Long comment, as a former PG&E customer, the rate increases are more nuanced than the hard numbers show. California has a tiered rate system for IOUs, as you use more energy the rate you pay goes up. They also have time of use, so each of the three rate periods had its own set of teirs. So super peak tier 3 you're paying over fifty cents kwh. They massage the energy allowance in each teir every year. You would have to look into other states rate structures to see if there are similar games being played elsewhere.
Another thing to note is PG&E, SCE,& DTE along with having high rates also have among the highest customer outage minutes per year. Not only expensive, but unreliable too. If you want to watch where the Power outages are, go to poweroutage.us.
Ohio is doing things different, they have an open market for energy called Energy Choice Ohio. The utilities get paid for delivery and have a standard offer rate you can take or shop. I do shop, and I can tell you the utility delivery charges are always the larger part of the bill.
Our last month’s PG&E bill, here in Northern California, was over $500, and that is WITH a subsidy. Rates are going up AGAIN and we will be losing that subsidy due to a small income increase. Our home is around 1,900sq ft and all electric. We are not in a position to purchase an alternative heat source, such as a wood or pellet stove or kerosene heater. I wish we could. The external temperatures haven’t been extremely low, and we are very conservative with our heater usage, but the kids and I are home most of the time. I had the thermostat set at 60 at night/65 during the day, but had to turn it up to 65 night/67 day because we’ve been struggling with sickness cycling through our family for over a month.
PG&E’s electricity prices are insanely high compared to what we paid when we lived in the Sacramento area and had SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District). SMUD is a community owned not for profit company. SMUD is also pursuing “going green”, but they still manage superior service over PG&E.
The renewable price increases have always been predictable. We are adding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new power plants that we do not need and that will not replace the existing ones.
The current on peak residential rate in San Diego is 66 cents per kWh, 5 times the national average. Equivalent of $5 gas.
California is stuck at about 35% renewables and will be stuck until massive grid upgrades are complete and hundreds of thousands of MWH of storage is installed. Prices will continue to rise rapidly as the bills come due.
We, truly, need to put the "net" in net zero. 15 years ago I thought if people really believed in a grand future catastrophe they would immediately offer to offset all extra costs for nations building new coal plants so they could build nuclear instead
Now I see that they really do believe in a grand current catastrophe yet they still aren't doing it. Change net zero locally to very low carbon electricity by 2050 with an actual net component of paying India etc to have much cleaner grids by 2050 instead of their 2070 stated goal (yes that's their total energy system goal but I currently consider that to be the electrical grid goal in practical terms)
More benefit, less cost, and electrification might actually be affordable
Ordinary people do not understand overcapitalization due to rate of return regulation … they also don’t understand how they were scared into fake “renewables” with Orwellian language … and that $billions were made at the expense of the ignorance of rate payers
IF clean AND energy are important then nuclear is the only logical choice. None of these woke states being victimized by green sources are smart enough to figure that federal subsidies are all that floats these inefficient methods of power production. But raiding the pockets of the serfs is all that matters to the rulers and the utilities
In OK GRDA is building a single cycle gas plant that is 30% less efficient than combined cycle just so they can spin up and down due to renewable intermittent electricity. It’s all such A scam
In Europe I can see the same trend. I don't deny global warming is an issue, and I agree we have to deal with it sooner rather than later. But for most people home heating and eating are more urgent matters. I would like to help save the planet while I still have a roof over my head.
One principal reason for the enormous increase in costs in 1978-1982 was the passing and implementation of the PURPA Act of 1978. The Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978, “designed by genius’s to be run by idiots” (Herman Wouk Caine Mutiny) was meant to force the public utilities mostly located in the lower 48 contiguous states, to compete fairly with Non Utility Generators (NUG’s) and allow Qualifying Facilities (QF’s) to generate and sell electric power to the public utilities for distribution to the electrical grid at a rate that was equal to the new cost of the generation constructed and brought on line by the utilities. The costs that the utilities were using to justify the rate cases that would allow them to build new generation was documented and the QF’s benefited from the higher prices then newly available to them to build, operate and sell electricity to the utility for distribution to the grid and paying consumers. The comment that the QF’s and NUG’s had ruined the free markets (which were not free markets, as they were regulated by the various PSC’s and PUC’s state by state) with “out of the money” contracts belied the fact that the utilities monopolistic practices allowed for huge cost overruns and failure to bring generation online, at budget and on time. Over time the PURPA costs were absorbed and the cost curves here presented demonstrate that period of time when rates were higher. Don’t forget that prime interest rates were in the 15%-18% range at the time. The former nuclear naval officer, who was a peanut farmer and Governor of Georgia, and President of the USA, when not busy scheduling the White House tennis court times and fending off swimming attack rabbits at Camp David did manage to understand enough about the generation, transmission and distribution of electrons to foster PURPA and unlock the potential of unregulated markets. Sadly he was the first and last President, since FDR, to figure it all out and try to do something about it. Until there are some massive fails in cold weather in the northern states wherein thousands freeze to death in their dark homes or in the southern climes where thousands of people succumb to heat stroke in their darkened homes, we are stuck in this rather difficult situation in which massive funds are deployed to no good end and zero public benefit. This was a great post. Please keep them coming.
To make matters worse, these green initiatives don’t take into account the amount of dirty mining required to produce all these wind mills, batteries and solar panels. They all require copious amounts of diesel and other non-green inputs.
Understanding the laws of the United States would have prepare people better. Utilities fall under the category of a natural monopoly-which I don't have to go into has the Energy Bad Boys did a great job of explaining-and the United States has anti-monopoly laws which makes the products they sell illegal to make a profit-they have to sell it at cost to the costumer. As a result, utilities make they money by cost return of capital deployed plus a return, generally in the range of 10%. So the more capital a utility deploys the more it can ask for rate hikes-pass thru cost to rate payers, which is why utilities generally have no problem with spending for regulatory reasons. So you understand this, then all the spending that have been done from the utilities would be paid back because they have a legal claim of cost plus capital return. And given the regressive nature of excise taxes & fees-which I don't really care about-it should have been intuitive that the "poor" would have ended up getting stuck with the bill of climate change and the wealthy, businesses, & well educated would get all the tax benefits and short the bill.
Long comment, as a former PG&E customer, the rate increases are more nuanced than the hard numbers show. California has a tiered rate system for IOUs, as you use more energy the rate you pay goes up. They also have time of use, so each of the three rate periods had its own set of teirs. So super peak tier 3 you're paying over fifty cents kwh. They massage the energy allowance in each teir every year. You would have to look into other states rate structures to see if there are similar games being played elsewhere.
Another thing to note is PG&E, SCE,& DTE along with having high rates also have among the highest customer outage minutes per year. Not only expensive, but unreliable too. If you want to watch where the Power outages are, go to poweroutage.us.
Ohio is doing things different, they have an open market for energy called Energy Choice Ohio. The utilities get paid for delivery and have a standard offer rate you can take or shop. I do shop, and I can tell you the utility delivery charges are always the larger part of the bill.
Worth noting that natural gas prices are much cheaper than they were 15 years ago, so electricity prices could have gone down.
Our last month’s PG&E bill, here in Northern California, was over $500, and that is WITH a subsidy. Rates are going up AGAIN and we will be losing that subsidy due to a small income increase. Our home is around 1,900sq ft and all electric. We are not in a position to purchase an alternative heat source, such as a wood or pellet stove or kerosene heater. I wish we could. The external temperatures haven’t been extremely low, and we are very conservative with our heater usage, but the kids and I are home most of the time. I had the thermostat set at 60 at night/65 during the day, but had to turn it up to 65 night/67 day because we’ve been struggling with sickness cycling through our family for over a month.
PG&E’s electricity prices are insanely high compared to what we paid when we lived in the Sacramento area and had SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District). SMUD is a community owned not for profit company. SMUD is also pursuing “going green”, but they still manage superior service over PG&E.
LCOE is the green energy Santa Claus.
The renewable price increases have always been predictable. We are adding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new power plants that we do not need and that will not replace the existing ones.
The current on peak residential rate in San Diego is 66 cents per kWh, 5 times the national average. Equivalent of $5 gas.
California is stuck at about 35% renewables and will be stuck until massive grid upgrades are complete and hundreds of thousands of MWH of storage is installed. Prices will continue to rise rapidly as the bills come due.
Great article, as usual. I noticed that utilities in Texas are absent from this list. Interesting. Not sure why?
We, truly, need to put the "net" in net zero. 15 years ago I thought if people really believed in a grand future catastrophe they would immediately offer to offset all extra costs for nations building new coal plants so they could build nuclear instead
Now I see that they really do believe in a grand current catastrophe yet they still aren't doing it. Change net zero locally to very low carbon electricity by 2050 with an actual net component of paying India etc to have much cleaner grids by 2050 instead of their 2070 stated goal (yes that's their total energy system goal but I currently consider that to be the electrical grid goal in practical terms)
More benefit, less cost, and electrification might actually be affordable
Ordinary people do not understand overcapitalization due to rate of return regulation … they also don’t understand how they were scared into fake “renewables” with Orwellian language … and that $billions were made at the expense of the ignorance of rate payers
Great post, guys.
We're kinda curious to look at some of these for the details. For example, the GA Power filing, to see if it mentions coal ash landfills/impoundments.
Friends in the business are involved in some of the environmental work on a DTE coal plant decommissioning (something other than coal ash).
Unless i missed it, you don’t really analyze the underlying cost per energy output of each solution.
My understanding is that solar and wind are cheaper than coal.
IF clean AND energy are important then nuclear is the only logical choice. None of these woke states being victimized by green sources are smart enough to figure that federal subsidies are all that floats these inefficient methods of power production. But raiding the pockets of the serfs is all that matters to the rulers and the utilities
In OK GRDA is building a single cycle gas plant that is 30% less efficient than combined cycle just so they can spin up and down due to renewable intermittent electricity. It’s all such A scam
In Europe I can see the same trend. I don't deny global warming is an issue, and I agree we have to deal with it sooner rather than later. But for most people home heating and eating are more urgent matters. I would like to help save the planet while I still have a roof over my head.
One principal reason for the enormous increase in costs in 1978-1982 was the passing and implementation of the PURPA Act of 1978. The Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978, “designed by genius’s to be run by idiots” (Herman Wouk Caine Mutiny) was meant to force the public utilities mostly located in the lower 48 contiguous states, to compete fairly with Non Utility Generators (NUG’s) and allow Qualifying Facilities (QF’s) to generate and sell electric power to the public utilities for distribution to the electrical grid at a rate that was equal to the new cost of the generation constructed and brought on line by the utilities. The costs that the utilities were using to justify the rate cases that would allow them to build new generation was documented and the QF’s benefited from the higher prices then newly available to them to build, operate and sell electricity to the utility for distribution to the grid and paying consumers. The comment that the QF’s and NUG’s had ruined the free markets (which were not free markets, as they were regulated by the various PSC’s and PUC’s state by state) with “out of the money” contracts belied the fact that the utilities monopolistic practices allowed for huge cost overruns and failure to bring generation online, at budget and on time. Over time the PURPA costs were absorbed and the cost curves here presented demonstrate that period of time when rates were higher. Don’t forget that prime interest rates were in the 15%-18% range at the time. The former nuclear naval officer, who was a peanut farmer and Governor of Georgia, and President of the USA, when not busy scheduling the White House tennis court times and fending off swimming attack rabbits at Camp David did manage to understand enough about the generation, transmission and distribution of electrons to foster PURPA and unlock the potential of unregulated markets. Sadly he was the first and last President, since FDR, to figure it all out and try to do something about it. Until there are some massive fails in cold weather in the northern states wherein thousands freeze to death in their dark homes or in the southern climes where thousands of people succumb to heat stroke in their darkened homes, we are stuck in this rather difficult situation in which massive funds are deployed to no good end and zero public benefit. This was a great post. Please keep them coming.
To make matters worse, these green initiatives don’t take into account the amount of dirty mining required to produce all these wind mills, batteries and solar panels. They all require copious amounts of diesel and other non-green inputs.
Understanding the laws of the United States would have prepare people better. Utilities fall under the category of a natural monopoly-which I don't have to go into has the Energy Bad Boys did a great job of explaining-and the United States has anti-monopoly laws which makes the products they sell illegal to make a profit-they have to sell it at cost to the costumer. As a result, utilities make they money by cost return of capital deployed plus a return, generally in the range of 10%. So the more capital a utility deploys the more it can ask for rate hikes-pass thru cost to rate payers, which is why utilities generally have no problem with spending for regulatory reasons. So you understand this, then all the spending that have been done from the utilities would be paid back because they have a legal claim of cost plus capital return. And given the regressive nature of excise taxes & fees-which I don't really care about-it should have been intuitive that the "poor" would have ended up getting stuck with the bill of climate change and the wealthy, businesses, & well educated would get all the tax benefits and short the bill.