anyone who pays a utility bill regularly in California has the right and opportunity to be heard. Some media stories are painting this as "inevitable" and this is not true. Make your voice heard on this issue otherwise you get the future that you deserve.
the previous channels of public input emphasized the California Public Utility Commission hearing process, but some have lost faith in that system.. [0]
the California State Assembly (your elected representative) is one piece of the public-comment loop.. [1] [2]
Yes, as linked in the article, the article describes changes *mandated* by CA AB 205[1] which was signed by the CA Gov on June 30, 2022. Search the bill text for "income".
"The bill would require the fixed charge to be established on an income-graduated basis, as provided, with no fewer than 3 income thresholds so that low-income ratepayers in each baseline territory would realize a lower average monthly bill without making any changes in usage."
This seems bad from a privacy point of view. Imagine, one person owns a home and rents a few of the rooms. That person has to gather private information from the renters. Then PG&E gets the private information. This just plainly seems prejudiced. Why should somebody with more income pay more? Should milk cost more because one has a higher income? Also, how exactly does PG&E verify the income. What if one does not know one's income? If one has zero income or next to zero income for 11 months, then one make some transactions for tax purposes, and one goes form poverty to a much higher tax bracket; does one pay 11 months at poverty level and one month at rich person level? Also, what exactly is defined as income? Is it W2 income, adjusted gross income. This seems wrong looking from every leve. There is no reason for PG&E to gather this. If the state wants to, it can subsidize poor people when they pay their taxes. Perhaps one can put the amount paid to PG&E into the tax form. This just seems like way more work than it should be.
I also want to know if I can install battery, solar and wind and just say F' this?
Crap like this makes me want to move to another state.
CA state elected lawmakers clearly wanted the utility companies to be the face of this policy which they created. As can be seen in this thread, a significant portion of those reading about this have a standing grudge against PG&E et. al.; it's not like their public image can get any lower, and by absorbing whatever public ire arises during the socialization and rollout of this policy, they provide some degree of cover/insulation between the public and the same CA state elected lawmakers who actually imposed the policy, and who just happen to regulate them.
CA voters asked for this kind of class warfare cast into the ever more intrusive laws that rule their everyday lives in ever increasing detail. The only problem is that unfortunately, even if you leave CA, wherever CA leads, most states eventually follow, because of both the "CA voter diaspora" phenomenon and CA shifting the Overton Window in directions that other state bureaucracies can only wait and dream of.
And I've not even commented on the practical "implementation details" you've raised related to the amount of personal information being disclosed to a debatably trustworthy/secure intermediary, and the definitional ambiguity between a "household" and the tax-filing entities that comprise it. I agree with all the points/objections you've raised and could probably think of quite a few more, but it's all moot: this policy is already the law of the land.
> but it's all moot: this policy is already the law of the land.
no, I believe that is not accurate (see sibling comments) What is true is that some changes will take place, but what they are is not yet done. contact your representatives; cite this Bill
Or convince the utility that you're a business and probably pay a lower rate than the high income tier.
This is already the case for kwh rates if your usage is significantly above average (e.g. large house with a lot of people) -- commercial rates are lower, because the high usage tier residential rates are jacked up to subsidize the low usage tier rates.
PG&E will presumably also leak and sell the info, even if it's illegal for them to do so, but AFAICT it wouldn't be illegal for them to do so.
What are your rates supposed to be if the people living at the residence aren't a constant set but ebb and flow? --- yet another law that assumes that everyone lives a particular way, has a single or a finite set of fixed residences that they own and live in, collects wages at a relatively fixed rate from an employer, etc.
As far as detaching from the grid. It's becoming more viable to do so, which I presume is part of the driver for this change: More and more people are only pulling lots of power when there is sustained bad weather. This creates a lot of transmission costs that aren't paid for by usage.
PG&E residential high peak rates aren't that noncompetitive with running a natural gas generator. So well overbuilt solar, plus batteries, plus natural gas backup for winter storms and you might be able to detach assuming you don't get an EV. You may want to add a few kW bitcoin mining capacity to shed your excess summer power.
Right now the economics of solar support spending money to overbuild solar rather than putting in more battery. An intuitive way to think about it is that a battery provides value when and only when its discharged. Capacity that is discharged every day costs little per use, capacity that is discharged only once a year during a winter storm is extremely expensive per use. Solar provides value only if you can use the energy, but the cost per unit power is much lower, and there are cheap ways to usefully sink excess power. (heating a hot water tank, regenerating a desiccant for cooling, or running a bitcoin miner).
Commercial availability of small flow batteries would likely help the economics of grid detaching a lot-- because the marginal cost of additional capacity can be extremely low.
There are other costs in being grid detached-- a lot less redundancy and spare capacity in your power. If parts fail your power is out. Suddenly the power factor of your devices starts to matter, etc.
the other comment here is misleading.. generally, regulations and program enactment are literally the "Implementation of a law that was passed" .. This law amends Section 739.1 of the California Public Utilities Code, but it does not replace existing rulings, guidelines and practices. The insider game occurs after the legislation is settled.. there is discretion in the implementing regulations, and that is reflected in the repeated use of "reasonable" in the bill text.
source- committee session time in Sacramento as part of graduate school
