PG&E gouging its customers?

[Sunking]

Been to both Prescott & Santa Fe. Have friends in Santa Fe. FWIW, I'd take Prescott , but opinions vary.

Toss up for me, depends on the time of year. Winter definitely Prescott, not much snow or cold to put up with, and since I do not ski Santa Fe does not have much to offer me in Winter. But the 3 other seasons Santa Fe has a lot more to do like GOLF everywhere with reasonable green fees, and the food is no comparison. Only down side to Santa Fe is frricken tourist, traffic, and hard left extreme liberals.

[jflorey2]

If I could abide the folks in NM, based on climate, sunshine and scenery, that'd be my choice after Death Valley, but SWMBO can't do low desert heat.

Worked at Los Alamos for a few months; it was some of the most beautiful country I've ever been in.

[J.P.M.]

Worked at Los Alamos for a few months; it was some of the most beautiful country I've ever been in.

Big +++1 on that. Prettiest area I've ever resided in.

[NorthRick]

Between June and December daylight only varies 1 hour.

Different world up here. We will gain another hour of daylight in just the next 2 weeks.

[Sunking]

Different world up here. We will gain another hour of daylight in just the next 2 weeks.

You must be way north where you have two season like us. You have winter, and the 4th of July.

[J.P.M.]

You must be way north where you have two season like us. You have winter, and the 4th of July.

And 3 maybe weeks or so of mud skiing around the Fourth of July like in Buffalo.

Maybe an interesting (or not) factoid: Most every place on the earth gets about the same amount of daylight (or darkness) over the course of a year, not taking twilight or first morning light, or elevations into account. At the equator, days have pretty close to 12 hr's of daylight every day. At the poles daylight lasts 6 months, as does night's darkness. Latitudes between those two extremes vary as f(latitude).accordingly.
Most every spot on the planet gets about 4,380 hours of daylight/yr.

That info and $5 will get you a Starbuck's.

[Sunking]

And 3 maybe weeks or so of mud skiing around the Fourth of July like in Buffalo.

Maybe an interesting (or not) factoid: Most every place on the earth gets about the same amount of daylight (or darkness) over the course of a year, not taking twilight or first morning light, or elevations into account. At the equator, days have pretty close to 12 hr's of daylight every day. At the poles daylight lasts 6 months, as does night's darkness. Latitudes between those two extremes vary as f(latitude).accordingly.
Most every spot on the planet gets about 4,380 hours of daylight/yr.

That info and $5 will get you a Starbuck's.

JPM you are well informed and correct. But this lard ass wants nothing to do with areas with large swings in daylight hours. Been to Canada and Minnesota to many times in winter and experienced snot freezing in my nose as I breathed and dark by 4:00 pm. .

[J.P.M.]

JPM you are well informed and correct. But this lard ass wants nothing to do with areas with large swings in daylight hours. Been to Canada and Minnesota to many times in winter and experienced snot freezing in my nose as I breathed and dark by 4:00 pm. .

And I bet not a whole lot of daylight before 0800 either. Ever go back in late June ?

On cold: Been there, done that. Delivered papers when a kid. Some mornings in winter, the cold shock on going outside at 0500 would induce tears that would quickly freeze.

On such mornings, it was so cold the cows would only gave condensed milk.

Later in life, one of the worst times I ever had was working the startup on a distillation tower I'd done the mechanical design for. Co. policy was design team went if startup hit snags, which policy I didn't disagree with. Wisconsin in mid Jan. figuring out (hopefully) small work arounds and still be safe, code and contract compliant, 50 ft. up a tower, it's -25 F. or so and windy, production == zero, the clock is running and the client expects things to work. An example of why engineers make the big bucks, right ?

[NorthRick]

You must be way north where you have two season like us. You have winter, and the 4th of July.

No, no, we have 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction season. The dramatic swings in daylight take a bit to get used to. It has the most affect on me when sunrise and sunset times are passing through my normal bedtime and wake up time. But once it's either always light or always dark it's all good again.

As for the cold, I think you are either built for it or not. 75F is a smoking hot day in July up here and many of us respond by whining about the heat. We can go several years without seeing 80F. And, hard as it is for some to believe, myself and a lot of my friends look forward to winter.

[littleharbor]

No, no, we have 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction season. The dramatic swings in daylight take a bit to get used to. It has the most affect on me when sunrise and sunset times are passing through my normal bedtime and wake up time. But once it's either always light or always dark it's all good again.

As for the cold, I think you are either built for it or not. 75F is a smoking hot day in July up here and many of us respond by whining about the heat. We can go several years without seeing 80F. And, hard as it is for some to believe, myself and a lot of my friends look forward to winter.

So.... No chance you are going to change your handle to BajaRick?

[Kuma]

The min. charge == ($120/yr.)/(365 days/yr.) = $10/month ~ = $0.329/day. That daily min. applies to all regular residential customers: tiered, T.O.U, solar, including NEM 1 And NEM 2, and non solar. The AB 327 mandate is $120/yr.

The pre AB 327 daily min. daily rate was $0.17/day, or about half as much, So, only about half the $120/yr. is new.

At this time, the "California Climate Credit" for most residential cust. amounts to about $60/yr., which, if you want to look at it that way, in effect, offsets the additional min. daily charge that AB 327 added.

For SDG & E residential customers special, somewhat lower rates for some disabled residential customers may apply.

There's nothing special about NEM 2 rates with respect to min. monthly charges. Most all residential tariff cust. get it the same.

For residential customers of the big 3 CA IOU POCOS, NEM 2 is not as sweet as NEM 1 due to some portions of the total rates being disallowed with respect to credit for net metering. At this time, at least for SDG & E and probably similarly for the SCE and PG & E customers, that makes NEM 1 a better deal than NEM 2 by about $0.0174/kWh for SDG & E.

BTW, that take away is down from last Aug. when it was $0.0196/kWh., putting NEM 2 a bit closer to NEM 1 in terms of making a PV system cost effective, NEM 1 being the older, sweeter, but unfortunately now closed deal.

Like I said three time now, per PG and E's billing for NEM 2 it is a ~.33 cent daily service charge. No matter how much you write it will not change PGE billing for NEM 2.

[sensij]

Like I said three time now, per PG and E's billing for NEM 2 it is a ~.33 cent daily service charge. No matter how much you write it will not change PGE billing for NEM 2.

I'm sorry, it doesn't matter how many times you write it, your understanding is incorrect. There is no service charge. There is a *minimum* charge, to be billed only if your other charges do not exceed it. That minimum is assessed to all customers, it has nothing to do with NEM.

[tyab]

Yep, PG&E minimum electric usage charge runs almost $0.33 / day ($0.32854 for those that count the fractional pennies).

In additional under PG&E NEM 2.0 there are non-bypassable charges - they bounce around a small amount month to month but seem to be running me about $25/month but they are in your NEM account so I'm estimating them at around $300/year. So at least for PG&E solar has a minimum charge of around $35/month.





On a related note we have some friends in Fresno that due to large Koi fish waterfall pond, pool (with another waterfall), AC, wine cellar, couple of 24/7 servers, computers, tons of phantom loads, etc got hit with the new 10% high usage surcharge - they are hating PG&E right now (and they have a undersized leased solar system - but that's another story...). But they are heavy users - know it - and choose to pay for the high comfort lifestyle. Their choice. The high usage surcharge started in March of 2017 - if you are over your tier by too much - you now get hit with a 10% surcharge.

But a more painful example is in our neighborhood. Single mom with 3 kids, home schooling, husband left her early last year and over the winter she got hit with $450/month PG&E bills from heating - she ran out of firewood and ran the electric forced air system all winter and never told any of us neighbors for three months (almost everyone up in the mountains here has wood burning stoves for heat). Once we found out, a bunch of us went over and got her wood supply taken care of - but on her fixed income those bills were devastating.

[SunEagle]

Yep, PG&E minimum electric usage charge runs almost $0.33 / day ($0.32854 for those that count the fractional pennies).

Well my customer service charge is $8.76 per month plus tax along with a charge of $7.48 per month for a whole house surge protector. So before I even use 1kWh I have a bill of over $16 per month.

But then again without solar pv system my bills have been only averaging under $170/mth total using under 1250 kWh on average so I really can't complain.