How much do you all pay for Power? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by mesamunefire@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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My PGE bill is a little over 50c per kilowatt hour. Its starting to become like a second mortgage or car payment for some. Wondering what other people are paying for their power.

https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Well, California has some of the highest electricity rates in the US. IIRC the exceptions are Hawaii and Alaska.

That being said, last I looked, it was more like $0.21/kWh. Hadn't realized that it had gotten that high.

EDIT: Here's a per-state list for average residential prices for 2024:

https://www.usatoday.com/money/homefront/deregulated-energy/electricity-rates-by-state/

That has California at an average of 29.49 cents/kWh, which is quite high as the US goes, but not nearly as high as yours. It does say that prices went up 11% since last year.

California has had a major problem where billing just happened per kWh, so that people who were using solar (or some other form of local generation) were basically dumping the cost of maintaining the grid connections onto people who weren't doing local generation, since the solar users were purchasing few kWhs. This was very politically controversial, especially since the latter group was generally poorer. IIRC, California is just or will be passing policy changes that will limit that, so the kWh cost from the grid should drop, though people getting most of their power from solar will have a higher overall bill than they had; there's a separate bill item for the grid connection and for the electricity provided over it.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article288420595.html

Not sure when that enters or entered into force. However, it should depress per-kWh charges, though there'll be a fixed charge for the grid connection.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Sounds like PG&E also got the go-ahead to do a bunch of underground lines and rate hikes to get customers to pay for them. I understand that buried lines are more-common in Europe -- you don't have to see power lines, but it costs more to stick 'em underground and maintain 'em, and the US typically keeps 'em aboveground, unless it's a major urban area.

https://www.kqed.org/news/12004361/yet-another-pge-rate-hike-could-be-coming-if-california-regulators-give-the-ok

Electricity costs will get even higher for many Bay Area residents after California regulators approved the latest in a series of PG&E rate hikes at a voting meeting on Thursday.

The utility seeks to recover $943.9 million in costs related to wildfire mitigation and damages from power outages during severe storms in recent years. It asked state regulators to approve a temporary rate increase of $5.16 per month for its average customer.

It’s the third such “interim rate relief” request from PG&E within a year, according to California Public Utility Commission documents. In July 2023, regulators allowed PG&E to raise rates temporarily by an average of $10.30 and then again by around $5 a month the following March.

These smaller, temporary rate hikes are in addition to regulators’ approval of a much larger general rate adjustment proposal last year to help PG&E cover the cost of burying thousands of miles of lines underground in the most wildfire-prone parts of the state, as well as other investments.

Ratepayers saw an average increase of about $30 a month on their bills beginning this year because of that.

I don't really care about not having lines visible, though I don't think that people not where underground lines are should be paying for those, that it should be people in an area that want them underground to cover the cost.

It would be interesting, I think, to have a journalist go to some states with wildly-different costs and do a breakdown of why electricity in different states costs different amounts. I think that it's pretty legitimate for someone living in a place with high utility costs to ask for and and get an explicit breakdown showing why their utility provider can't be competitive with one in another state.

[-] Subdivide6857@midwest.social 1 points 2 months ago

Maintain the underground power lines?

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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024

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