very rich state, and if you want to find corruption, just follow the money...

[hn_throwaway_99]

I'm curious with what you are referring to with respect to CPUC and their net metering decision. I googled it and saw that they recently went away from net metering.

Austin, TX is one of the first locales (if not the first) that used a "Value of Solar" metric instead of net metering. I may hate this from a personal perspective as someone who wants to put up solar panels on my house, but I also acknowledge that net metering fundamentally doesn't make sense and is unfair.

That is, a utility can only survive of it buys electricity at wholesale rates and sells it at retail rates. Net metering is essentially having the utility buy power at retail rates. There are tons of costs with maintaining the grid beyond just the cost of power, and it wouldn't make sense for a customer to get the benefit of that grid hookup and pay nothing if they're "net 0".

[m463]

PG&E is the culprit.

Take a look at each incremental change by the CPUC, and you'll see that they went too far the other way with "unfair" net metering. Concurrently, they have incrementally raised electricity rates and are charging some of the highest in the country. I routinely pay 50c/kwh for electricity, no matter what confusing "plan" I am on.

This has happened throughout my time in california. Even when I had a small apartment (years ago), the tiered electricity rates were horrendous because the baseline rate was based on someone with both gas and electricity, and the apartment did not have gas available.

[fragmede]

fwiw, there are two base rate plans. If you are on the electricity+gas plan, but don't have gas, you're overpaying. have pge put you on the electricity-only base rate plan.

[m463]

I don't remember there being a electricity-only base rate plan years (and years) ago. maybe I just had higher than normal usage?

[fragmede]

Point is, If PG&E's map is wrong, and they have you on a gas+electricity plan when you only have electricity, you have to call them up and tell them that you aren't.

[GlibMonkeyDeath]

"a utility can only survive of it buys electricity at wholesale rates and sells it at retail rates."

That is only true if the utility invests in the generation equipment. Individuals are paying 100% of the capital cost of solar generation equipment, which the utility uses locally at time of generation at basically no incremental cost. The utilities very much benefit from this at nearly retail rates (less the incremental maintenance costs of the local grid.) Yes, there should be some user fee for connecting to the grid, but it is not anywhere near the full difference between retail and wholesale energy costs...