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Two golden rules of government.........
1. If you want more of something.....subsidize it.
2. If you want less of something.....tax it.
1. If you want more of something.....subsidize it.
2. If you want less of something.....tax it.
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I have a friend who left ca and went to Texas... his property taxes are insane.
I live in Ca and pay .14 during winter and slightly lest than .19 per KwH for electricity. We all live where we want, and no way in hell I would live anywhere other than Ca. No humidity, no hurricanes. To each their own.Comment
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Sure it does. A transmission system that carries 1kwh a day is far cheaper than a transmission system that carries 1000Mwh a day. One of the benefits of DER is the reduction in transmission required, since there is local generation to compensate for any shortfall due to a limited distribution system.
Of course for that to work you need a smarter grid, one that can intelligently respond to both demand and generation. And that's $$ the utilities don't want to spend. The easier solution is to just raise rates and build more transmission. This isn't some nefarious plot on their part; it's just what they are used to and what they have been doing for the past 100 years.
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Well, but right now the POCO is a quasi-governmental agency. Any power company has a guaranteed monopoly and the right to use public rights-of-way to get their power to people. To compensate for that, these public utilities are under the control of public utilities commissions.
The problem is that these PUC's are often appointed through a fairly opaque process, such that they don't really represent anyone other than the people supervising them in the government. Thus the very wide spectrum of policies and rate structures we see across the US.
As I mentioned before I see two ways to fix this.
One, just make the system fully competitive. The government maintains the transmission network same way as they maintain the roads now. Any POCO can sell power to it. Any customer can draw power from it. Power is paid for via an automated auction system that is always competitive; power at 5pm on a Phoenix day in September might be $5.00 a kilowatt-hour, but at midnight the same day might be four cents. Those price signals will drive generators to make more peak generation, and will drive customers to use DR, energy storage, EVs and solar to reduce prices.
Two, go the other direction. The few 100% government run utilities in the US are in general more stable and lower cost than private versions. The "common knowledge" is that anything government does is inefficient, but there are plenty of counterexamples to that (the air traffic control system, the US interstate system, NASA from 1960-1990 etc.)Comment
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As we approach the deadline for the CPUC to vote on how much money people will be charged based upon their income approaches, legislators are getting nervous. Most people have their head in the sand and have no clue this is coming, but slowly more people are hearing about it. As a result, legislation has now been proposed to scrap this income based flat fee that will surely result in lawsuits. It is nuts to see the same legislators that voted for the crazy law that calls for an income based fee to now reverse and want to scrap it.Comment
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As I've written in this thread and on other topics, don't get your knickers in a bunch just yet. Between the proposals and the final legislation there is a lot of political sausage making that goes on. The finished product with respect to residential energy policy is usually somewhere between what the POCO's want and what the residential solar users want. Often no one gets all they want but most everyone gets what they can barely tolerate.
It'll be a while (SWAG, 6 mon./1 year maybe ?) until it all flushes out.
Meanwhile, no one knows what the final form will look like.
Get some popcorn and watch the show.Comment
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In every article I read about tis, they keep saying how wealthy home owners are being subsidized by low income. The costs are going up to pay to mitigate wild fires. Well how come it is never said that those people that chose to live in mountain areas that are prone to wild fires are being supported/subsidized by us that live nowhere near that fire zone? The arguments are actually accurate. There is no doubt that the fewer people that are paying into the electric company leaves those that do paying more. And???? I never hear anyone talking about the 34k check we wrote when we installed our panels. That was 34k we spent to protect ourselves against spiraling electric costs. So why should I now be punished for protecting myself.
Also, why is it we never hear about the fact that low income are already being subsidized by the rest of us as they qualify for the CARES program.Comment
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LOL.....the regulators requiring POCOs to buy power at retail and then resell at the same price. POCOs are unwilling partners in a no win game.....who would of thought it would have a nasty outcome with unintended consequences.Comment
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Socialism meets Capitalism at the power meter hanging on the side of your house......who would have thunk it.......Comment
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You're being sarcastic with the question, right ?
I've been knocking around alternate energy since the mid '70's and have always held the opinion that net metering as it is/was practiced was always a house of cards that could not come to a good end.
I rode the buy price = sell price gravy train like every other net metering customer in CA but I was never of the opinion that it was either fair or sustainable.
IMO, as long as I believe in capitalism, I'd have been a fool to think otherwise. Actually, I'm surprised the party has lasted this long.
Net metering as it was practiced for a long time is and was an unsustainable way to give a new technology a leg up, at least as it was done in CA and many other places.
FWIW, I honestly believe net metering (and solar tax credits for that matter) hurt solar energy much like training wheels on a bicycle make the new rider dependent on artificial systems and less than independent for longer than the few bruises that come with no training wheels.
No subsidies would have forced PV to put on the big boy pants and truly compete in the energy marketplace instead of whining about how unfair the world is.
Alternate energy would be more robust, mature and viable today without all the handouts.Comment
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AgreeComment
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Who said I could afford it? I sold all of my baseball cards to come up with that money..... does me being able to afford it change anything? I can afford many things that low income can not. How does that change anything? Is it fair I can afford to go to an expensive football game across the country while the low income person can not? is it fair that I spent 4 years in the military to pay for school while someone else did not? Is it fair that I worked 2 jobs at the same time while attending school full time while someone else did not?Comment
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Ah..... compete in the free market, like the electric companies are doing???? There is zero sarcasm in my question. If people can whine about '"Subsidizing," my solar panels, why should all of us that dont live in the fire zones be complaining about people that choose to build their home in the middle of a tinderbox?
I would be perfectly fine to have a flat fee on our bills that EVERYONE paid equally. But they will never do that. A tiered flat fee is a joke.
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