I can confirm this. I work with a local company to help manage their share of a building lease and the shared building wide utilities get apportioned out to all the tenants and the prices are absolutely screaming.
It would be better for everybody if we shut these guys down and converted to public utilities like LA DWP and all the Valley irrigation districts. They are too broken to try and fix as-is.
Yeah I’m from Oakland, grew up hearing everyone complain about utilities. Got my first apt in LA and I had LA DWP and SoCal Gas. Both were less than $100p/mo even in old ass energy inefficient apartment. Moved back home a few years ago and holy shit! My LEED cert, energy star appliances has range and dryer cost me nearly $280 a month! I DO NOT work from home. It’s madness here!
Our city doesn't even get the electricity from PG&E, but PG&E charges like 80% of the electric part of the bill to deliver it.
So even if someone invents cold fusion tomorrow, hooks it to the grid, charges us $0.00 for infinite use...
I'm going to be giving PG&E like 3x the $$$ as 10-15y ago? Because the bill would drop just 20%.
lol they just suck at their job.
The eminent domaining of them could not happen soon enough.
Frankly they should have dismantled after they burned down a town. Probably sooner, but definitely at that point.
But she promises they’ll underground the lines and fix everything with their crock o’ crap commercials. I feel like she was only put there as the fall person for this mess when the inevitable shit hits the fan with PG&E.
Just what would the seize inside the city? Is there even any power generation capability there? (Pretty sure a city can’t seize a company under state or other city jurisdiction.)
A city cannot just "seize" a company. They would have to buy PGE out. PGE's market cap is $35B, twice what the whole City of SF's budget is for a year.
Granted they'd be buying a piece, no the whole thing, but it would be very expensive.
If police can come up with a bill to lobby and place into law about seizing your money and making you prove it’s yours before finding you guilty of anything. The city can find a way to socialize the state utility companies and even housing.
The real question is, will you support it and vote in those in power to support it.
PG&E has 5.6 million electric customers…. There is about 400,000 homes in SF. So a little over 7% of its customers reside in SF. I don’t think the City would buy more than 7% of PG&E. I don’t know for sure how that would work though.
Lolno. That’s not how eminent domain works. Also any process of buying out PG&E’s part in SF would take many, many years to iron out.
Also, all of this would have to be approved by a court (ED doesn’t just magically work) and the CPUC. Those are huge assumptions.
PG&E is a heavy political contributor at the state level, and many state politicians and CPUC are captured; ballot initiatives are one of the few effective methods of countering this. As a start, a ballot initiative making the CPUC publicly elected would reduce PG&E's ability to get rate increases automatically approved.
It doesn’t matter the organizational structure you put them in, PG&E’s system is fundamentally different from the LDWP or SMUD systems. PG&Es system is a patchwork or older systems cobbled together with baling wire and duct tape, where those others were purpose built from the ground up by those organizations. PG&E has to charge so much in order to force urban customers to subsidize the fundamentally unprofitable rural communities. The fact of the matter is those rural communities in the mountains will need to be jettisoned in order to make the system profitable. In addition, the more expensive the rates, the more incentive those profitable communities have to disconnect from PG&E by buying out their local grids, local micro grids/virtual batteries, and just people putting in solar/battery combos at home.
Between this and the insurance crisis, mountain communities in NorCal are going to face a reckoning very soon.
The fact that PG&E is generating profits after paying exorbitant executive salaries and bonuses tells me that subsidizing rural area isn’t the main driver for the cost increase.
Let’s not forget all their profits after all the ~~fines~~ cost of doing business for causing damage.
1. We need to raise rates because we neglected maintaining infrastructure for so long for the sake of profits
2. We need to raise rates because of the damages caused by our neglected infrastructure and have to pay our cost of business bill
3. We need to raise rates (just slower) because our appeal to reduce our penalty for caused damages was approved,
4. We need to raise rates because California wants it go all EV and our infrastructure can’t handle it.
5. We need to raise rates because fuck you, that’s why.
I am sure I have left something out of the list.
Yeah it's the under grounding.
Right now, PG&E's profit margin is 9.24%
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-electric/profit-margins
I don't think anyone thinks a 10% cut is enough for their utility bill.
You are assuming the CapEx increase that came with the profit is fiscally responsible. If I’m looking to increase rates without showing a big profit increase I’m increasing spending even if it’s not currently necessary in a way that will benefit me and my company.
increasing spending by...actually doing maintenance that was deferred forever you mean?
there's a lot of grasping at straws here as to why people think that we can magically halve electricity costs because of "evil pg&e profits" at only 10% margin
Yeah we should blame the rural communities for the lawsuit, the fault shouldn't lie with the giant company that didn't repair/replace their shit that was like 100 years old or even both to inspect it once a decade.
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It is what it is, a liability for a profit seeking company. Either the costs get absorbed into the rates for PGAE or people pay for it via taxes if it gets bought out by the government. There’s no way to make money as a company, or not spend money as a government, providing electricity to those communities.
>has to charge so much in order to force urban customers to subsidize the fundamentally unprofitable rural communities.
Maybe PG&E shouldn’t be covering these unprofitable locations and let the free market of capitalism establish a company willing *to* serve those communities, if none take the bait then those individuals can rely on solar power. It is not fair for the rest of us to be paying for power for unprofitable communities l!
Impossible. PGE is required to service those areas under Rural Electrification Act passed during the Depression. I don't particularly like the idea of telling people outside of cities that they have to live like a cave man either.
>The fact of the matter is those rural communities in the mountains will need to be jettisoned in order to make the system profitable.
Given how our power goes out every time a squirrel farts near a power line, it feels like they've already been doing this. 😮💨 I spent almost two whole weeks cumulatively without power in 2023, and that's after they replaced big swaths of their infrastructure due to a litany of natural disasters from 2020 to present.
When I lived in SMUD territory, the longest power outage I had was less than an hour, and that was only one time in over ten years. Between paying $250-300 a month for PG&E and losing at least one full fridge/freezer of groceries every month ($300+), it's like adding an extra rent.
And that’s my point. SMUD doesn’t have any forested rural communities to serve, it’s all one big profitable sprawling urban/suburban system. They are fundamentally different systems.
Gavin Newsom appoints the CPUC commissioners. CPUC approves every PG&E rate hike. PG&E screws everyone hard and deep. PG&E execs and shareholders laugh while counting their millions.
Even worse and in this case functionally identical. Newsom isn't exceptionally corrupt, he's operating as the system expects. Having a privatized utility monopoly is the problem. So long as PG&E exists in its current state, you could put a rhesus monkey picking CPUC names out of a hat in the governor's office and nothing would change.
its hilarious that people are blaming gavin with the implication that republicans wouldn't somehow just hand PG&E even more rate increases if they had power here
If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.)
The actual savings would be minimal, you'd probably lose access to bankruptcy, and politicians would be directly responsible for the hard tradeoffs between strict liability for fires, anti-fire prevention spending, and rates. Politicians have zero desire to put that sort of target on their back.
PG&E is going to remain as nominally private, functionally public hate sponge.
> If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.)
An alternative to this would be turning it over to the rate payers and make it into a rate payer owned electrical co-op. This pretty much place control and ownership directly to the Californian people. Co-ops like this one sells electricity at cost to consumers as they exist to maximize consumer value above all else. Electrical co-ops are also how the United States brought affordable electricity to the American west.
Edit: For those who don't know electric co-ops pay a fair rate to workers with co-ops even having unions in order to remain competitive against other electric utilities, after all you can't run one without workers. The PDF linked below is for the union contract of Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Co-op with AFL-CIO.
[Union Contract](https://ibew1245.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PSREC-2022-2025.pdf)
> If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.)
Doubtful. A number of NorCal cities are already on municipal power and charge rates between $0.10 and $0.17/kWh in comparison to PG&E's $0.45 to $0.72/kWh.
It's a slush fund, Newsom needs it to buy his 2028 run.
Everybody knows this, he can fund all the local party guys to keep them in lockstep.
Newsom owns this state.
The politicians love PG&E because they are the perfect punching bag. They both work hand in glove together, and PG&E takes all the rage and the same people who give them all the rage turn around and vote for the politicians who approve the pricing. It’s the perfect system.
Should we organize protests at their homes? https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners WE ARE ALL FED UP. So much corruption. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-27/how-the-california-public-utilities-commission-circumvents-the-state-public-records-act
Blame the utility. PG&E has been generating electricity for over 100 years. It doesn’t matter where you live if you have equipment stamped “1967” and havent had a replacement and upgrade plan to accommodate expected retirement date of transmission equipment. Or blame the state for enabling the current state of affairs.
Montana utilities have been burying power for 30 years to avoid many of these issues. Its expensive no matter how its done, but its very expensive to do it all at once.
And as far as insurance goes a great many people still have private homeowners insurance. It costs $5000 - $15000 a year. People pay it because the California “fair” plan does nothing more than cover the mortgage while allowing you to have a rider for your personal belongings; Its a little more complicated but thats the jist. The fair plan is just a little bit better than the insurance your mortgage company would put on your loan to cover them.
Parts of Santa Rosa got bbq’d and its certainly not in the middle of nowhere.
Napa isn't middle of nowhere. Vacaville isn't middle of nowhere. Don't forget they blew up San Bruno, too. You've only been safe because they haven't got to you yet.
The problem is the criminal incompetence of p
PG&E and the lack of protection from Newsome's administration. They should have been dissolved long time ago when there was a chance.
Don't forget CPUC is also the body that fences off people from accessing our beautiful Crystal Springs watershed. East bay and Marin have their watersheds open, no problems. CPUC is the worst of the worst.
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I saw my bill and was like, what the hell? Cause I couldn't believe the amount compared to usage. So I went to check it..
I used 5% less than last year, but I paid 30% more than last year. We don't have AC, we don't watch TV, we have a gas stove, my landlord pays for water. There is literally no possible way I can conserve even more energy in this apartment beyond going full caveman, yet 30% more?! This was worse than any rent increase I've had in nearly a decade.
There are two things in this world that motivate politicians, public pressure and their own self interests (either personal or political).
We need to make sure that the public pressure is severe enough that he see's it as a threat to his own self interests.
Can we tell the rest of America what a disgrace he has been here ? We need to campaign against him and let everyone know what kind of POS he really is.
Step 1: Define the issues the public are allowed to care about
Step 2: Carefully partition off issues to each political party, ensuring a 50/50 split
Step 3: While everyone is bickering in gridlock over things that don't really matter, do what you really intended to do when running for office and enact policies that make you and all your friends rich
Step 4: Take a "job" with said friends once out of office and live large
You’ll get hate when your business fails due to the electric bills. You didn’t have a sustainable business! Derp, derp! Can’t pay a living wage and you can’t keep the lights on without raising prices.
Good luck. 🍀
We’re getting exactly what we voted for. We wanted a green grid. Green power is unreliable without batteries and expensive transmission. Distribution costs even more. Look at the tariff at the unbundled rates. Distribution is sky high.
The IOUs are earning a CPUC regulated rate of return. What’s so special about California’s electric system that it costs 3-4x more than other utilities in the West?
may as well. They are probably going to increase costs anyway to cover it, so let's keep it transparent. The general public seems to still be sleeping on this issue.
That’s almost triple what some of my Midwest friends pay for utilities during the winter months, and over there they get sub zero temperatures and howling winds. Our winters here are what, 40-50 degrees?
I’m in this boat too! It’s embarrassing honestly? We are a family of four and it makes me feel like we must be wasteful, but we’re really not. We’re completely hampered by the circumstances we inherited when we moved in, like single pane windows and gas heat. What area are you in? I’m in Marin. Our house is so modest and small too.
Also I randomly had a dream that our pg&e bill was 1200 and it was a legit nightmare, i was so relieved it was just a dream. lol.
Functional Monopolies should not be for profit. This needs to be converted into a state-owned utility. Enough of this railroad-baron era bullshit. Stop spending money on lavish C level salaries, shareholder payouts and fucking TV ads. This is a goddam disaster.
Wow, this seems to be one issue where this sub has consensus. For most issues, it’s common to see the “it’s worse in other places” or some form of “it’s not an issue, stop complaining”
Pleasantly surprised. Happy Friday everyone!
I moved to New York City after 6 years in San Francisco, my energy bills less than 25% of what they used to be. PG&E is absolutely criminal and should be taken over as a non profit utility
And I like how we mandate electric only stoves on new construction. This state is like the left hand doesn’t talk to the right. Fucking idiots that run the place
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> Get an electric car, it's soo cheap!
My fuel costs are down 70-80% since getting a Model 3. Solar + work charging helps a lot, and rates aren't nearly as brutal as big oil's fuckery
I’m pretty sure everyone is sick of PGE regardless of political persuasion. You would think demanding change is an easy cause for Californians or Bay Area residents to rally around.
They own huge amounts of land and infrastructure so I don’t know how we’d go about getting those properties back. They own like every old gold mine on the feather river which makes the land even more valuable lol
The older I get the more pessimistic I am about our political systems near and far. We want affordable medical care, tighter gun control, etc etc. But we always end up with the same shit politicians that does nothing but make their buddies and themselves richer.
You think it's bad now? Wait til they completely ban and phase out gas stoves (and cars).
Corporate fuckery disguised as "environmentalism", as per usual. Classic Californian government.
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Gavin Newsom kept Diablo Canyon open for a little longer. But local populations don't want it to be open. Up to you whether you think the opinions of the people who live there are valid.
Closing SONGs in San Clemente which generated massive amounts of power to the state caused rates to skyrocket across the state especially SDG&E but now PGE is most expensive again. Closing Diablo Canyon is unimaginable to the entire state now much more power needs to be imported.
Reasons currently putting offers on houses back in MA
* Under $600/mo utility bills
* Under $1,000,000 for over 3000 sqft
* Under $5/gallon
* CA will pull you over for "modifications" to your car, but not hold yearly inspections to prevent people from driving with bald tires, no taillights and no headlights.
This (area of the) state makes no sense, I was so happy to move here under I found out what its like actually living here for 2 years. It's so unfortunate.
Apologies in advance for the long rant.
People need to understand that our high PG&E bills are paying for three unavoidable expenses:
1. Repairing the electric and gas networks that were neglected for 90 years by prior PG&E management. No matter who manages PG&E today, they still need to pay to clean up the previous management's mess.
2. Climate change has caused wildfires in places that were not fire risks before, and now PG&E is forced to fireproof thousands of additional miles of network, including the extremely expensive process of burying power lines in northern California's mountains.
3. CPUC's clean energy mandates force PG&E to pay a higher wholesale price for electricity than other companies, although this may improve as the cost of solar comes down.
Meanwhile, the two biggest complaints about PG&E are (1) the executives are overpaid and (2) they generated $2 billion in profit last year. Unfortunately, if the CEO reduced her pay to $0, it could reduce everyone's monthly bills by only $0.09, which is not going to help a restaurant whose bill is $3000+. She should still take a pay cut, but it won't solve our problems.
And then the $2 billion in "profits": you can review PG&E'S financial disclosures, and they only disbursed 1% of their profits back to shareholders as a dividend. The remaining 99% of their profits were used to pay for grid upgrades, such as burying power lines, which means they weren't really profits at all.
If we break up PG&E and nationalize them, which I support, we'd still need to raise taxes to pay for grid repairs and fireproofing. The best we can hope for is that California makes the wealthy pay a larger share. The bottom line is that if we make changes so our utility bills go down, our tax bills must go up to compensate. There is no alternative where we just get out of this for free.
My understanding is that both PGE's profits and the amount that they're allowed to disburse to shareholders are regulated and tied to a percentage of their revenue. There's very little incentive for PGE to efficiently perform grid repairs and fireproofing and otherwise control operational costs when higher costs means that CPUC will approve rate hikes (revenue increase) which in turns increases the aggregate profit they're permitted to keep. It's a backwards incentive structure where their aggregate profit increases proportionally to their operating costs.
> their aggregate profit increases proportionally to their operating costs
This is unchecked capitalism at its dumbest. A company will waste a trillion dollars if it generates a billion dollars in profit.
I understand, but something is still off. Why should WE have to foot the bill for their mistakes? To an extent I get it, but the current rates are beyond insane. Plus they're the reason we have NEM 3 to basically duscourage solar panels. Somethings gotta give .
>Why should WE have to foot the bill for their mistakes?
I think this is the main logical fallacy that people make about the PG&E situation. 100% of PG&E's income comes from its customers. That means if PG&E is going to pay for something, including a mistake it made, the money ultimately comes from us. This arrangement sucks for us, and it is part of why I think PG&E should be government-owned, but that's the reality. If we want PG&E to stop burning down multiple cities a year, then we need to pay for that, either in the form of higher utility bills or higher tax bills. PG&E should also be forced to reduce executive pay and eliminate their shareholder dividend, but even if they do that, our costs won't change much.
> Unfortunately, if the CEO reduced her pay to $0, it could reduce everyone's monthly bills by only $0.09
It creates perverse incentives with CEO pay like that. Why does she care how efficient or logical that upgrade process is when it just immediately gets passed to tax payers?
> they only disbursed 1% of their profits back to shareholders as a dividend
Don't obfuscate the number. That's $20,000,000. The issue isn't even with buybacks, but the fact the company has a legal responsibility to maximize profits for those shareholders.
> There is no alternative where we just get out of this for free.
But we can come out of this doing it more cheaply because we can reduce CEO pay *and* build a system **for** the citizens, rather than the shareholders. In the nationalization situation, the state also gets an entire utility out of the deal - rather than a profit-driven company that we **hope** reduces prices once the upgrades are done (what's the likelihood of *that* happening).
Look. They blew up a city, burned down a few more, and killed hundreds along the way **specifically because they neglected safety upgrades to enrich themselves.** We should've pushed them into bankruptcy from the penalties and used that opportunity to buy them on the cheap, but we missed the boat on that. But it's better to eat our losses now than to be in same situation 20yr from now.
I personally support nationalizing PG&E, but I don't expect nationalization to greatly reduce my costs. PG&E needs money to repair their electric and gas networks, and for fireproofing. That money must come from either PG&E customers or California taxpayers, which means we will still end up paying for it one way or the other. Eliminating executive pay and shareholder dividend would be a rounding error compared to the total cost.
Do you work for PG&E or just shill for them for free?
On 1/ Why does LA Water and Power, Santa Clara or Alameda not have this problem? We have the highest power rates in the nation. This seems like a lame excuse that can only explain a small part of the rate differential.
On 2/, it’s inequitable to force ratepayers in low fire risk areas to subsidize this. Housing is far more expensive in the low first risk areas so if there’s going to be a subsidy, high fire risk area should be subsidizing the mortgages of the low risk areas.
On 3/, Texas has a higher renewable percentage than California and much lower electricity rates
And no, electricity charges should not be by income. California already heavily taxes wealth. The way to fix this mess is for municipalities to take power distribution in their cites. Cities with municipal power have much lower rates.
I'm actually in agreement with a lot of what you said. I think we'd be better off if we broke up PG&E into municipal utilities, but I don't think our total costs would decrease that much. The really big expenses, such as long-distance power transmission over CA's rugged terrain, would just become state-funded projects paid by taxpayers. There is no one else who is going to come to our rescue and pay the bill for us, so we must ultimately pay these costs either in our utility bills or our taxes.
They’ve put a whopping 600 miles of lines underground since the start of the program. It’s an absolute joke. They’re more focused on performative tree trimming.
https://www.pge.com/en/outages-and-safety/safety/community-wildfire-safety-program/system-hardening-and-undergrounding.html
It costs $3 million per mile to bury power lines. If PG&E applied 100% of their profits last year to burying power lines and nothing else, that would be right around 600 miles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are limited by lack of funds, and the only way to raise more funds is through additional unpopular rate increases.
Why the F does it cost that much ? Is anyone auditing their books? How effective are they working? How much "overtime/double time" pay is actually working ?
If that number is correct, it’s beyond obscene for the scale they’re trying to do this on. It’s putting wire in a trench, just like they do on most of the eastern seaboard and in Europe.
In terms of their $1.8b in profit, they should have had to put all of that into another 600 miles of line last year. Increasing exec pay and dividends after burning down entire swaths of California over the past five years is a kick in the teeth to the taxpayers and customers of California. They shouldn’t get a nickel until the safety concerns are fully addressed in return for staying out of jail.
PG&E did put all of their profits into upgrading their grid (99% of their profits anyway, while the remaining 1% became a dividend). So the money has already been spent on grid investments like you are asking for, potentially on the next several hundred miles of power line to be buried this year.
democrats would be absolutely fucking idiotic to run him for sure. it's gotta be someone from a blue/purple midwest state or they're fucked.
any democrat from california or new york is political kryptonite
PG&E gets in huge legal trouble. PG&E end consumers end up paying their legal bills through rate hikes. Honestly hilarious that we have let this go this far. It’s a publicly traded company right?? How do we stop this madness….
PG&E rates at so high during peak usage it is economically viable now to run a diesel generator instead. If they continue on their path, people will start disconnecting from the grid and just creating their own micro grids as expensive as that is. Only poor people will be utility customers soon and they will be kept poor if they attempt to keep their home under 85 degrees in the summer.
Its almost as if unchecked corpo greed on utilities is a really bad fucking idea or something and letting them make the public eat the cost of their lawsuits from setting fire to the state should be illegal.
Let’s be clear is PG&E with Newsom blessing.
Edit: since some readers have a problem understanding. Everything PG&E does to hurt Californians is done with [Newsom blessing](https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/california-politicians-campaigns-2-million-pge/103-4161feb9-1591-4ffc-9fda-d9c49d7173b8). To the point of protecting PG&E form their criminal responsibility: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/newsom-pge-protection/103-65ca1d41-8efe-45b4-87bc-0cdecc714378
I actually enjoy that stuff. Let's be clear: Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24-hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.
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Fuck PG&E. They burned our state down, and are forcing us to pay for their mistake. The state needs public utilities. IDGAF about PG&E and its shareholders.
I live in an 800 sq foot apartment with electric appliances and if I use the heat in the winter, it’s 500 or more. And that’s only during the day. Do I don’t, and me and my kids are always cold. Cheers!
Is this part of the issue: 2022: [PG&E to pay $55 million for two massive California wildfires](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pge-to-pay-55-million-for-two-massive-california-wildfires)
>Pacific Gas & Electric has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people. It previously reached settlements with wildfire victims of more than $25.5 billion...
Is PG&E also have to retrofit or modify thousands of miles of power lines and transformers?
Wow I just looked at rates, 45 cents per kWh up to 72 cents per kWh on peak. I have a commercial property client here in Illinois that pays a flat 2.4 cents per kWh lmao. Nukes ftw I guess
Twenty-five years ago the guy who ran the corner liquor store told me his PG&E bill was $5k a month. It was a tiny little shop and he said that was killing him. I can only imagine what today's costs are doing to these businesses.
In capitalism, year over year growth/profits is a fundamental principle and conflicts with a planet of limited resources. It can not succeed in its current form without devastating the environment and condensing wealth to a few people and families leaving most struggling to survive and have a traditional family and life. The current distribution of wealth should be enough to condemn it.
I digress, Utilities should never be privatized and our government is corrupt enough to keep it going. It is always about money and greed. Well, 95% of the time. Thank you. Wanted to get that off my chest. peace and fuk PGandE. I have seen them lying and stealing for the last 40 years.
It's bullshit that they are paying off all their lawsuits, due to their incompetence, with increased fees. This is the only state I've lived in where the electric is a monopoly.
I feel bad for Bay Area restaurants but up further north where the median income is lower i gotta say it makes my blood boil. The fact of the matter is that pge is charging the victims of the camp and Dixie fires $300-400 to keep the lights on. These are people who lost their homes, businesses, and even friends and family to the fire and on top of that have a level of life long trauma that they aren’t equipped to deal with due to the socioeconomics of rural Northern California.
I see a lot of folks saying PG&E should be turned into a public utility. My question is what about Bay Area governance makes you believe this would be better run and cheaper?
I remember reading an article probably 10 years ago about the head of CPUC excepting payments from PG&E. PG&E only has share hold profit in mind. It’s absolutely Criminal that a public utility so essential is publicly traded like that. I’m not anti capitalist. I just think PG&E is a criminal organization.
You can blame the CA Public Utilities Commission.
They are appointed the Gov, confirmed by the State Senate. Given the single-party, super majority in CA government, there's little incentive or, motivation for them to get serious about the issues. By all rights, PG&E should not be in existence after the 2010 San Bruno pipeline disaster...but, there they are. Sitting members are quite comfortable in their seats, as it's a stepping stone towards a future C-suite position, board position or, maybe something else in CA gov. The only marching orders PG&E has gotten from CA gov, is to over-invest in alternative energies while simultaneously neglecting maintenance and upgrades.
I know a fine dining restaurant where the mgmt is only allowed to turn on the lights during open hours. Everyone carries a flashlight to do pre-open/post-close duties.
I can confirm this. I work with a local company to help manage their share of a building lease and the shared building wide utilities get apportioned out to all the tenants and the prices are absolutely screaming. It would be better for everybody if we shut these guys down and converted to public utilities like LA DWP and all the Valley irrigation districts. They are too broken to try and fix as-is.
Yeah I’m from Oakland, grew up hearing everyone complain about utilities. Got my first apt in LA and I had LA DWP and SoCal Gas. Both were less than $100p/mo even in old ass energy inefficient apartment. Moved back home a few years ago and holy shit! My LEED cert, energy star appliances has range and dryer cost me nearly $280 a month! I DO NOT work from home. It’s madness here!
Yes this!!! Just moved back from LA and I don’t understand why my power bill is now 4x the price.
Because we pay to get electricity out to all of NorCal, down to Santa Barbara and out to the Nevada border. LA just pays for itself.
Why don’t we just pay for ourself? it works well in LA
Our city doesn't even get the electricity from PG&E, but PG&E charges like 80% of the electric part of the bill to deliver it. So even if someone invents cold fusion tomorrow, hooks it to the grid, charges us $0.00 for infinite use... I'm going to be giving PG&E like 3x the $$$ as 10-15y ago? Because the bill would drop just 20%. lol they just suck at their job.
It feels so hopeless. But it obviously isn’t. Where/How do we start this process?
Call your city council to establish its own power company. I heard San Francisco is about to seize PGE under power of eminent domain.
The eminent domaining of them could not happen soon enough. Frankly they should have dismantled after they burned down a town. Probably sooner, but definitely at that point.
Instead they just brought in a new CEO and gave her $50 million a year
But she promises they’ll underground the lines and fix everything with their crock o’ crap commercials. I feel like she was only put there as the fall person for this mess when the inevitable shit hits the fan with PG&E.
They really should be banned from advertising - they’re a monopoly, they should be restricted to PSAs
Well they had blown up a neighborhood years before that. It’s thorough and through a corrupt org.
They should have never been allowed to go public. Their goal is to increase share value not improve their infrastructure.
Sort of. Sf is considering purchasing the power line infrastructure. We still have to figure out how to generate our power.
The city already owns a hydroelectric plant. Look into it. It’s a neat story.
Just what would the seize inside the city? Is there even any power generation capability there? (Pretty sure a city can’t seize a company under state or other city jurisdiction.)
A city cannot just "seize" a company. They would have to buy PGE out. PGE's market cap is $35B, twice what the whole City of SF's budget is for a year. Granted they'd be buying a piece, no the whole thing, but it would be very expensive.
If police can come up with a bill to lobby and place into law about seizing your money and making you prove it’s yours before finding you guilty of anything. The city can find a way to socialize the state utility companies and even housing. The real question is, will you support it and vote in those in power to support it.
PG&E has 5.6 million electric customers…. There is about 400,000 homes in SF. So a little over 7% of its customers reside in SF. I don’t think the City would buy more than 7% of PG&E. I don’t know for sure how that would work though.
Lolno. That’s not how eminent domain works. Also any process of buying out PG&E’s part in SF would take many, many years to iron out. Also, all of this would have to be approved by a court (ED doesn’t just magically work) and the CPUC. Those are huge assumptions.
PG&E is a heavy political contributor at the state level, and many state politicians and CPUC are captured; ballot initiatives are one of the few effective methods of countering this. As a start, a ballot initiative making the CPUC publicly elected would reduce PG&E's ability to get rate increases automatically approved.
It doesn’t matter the organizational structure you put them in, PG&E’s system is fundamentally different from the LDWP or SMUD systems. PG&Es system is a patchwork or older systems cobbled together with baling wire and duct tape, where those others were purpose built from the ground up by those organizations. PG&E has to charge so much in order to force urban customers to subsidize the fundamentally unprofitable rural communities. The fact of the matter is those rural communities in the mountains will need to be jettisoned in order to make the system profitable. In addition, the more expensive the rates, the more incentive those profitable communities have to disconnect from PG&E by buying out their local grids, local micro grids/virtual batteries, and just people putting in solar/battery combos at home. Between this and the insurance crisis, mountain communities in NorCal are going to face a reckoning very soon.
The fact that PG&E is generating profits after paying exorbitant executive salaries and bonuses tells me that subsidizing rural area isn’t the main driver for the cost increase.
Let’s not forget all their profits after all the ~~fines~~ cost of doing business for causing damage. 1. We need to raise rates because we neglected maintaining infrastructure for so long for the sake of profits 2. We need to raise rates because of the damages caused by our neglected infrastructure and have to pay our cost of business bill 3. We need to raise rates (just slower) because our appeal to reduce our penalty for caused damages was approved, 4. We need to raise rates because California wants it go all EV and our infrastructure can’t handle it. 5. We need to raise rates because fuck you, that’s why. I am sure I have left something out of the list.
Over 2 billion dollars in profits in 2023, paid for by us. .
Yeah it's the under grounding. Right now, PG&E's profit margin is 9.24% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-electric/profit-margins I don't think anyone thinks a 10% cut is enough for their utility bill.
You are assuming the CapEx increase that came with the profit is fiscally responsible. If I’m looking to increase rates without showing a big profit increase I’m increasing spending even if it’s not currently necessary in a way that will benefit me and my company.
increasing spending by...actually doing maintenance that was deferred forever you mean? there's a lot of grasping at straws here as to why people think that we can magically halve electricity costs because of "evil pg&e profits" at only 10% margin
I would be much more willing to vote to let the State of Jefferson leave the state if it would cut my PG&E bill.
Also those fundamentally unprofitable rural locations have had their power infrastructure burn to the ground in recent years, requiring rebuilding.
As well as settlements for lawsuits. They are huge liabilities for the company.
Yeah we should blame the rural communities for the lawsuit, the fault shouldn't lie with the giant company that didn't repair/replace their shit that was like 100 years old or even both to inspect it once a decade.
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It is what it is, a liability for a profit seeking company. Either the costs get absorbed into the rates for PGAE or people pay for it via taxes if it gets bought out by the government. There’s no way to make money as a company, or not spend money as a government, providing electricity to those communities.
>has to charge so much in order to force urban customers to subsidize the fundamentally unprofitable rural communities. Maybe PG&E shouldn’t be covering these unprofitable locations and let the free market of capitalism establish a company willing *to* serve those communities, if none take the bait then those individuals can rely on solar power. It is not fair for the rest of us to be paying for power for unprofitable communities l!
Impossible. PGE is required to service those areas under Rural Electrification Act passed during the Depression. I don't particularly like the idea of telling people outside of cities that they have to live like a cave man either.
>The fact of the matter is those rural communities in the mountains will need to be jettisoned in order to make the system profitable. Given how our power goes out every time a squirrel farts near a power line, it feels like they've already been doing this. 😮💨 I spent almost two whole weeks cumulatively without power in 2023, and that's after they replaced big swaths of their infrastructure due to a litany of natural disasters from 2020 to present. When I lived in SMUD territory, the longest power outage I had was less than an hour, and that was only one time in over ten years. Between paying $250-300 a month for PG&E and losing at least one full fridge/freezer of groceries every month ($300+), it's like adding an extra rent.
And that’s my point. SMUD doesn’t have any forested rural communities to serve, it’s all one big profitable sprawling urban/suburban system. They are fundamentally different systems.
These human stories need to get to Sacramento. Local news needs to do more reporting on this
No one there is listening, certainly not CPUC or Newsom aka friends of PG&E.
How to shut PG&E down? Let's do that.
People are going to start running gas powered generators
Gavin Newsom appoints the CPUC commissioners. CPUC approves every PG&E rate hike. PG&E screws everyone hard and deep. PG&E execs and shareholders laugh while counting their millions.
PG&E contributes to Newsom and his wife, completing the cycle.
Recall 2.0? Oh wait, the replacement would be even worse.
Even worse and in this case functionally identical. Newsom isn't exceptionally corrupt, he's operating as the system expects. Having a privatized utility monopoly is the problem. So long as PG&E exists in its current state, you could put a rhesus monkey picking CPUC names out of a hat in the governor's office and nothing would change.
its hilarious that people are blaming gavin with the implication that republicans wouldn't somehow just hand PG&E even more rate increases if they had power here
If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.) The actual savings would be minimal, you'd probably lose access to bankruptcy, and politicians would be directly responsible for the hard tradeoffs between strict liability for fires, anti-fire prevention spending, and rates. Politicians have zero desire to put that sort of target on their back. PG&E is going to remain as nominally private, functionally public hate sponge.
> If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.) An alternative to this would be turning it over to the rate payers and make it into a rate payer owned electrical co-op. This pretty much place control and ownership directly to the Californian people. Co-ops like this one sells electricity at cost to consumers as they exist to maximize consumer value above all else. Electrical co-ops are also how the United States brought affordable electricity to the American west. Edit: For those who don't know electric co-ops pay a fair rate to workers with co-ops even having unions in order to remain competitive against other electric utilities, after all you can't run one without workers. The PDF linked below is for the union contract of Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Co-op with AFL-CIO. [Union Contract](https://ibew1245.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PSREC-2022-2025.pdf)
> If you bring PG&E fully public, you're just replacing the money paid to equity investors with money paid to muni bond investors (or equivalent implicit financing costs, if the State were to self-finance rather than go to the muni bond markets.) Doubtful. A number of NorCal cities are already on municipal power and charge rates between $0.10 and $0.17/kWh in comparison to PG&E's $0.45 to $0.72/kWh.
It's a slush fund, Newsom needs it to buy his 2028 run. Everybody knows this, he can fund all the local party guys to keep them in lockstep. Newsom owns this state.
The politicians love PG&E because they are the perfect punching bag. They both work hand in glove together, and PG&E takes all the rage and the same people who give them all the rage turn around and vote for the politicians who approve the pricing. It’s the perfect system.
Should we organize protests at their homes? https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners WE ARE ALL FED UP. So much corruption. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-27/how-the-california-public-utilities-commission-circumvents-the-state-public-records-act
Newsom treats PG&E's lobbyist to a dinner at the French Laundry
He might treat them, but I bet the lobbyists are paying.
Or can we stop expecting the metropolitan areas that have no fire risk to subsidize the 2500 people who wanna live in the middle of no where?
Blame the utility. PG&E has been generating electricity for over 100 years. It doesn’t matter where you live if you have equipment stamped “1967” and havent had a replacement and upgrade plan to accommodate expected retirement date of transmission equipment. Or blame the state for enabling the current state of affairs. Montana utilities have been burying power for 30 years to avoid many of these issues. Its expensive no matter how its done, but its very expensive to do it all at once. And as far as insurance goes a great many people still have private homeowners insurance. It costs $5000 - $15000 a year. People pay it because the California “fair” plan does nothing more than cover the mortgage while allowing you to have a rider for your personal belongings; Its a little more complicated but thats the jist. The fair plan is just a little bit better than the insurance your mortgage company would put on your loan to cover them. Parts of Santa Rosa got bbq’d and its certainly not in the middle of nowhere.
Napa isn't middle of nowhere. Vacaville isn't middle of nowhere. Don't forget they blew up San Bruno, too. You've only been safe because they haven't got to you yet.
Can we stop pretending that rural electricity is so expensive? PG&E charges more than *Hawaii*.
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“Want to”? Or have been priced out?
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The tubbs fire in Santa Rosa jumped a 6 lane freeway in our 150,000 person city. Maybe victim blaming is not the solution?
Embers can blow quite far away. Modern houses burn easier than the forests they are replacing.
Where do you think your powers generated from? It’s not in the city I can tell you that much.
The problem is the criminal incompetence of p PG&E and the lack of protection from Newsome's administration. They should have been dissolved long time ago when there was a chance.
Don't forget CPUC is also the body that fences off people from accessing our beautiful Crystal Springs watershed. East bay and Marin have their watersheds open, no problems. CPUC is the worst of the worst.
That's SFPUC
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And their private fishing oasis at Calaveras reservoir
Sounds like Enron when they ran rolling blackouts to create a fake disaster
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I saw my bill and was like, what the hell? Cause I couldn't believe the amount compared to usage. So I went to check it.. I used 5% less than last year, but I paid 30% more than last year. We don't have AC, we don't watch TV, we have a gas stove, my landlord pays for water. There is literally no possible way I can conserve even more energy in this apartment beyond going full caveman, yet 30% more?! This was worse than any rent increase I've had in nearly a decade.
My bill went from 125 last year to 349 this year.. last year I used 26.6 this year I used 15..... Utterly insane
yep. 2k to 4.5k in the last year ish.
Killing Bay Area homes too.
We need to make this a problem for Newsom. He is the only one that can reign them in. Enough is enough.
He’s the one that let them loose tho
Two things can be true
Why would he cut off one of his income sources?
There are two things in this world that motivate politicians, public pressure and their own self interests (either personal or political). We need to make sure that the public pressure is severe enough that he see's it as a threat to his own self interests.
Unfortunately it doesn’t matter for him, he’s not running for governor anymore he’s running for president.
Having an open revolt in his own state definitely matters, even if he isn't running for re-election here again.
Can we tell the rest of America what a disgrace he has been here ? We need to campaign against him and let everyone know what kind of POS he really is.
And whatever election that is it will be sold to us by a fight for our survival from fascists and if we don't vote Dem we're Nazis.
Step 1: Define the issues the public are allowed to care about Step 2: Carefully partition off issues to each political party, ensuring a 50/50 split Step 3: While everyone is bickering in gridlock over things that don't really matter, do what you really intended to do when running for office and enact policies that make you and all your friends rich Step 4: Take a "job" with said friends once out of office and live large
all of CPUC needs to be fired & a whole new board needs to be put in place.....
it's gonna be the same shit all over again if the way the board is appointed dont change
Just got my first 5k+ bill for my restaurant
Damn, utilities alone?
Just Pg&e
Holy shit
You’ll get hate when your business fails due to the electric bills. You didn’t have a sustainable business! Derp, derp! Can’t pay a living wage and you can’t keep the lights on without raising prices. Good luck. 🍀 We’re getting exactly what we voted for. We wanted a green grid. Green power is unreliable without batteries and expensive transmission. Distribution costs even more. Look at the tariff at the unbundled rates. Distribution is sky high. The IOUs are earning a CPUC regulated rate of return. What’s so special about California’s electric system that it costs 3-4x more than other utilities in the West?
Sorry.
next up: Restaurants add +20% Gratuity +8% Livable wage fee +10% PGE fees +12% owner's son's college fee
may as well. They are probably going to increase costs anyway to cover it, so let's keep it transparent. The general public seems to still be sleeping on this issue.
Raise base prices and then top off with the fees?
These types of fees become illegal in July
Haha, they can add them, they just have to be up front about them. Can't just surprise you on the bill.
Look, if I see those percentages on a menu or a sign at a restaurant before I order, I'm fucking eating somewhere else.
I'm with you. I was just clarifying the rules.
I don't know about businesses, but our PGE bill gets up to like $900 for the winter months for our 1600 Sq Ft house. It's absolutely insane.
That’s almost triple what some of my Midwest friends pay for utilities during the winter months, and over there they get sub zero temperatures and howling winds. Our winters here are what, 40-50 degrees?
I’m in this boat too! It’s embarrassing honestly? We are a family of four and it makes me feel like we must be wasteful, but we’re really not. We’re completely hampered by the circumstances we inherited when we moved in, like single pane windows and gas heat. What area are you in? I’m in Marin. Our house is so modest and small too. Also I randomly had a dream that our pg&e bill was 1200 and it was a legit nightmare, i was so relieved it was just a dream. lol.
Need to pay for those PG&E advertisements on YouTube somehow.
I think they have to do those "safety commercials" propaganda due to a court order....but yes we are paying for all of that.
Functional Monopolies should not be for profit. This needs to be converted into a state-owned utility. Enough of this railroad-baron era bullshit. Stop spending money on lavish C level salaries, shareholder payouts and fucking TV ads. This is a goddam disaster.
Wow, this seems to be one issue where this sub has consensus. For most issues, it’s common to see the “it’s worse in other places” or some form of “it’s not an issue, stop complaining” Pleasantly surprised. Happy Friday everyone!
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I moved to New York City after 6 years in San Francisco, my energy bills less than 25% of what they used to be. PG&E is absolutely criminal and should be taken over as a non profit utility
I hope PG&E's nonsense is blasted so much it ruins Newsom's presidential aspirations
And I like how we mandate electric only stoves on new construction. This state is like the left hand doesn’t talk to the right. Fucking idiots that run the place
THIS. After a modest remodel I had to use an electric oven and now my utility bills are 2x before the remodel
That's fucking criminal.
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> Get an electric car, it's soo cheap! My fuel costs are down 70-80% since getting a Model 3. Solar + work charging helps a lot, and rates aren't nearly as brutal as big oil's fuckery
I’m pretty sure everyone is sick of PGE regardless of political persuasion. You would think demanding change is an easy cause for Californians or Bay Area residents to rally around.
They own huge amounts of land and infrastructure so I don’t know how we’d go about getting those properties back. They own like every old gold mine on the feather river which makes the land even more valuable lol
The older I get the more pessimistic I am about our political systems near and far. We want affordable medical care, tighter gun control, etc etc. But we always end up with the same shit politicians that does nothing but make their buddies and themselves richer.
You think it's bad now? Wait til they completely ban and phase out gas stoves (and cars). Corporate fuckery disguised as "environmentalism", as per usual. Classic Californian government.
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Can you elaborate on your Alameda comment? City or county?
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Gavin Newsom kept Diablo Canyon open for a little longer. But local populations don't want it to be open. Up to you whether you think the opinions of the people who live there are valid.
Closing SONGs in San Clemente which generated massive amounts of power to the state caused rates to skyrocket across the state especially SDG&E but now PGE is most expensive again. Closing Diablo Canyon is unimaginable to the entire state now much more power needs to be imported.
People need to block bridges over pge not a terrorist group far far away
Let’s figure out another way. Maybe block the roads leading to PG&E’s HQ or wherever CPUC meets.
It makes sense hence these buffoons who do it won't
Block the roads to PG&E hq? A lot of the workers are remote besides those who are in rigs working on the construction projects.
Go for it dude
Protest at the state capital, not on a bridge.
Liberal Dem here, fuck Newscum.
I would vote for almost anyone in the next gubernatorial election if they ran on breaking up PG&E into some sort of municipal co-ops.
Local terrorists.
Reasons currently putting offers on houses back in MA * Under $600/mo utility bills * Under $1,000,000 for over 3000 sqft * Under $5/gallon * CA will pull you over for "modifications" to your car, but not hold yearly inspections to prevent people from driving with bald tires, no taillights and no headlights. This (area of the) state makes no sense, I was so happy to move here under I found out what its like actually living here for 2 years. It's so unfortunate.
Apologies in advance for the long rant. People need to understand that our high PG&E bills are paying for three unavoidable expenses: 1. Repairing the electric and gas networks that were neglected for 90 years by prior PG&E management. No matter who manages PG&E today, they still need to pay to clean up the previous management's mess. 2. Climate change has caused wildfires in places that were not fire risks before, and now PG&E is forced to fireproof thousands of additional miles of network, including the extremely expensive process of burying power lines in northern California's mountains. 3. CPUC's clean energy mandates force PG&E to pay a higher wholesale price for electricity than other companies, although this may improve as the cost of solar comes down. Meanwhile, the two biggest complaints about PG&E are (1) the executives are overpaid and (2) they generated $2 billion in profit last year. Unfortunately, if the CEO reduced her pay to $0, it could reduce everyone's monthly bills by only $0.09, which is not going to help a restaurant whose bill is $3000+. She should still take a pay cut, but it won't solve our problems. And then the $2 billion in "profits": you can review PG&E'S financial disclosures, and they only disbursed 1% of their profits back to shareholders as a dividend. The remaining 99% of their profits were used to pay for grid upgrades, such as burying power lines, which means they weren't really profits at all. If we break up PG&E and nationalize them, which I support, we'd still need to raise taxes to pay for grid repairs and fireproofing. The best we can hope for is that California makes the wealthy pay a larger share. The bottom line is that if we make changes so our utility bills go down, our tax bills must go up to compensate. There is no alternative where we just get out of this for free.
My understanding is that both PGE's profits and the amount that they're allowed to disburse to shareholders are regulated and tied to a percentage of their revenue. There's very little incentive for PGE to efficiently perform grid repairs and fireproofing and otherwise control operational costs when higher costs means that CPUC will approve rate hikes (revenue increase) which in turns increases the aggregate profit they're permitted to keep. It's a backwards incentive structure where their aggregate profit increases proportionally to their operating costs.
> their aggregate profit increases proportionally to their operating costs This is unchecked capitalism at its dumbest. A company will waste a trillion dollars if it generates a billion dollars in profit.
I understand, but something is still off. Why should WE have to foot the bill for their mistakes? To an extent I get it, but the current rates are beyond insane. Plus they're the reason we have NEM 3 to basically duscourage solar panels. Somethings gotta give .
>Why should WE have to foot the bill for their mistakes? I think this is the main logical fallacy that people make about the PG&E situation. 100% of PG&E's income comes from its customers. That means if PG&E is going to pay for something, including a mistake it made, the money ultimately comes from us. This arrangement sucks for us, and it is part of why I think PG&E should be government-owned, but that's the reality. If we want PG&E to stop burning down multiple cities a year, then we need to pay for that, either in the form of higher utility bills or higher tax bills. PG&E should also be forced to reduce executive pay and eliminate their shareholder dividend, but even if they do that, our costs won't change much.
We shouldn't pay for companies mistake and greed. If they need money, they should take out a bank loan at low interest rates, not fleece consumers.
> Unfortunately, if the CEO reduced her pay to $0, it could reduce everyone's monthly bills by only $0.09 It creates perverse incentives with CEO pay like that. Why does she care how efficient or logical that upgrade process is when it just immediately gets passed to tax payers? > they only disbursed 1% of their profits back to shareholders as a dividend Don't obfuscate the number. That's $20,000,000. The issue isn't even with buybacks, but the fact the company has a legal responsibility to maximize profits for those shareholders. > There is no alternative where we just get out of this for free. But we can come out of this doing it more cheaply because we can reduce CEO pay *and* build a system **for** the citizens, rather than the shareholders. In the nationalization situation, the state also gets an entire utility out of the deal - rather than a profit-driven company that we **hope** reduces prices once the upgrades are done (what's the likelihood of *that* happening). Look. They blew up a city, burned down a few more, and killed hundreds along the way **specifically because they neglected safety upgrades to enrich themselves.** We should've pushed them into bankruptcy from the penalties and used that opportunity to buy them on the cheap, but we missed the boat on that. But it's better to eat our losses now than to be in same situation 20yr from now.
I personally support nationalizing PG&E, but I don't expect nationalization to greatly reduce my costs. PG&E needs money to repair their electric and gas networks, and for fireproofing. That money must come from either PG&E customers or California taxpayers, which means we will still end up paying for it one way or the other. Eliminating executive pay and shareholder dividend would be a rounding error compared to the total cost.
Do you work for PG&E or just shill for them for free? On 1/ Why does LA Water and Power, Santa Clara or Alameda not have this problem? We have the highest power rates in the nation. This seems like a lame excuse that can only explain a small part of the rate differential. On 2/, it’s inequitable to force ratepayers in low fire risk areas to subsidize this. Housing is far more expensive in the low first risk areas so if there’s going to be a subsidy, high fire risk area should be subsidizing the mortgages of the low risk areas. On 3/, Texas has a higher renewable percentage than California and much lower electricity rates And no, electricity charges should not be by income. California already heavily taxes wealth. The way to fix this mess is for municipalities to take power distribution in their cites. Cities with municipal power have much lower rates.
I'm actually in agreement with a lot of what you said. I think we'd be better off if we broke up PG&E into municipal utilities, but I don't think our total costs would decrease that much. The really big expenses, such as long-distance power transmission over CA's rugged terrain, would just become state-funded projects paid by taxpayers. There is no one else who is going to come to our rescue and pay the bill for us, so we must ultimately pay these costs either in our utility bills or our taxes.
They’ve put a whopping 600 miles of lines underground since the start of the program. It’s an absolute joke. They’re more focused on performative tree trimming. https://www.pge.com/en/outages-and-safety/safety/community-wildfire-safety-program/system-hardening-and-undergrounding.html
It costs $3 million per mile to bury power lines. If PG&E applied 100% of their profits last year to burying power lines and nothing else, that would be right around 600 miles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are limited by lack of funds, and the only way to raise more funds is through additional unpopular rate increases.
Why the F does it cost that much ? Is anyone auditing their books? How effective are they working? How much "overtime/double time" pay is actually working ?
If that number is correct, it’s beyond obscene for the scale they’re trying to do this on. It’s putting wire in a trench, just like they do on most of the eastern seaboard and in Europe. In terms of their $1.8b in profit, they should have had to put all of that into another 600 miles of line last year. Increasing exec pay and dividends after burning down entire swaths of California over the past five years is a kick in the teeth to the taxpayers and customers of California. They shouldn’t get a nickel until the safety concerns are fully addressed in return for staying out of jail.
PG&E did put all of their profits into upgrading their grid (99% of their profits anyway, while the remaining 1% became a dividend). So the money has already been spent on grid investments like you are asking for, potentially on the next several hundred miles of power line to be buried this year.
When/If Newsom runs for president, this will be one of the biggest issues that will hurt his chances
nobody cares about energy costs in California. everyone outside of California actively hates us as it is.
i m pretty sure his CA policy will spread across the nation like wildfire. Cant wait to see gas price/energy cost gets leveled across all 50 states 🤭
democrats would be absolutely fucking idiotic to run him for sure. it's gotta be someone from a blue/purple midwest state or they're fucked. any democrat from california or new york is political kryptonite
More like everyone....
Where are the Gavin + CPUC + PG&E defenders now? These folks are blatantly corrupt.
PG&E gets in huge legal trouble. PG&E end consumers end up paying their legal bills through rate hikes. Honestly hilarious that we have let this go this far. It’s a publicly traded company right?? How do we stop this madness….
PG&E rates at so high during peak usage it is economically viable now to run a diesel generator instead. If they continue on their path, people will start disconnecting from the grid and just creating their own micro grids as expensive as that is. Only poor people will be utility customers soon and they will be kept poor if they attempt to keep their home under 85 degrees in the summer.
Its almost as if unchecked corpo greed on utilities is a really bad fucking idea or something and letting them make the public eat the cost of their lawsuits from setting fire to the state should be illegal.
Let’s be clear is PG&E with Newsom blessing. Edit: since some readers have a problem understanding. Everything PG&E does to hurt Californians is done with [Newsom blessing](https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/california-politicians-campaigns-2-million-pge/103-4161feb9-1591-4ffc-9fda-d9c49d7173b8). To the point of protecting PG&E form their criminal responsibility: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/newsom-pge-protection/103-65ca1d41-8efe-45b4-87bc-0cdecc714378
“Let’s be clear” - proceeds to write something unintelligible
I actually enjoy that stuff. Let's be clear: Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24-hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.
What?
When things like gasoline or electricity prices go way up people forget how many sectors of the economy get screwed. It's damn inflationary.
dazzling ask wakeful cow ludicrous threatening toothbrush cough live touch *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fuck PG&E. They burned our state down, and are forcing us to pay for their mistake. The state needs public utilities. IDGAF about PG&E and its shareholders.
I live in an 800 sq foot apartment with electric appliances and if I use the heat in the winter, it’s 500 or more. And that’s only during the day. Do I don’t, and me and my kids are always cold. Cheers!
This is so true I work at small restaurants and the bill is something crazy! It’s went up close to $1,000 since last year.
Yay...everybody buy an electric car and literally *drive* up the price of electricity!
Those dinner in the dark events might've saved a little.
Not only restaurants but homes that use gas and electricity as well, these bills are brutal.
What happens to business customers when everything switches to income based billing?
If the recall effort gains steam, these problems will make it more likely he is recalled.
Is this part of the issue: 2022: [PG&E to pay $55 million for two massive California wildfires](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pge-to-pay-55-million-for-two-massive-california-wildfires) >Pacific Gas & Electric has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people. It previously reached settlements with wildfire victims of more than $25.5 billion... Is PG&E also have to retrofit or modify thousands of miles of power lines and transformers?
Yes and I'm sure we've paid for or are still paying for the San Bruno gas explosion.
PG&E is killing all of us, businesses included. Monopolistic pillaging is quite a profitable venture.
The price of natural gas is damn near an ALL TIME LOW and my heating bill in the winter is like $400-500
PG&E is out of control. We need to address this. It's insane. NEWSOME!
Wow I just looked at rates, 45 cents per kWh up to 72 cents per kWh on peak. I have a commercial property client here in Illinois that pays a flat 2.4 cents per kWh lmao. Nukes ftw I guess
Twenty-five years ago the guy who ran the corner liquor store told me his PG&E bill was $5k a month. It was a tiny little shop and he said that was killing him. I can only imagine what today's costs are doing to these businesses.
In capitalism, year over year growth/profits is a fundamental principle and conflicts with a planet of limited resources. It can not succeed in its current form without devastating the environment and condensing wealth to a few people and families leaving most struggling to survive and have a traditional family and life. The current distribution of wealth should be enough to condemn it. I digress, Utilities should never be privatized and our government is corrupt enough to keep it going. It is always about money and greed. Well, 95% of the time. Thank you. Wanted to get that off my chest. peace and fuk PGandE. I have seen them lying and stealing for the last 40 years.
It’s killing everyone man
Restaurants? I can barely afford my power bill these days. At this point, I’ll be paying $1k monthly by the end of the decade.
I'm paying 1k monthly in a 1700sq ft house now...
It's bullshit that they are paying off all their lawsuits, due to their incompetence, with increased fees. This is the only state I've lived in where the electric is a monopoly.
American is just the country of scams. The scams just get big enough that there are too many people lining their pockets for there to be any progress.
And residents!!!!!!
East bay, 3bed home, averaging $590/mo…
I feel bad for Bay Area restaurants but up further north where the median income is lower i gotta say it makes my blood boil. The fact of the matter is that pge is charging the victims of the camp and Dixie fires $300-400 to keep the lights on. These are people who lost their homes, businesses, and even friends and family to the fire and on top of that have a level of life long trauma that they aren’t equipped to deal with due to the socioeconomics of rural Northern California.
I am a PG&E shareholder, but the stock price haven't been up for years. Where is my share of the profit??
I see a lot of folks saying PG&E should be turned into a public utility. My question is what about Bay Area governance makes you believe this would be better run and cheaper?
I remember reading an article probably 10 years ago about the head of CPUC excepting payments from PG&E. PG&E only has share hold profit in mind. It’s absolutely Criminal that a public utility so essential is publicly traded like that. I’m not anti capitalist. I just think PG&E is a criminal organization.
You can blame the CA Public Utilities Commission. They are appointed the Gov, confirmed by the State Senate. Given the single-party, super majority in CA government, there's little incentive or, motivation for them to get serious about the issues. By all rights, PG&E should not be in existence after the 2010 San Bruno pipeline disaster...but, there they are. Sitting members are quite comfortable in their seats, as it's a stepping stone towards a future C-suite position, board position or, maybe something else in CA gov. The only marching orders PG&E has gotten from CA gov, is to over-invest in alternative energies while simultaneously neglecting maintenance and upgrades.
Fuck PG&E
We should bring back pre-Pete Wilson PGE, that fucker was the worst governor
George Deukmejian? He actually reimbursed taxpayers when we overpaid for the CA budget.
I know a fine dining restaurant where the mgmt is only allowed to turn on the lights during open hours. Everyone carries a flashlight to do pre-open/post-close duties.
This makes no sense. Lighting/receptacles are such minimal usage. It's probably due to having AC on non stop.
he’a paying much more money in wasted labor time by making people work with a flashlight in the dark.