[downWidOutaFite]

PG&E is charging you to pay for wildfire lawsuits and to bury power lines so that people can keep building cities in forests.

[s1artibartfast]

They are also regulated to have a 10% profit margin, so that only way to increase revenue is to drive up costs year after year.

[psunavy03]

Which leads to opening up a whole nother can of worms regarding forest mismanagement and lack of controlled burns.

[photonbeam]

The state should pay for that out of general taxes rather that shifting the economic incentives of power use

[amluto]

IMO the state should have forced PG&E into liquidation, bought all the assets, and converted the whole mess to a public utility. It would surely take some time to learn how to operate PG&E’s disaster of a system, but it’s not as though PG&E can competently operate its own system right now.

[s1artibartfast]

I hated this idea at the time, but have come around to it. Im fairly libertarian, but understand that competition is difficult for the power distribution network.

As much as I think the state is inefficient, a cost plus regulated monopoly is even worse. Municipal power companies in CA run $0.10-0.20 per kwh, while PG&E is $0.40-0.50 cents, and going up.

[amluto]

It would be amusing to require PG&E to match the average rates of the municipal utilities plus 10%. And then liquidate them when their stock goes to zero as a result :)