Jestersix

Anyone get an absurdly high PG&E bill?

I don’t think they care where the money comes from as long as they can start to rebuild their life with it
 
I'm sure it's a combination of both, insurance companies always like to pass the blame as long as they don't have to pay for it. And I'm sure there are those who suffered who feel wronged, and then there are those who have lawyers who convince people that lawsuits are the ultimate form of retribution and will make them right.

I'm actually waiting for PG&E to basically say "yeah we can't service your area anymore, due to the chance for wildfires", I mean wouldn't surprise me if they flip the power off if the wind blows any stronger than a mouse fart.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I'm actually waiting for PG&E to basically say "yeah we can't service your area anymore, due to the chance for wildfires", I mean wouldn't surprise me if they flip the power off if the wind blows any stronger than a mouse fart.
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they have started to do that more and more, shut down power when natural events cause unsafe weather. over where i live we had high winds and pge sent out a notification text saying they were shutting down power in 3 countys.
 
Fuck pge. No other way to say it. Corrupt. Greedy. Evil. Uncaring.
Hmmmm, starting to sound a lot like our government...no wonder they are in bed together. I would like them to both go away, and rot in hell, but I’ll settle for them going away.
 
Pge arguments are interesting. People want them to maintain the line more, but they don’t want pge to charge more money. Somebody has to pay for the maintenance.


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jorahx4 said:
Pge arguments are interesting. People want them to maintain the line more, but they don’t want pge to charge more money. Somebody has to pay for the maintenance.


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I’m trying to remember, do you do maintenance for them?
 
my pge bill used to average 150 a month - 3/2 house about 1400 sqft. now with the new east bay energy generation charge last 2 months, it was 230 last month and 213 this month. they claim there is a credit on the bill, which it showed, but it doesnt make up for the huge hike. was thinking of opting out but unsure what the charges would look like afterwards since they claimed the new east bay company provides cheaper rates.

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jorahx4 said:
Pge arguments are interesting. People want them to maintain the line more, but they don’t want pge to charge more money. Somebody has to pay for the maintenance.
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Don't forget the other arguments... "why am I paying for the maintenance when it's not my stuff that is being maintained" As an example San Francisco wanted to underground all wires, and of course like any big city they screwed the pooch on it, the more "affluent" parts of the city of course got it done first... because... and some other parts did but it went WAY over budget, because instead of stopping when the budget was getting low they decided to finish up a few areas, and of course this cost the people of San Francisco... ALL OF THEM, and we continue to pay off that debt with like a small charge on PG&E bills, even though we will never get it done. So the moral of this story, is even though you don't get any benefit from it, you still end up paying for it.

I don't want to shift the blame to victims of a wild fire, but who's job is it really to maintain the area around PG&E lines? Should me in San Francisco be paying for PG&E maintenance half way across the state because they "average" the cost to everyone instead of raising local rates to reflect a larger maintenance budget per customer? Should PG&E be responsible for dealing with vegetation around their lines? Or should the county be forced to foot the bill similar to San Francisco footing the bill for undergrounding wires (which in addition to aesthetics, there was an argument for safety as well).

Either way, doesn't matter now, because of the lawsuits (and not going to argue how justified they are or not), means that the cost of them get distributed to ALL customers, so regardless of what happens I end up paying for stuff that in no way involves me.
 
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sfsuphysics said:
Don't forget the other arguments... "why am I paying for the maintenance when it's not my stuff that is being maintained" As an example San Francisco wanted to underground all wires, and of course like any big city they screwed the pooch on it, the more "affluent" parts of the city of course got it done first... because... and some other parts did but it went WAY over budget, because instead of stopping when the budget was getting low they decided to finish up a few areas, and of course this cost the people of San Francisco... ALL OF THEM, and we continue to pay off that debt with like a small charge on PG&E bills, even though we will never get it done. So the moral of this story, is even though you don't get any benefit from it, you still end up paying for it.

I don't want to shift the blame to victims of a wild fire, but who's job is it really to maintain the area around PG&E lines? Should me in San Francisco be paying for PG&E maintenance half way across the state because they "average" the cost to everyone instead of raising local rates to reflect a larger maintenance budget per customer? Should PG&E be responsible for dealing with vegetation around their lines? Or should the county be forced to foot the bill similar to San Francisco footing the bill for undergrounding wires (which in addition to aesthetics, there was an argument for safety as well).

Either way, doesn't matter now, because of the lawsuits (and not going to argue how justified they are or not), means that the cost of them get distributed to ALL customers, so regardless of what happens I end up paying for stuff that in no way involves me.
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exactly, that is the issue, if i let the tree in my back yard grow and hit the powerlines than blame pge for my house burning down, i feel like i was neglecting my own responsibility.

it is pge right-away and they are spending more and more money to trim trees back or replace old/damaged equipment but that isnt cheap to do. and that just leads to the general public thinking "fuck pge" for raising my prices to try to prevent future fires.


pge can help with pruning trees-
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/yard-safety/powerlines-and-trees/power-line-safety-and-trees.page
 
sfsuphysics said:
Don't forget the other arguments... "why am I paying for the maintenance when it's not my stuff that is being maintained" As an example San Francisco wanted to underground all wires, and of course like any big city they screwed the pooch on it, the more "affluent" parts of the city of course got it done first... because... and some other parts did but it went WAY over budget, because instead of stopping when the budget was getting low they decided to finish up a few areas, and of course this cost the people of San Francisco... ALL OF THEM, and we continue to pay off that debt with like a small charge on PG&E bills, even though we will never get it done. So the moral of this story, is even though you don't get any benefit from it, you still end up paying for it.

I don't want to shift the blame to victims of a wild fire, but who's job is it really to maintain the area around PG&E lines? Should me in San Francisco be paying for PG&E maintenance half way across the state because they "average" the cost to everyone instead of raising local rates to reflect a larger maintenance budget per customer? Should PG&E be responsible for dealing with vegetation around their lines? Or should the county be forced to foot the bill similar to San Francisco footing the bill for undergrounding wires (which in addition to aesthetics, there was an argument for safety as well).

Either way, doesn't matter now, because of the lawsuits (and not going to argue how justified they are or not), means that the cost of them get distributed to ALL customers, so regardless of what happens I end up paying for stuff that in no way involves me.
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This is literally the way every organization larger than 1 family, public and private, works and has worked throughout the entire world for the entirety of human history.

People hardly notice (much less appreciate) when they benefit at other people’s expense but are morally outraged when someone else benefits at at their expense. There are infinite examples.

Ranting about when the pendulum swings away from you just shows lack of insight about the times it swings back toward you. Plus it isn’t healthy to be consumed by frustration and anger about things that so far out of your control.
 
JVU said:
This is literally the way every organization larger than 1 family, public and private, works and has worked throughout the entire world for the entirety of human history.

People hardly notice (much less appreciate) when they benefit at other people’s expense but are morally outraged when someone else benefits at at their expense. There are infinite examples.

Ranting about when the pendulum swings away from you just shows lack of insight about the times it swings back toward you. Plus it isn’t healthy to be consumed by frustration and anger about things that so far out of your control.
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well said.
 
JVU said:
This is literally the way every organization larger than 1 family, public and private, works and has worked throughout the entire world for the entirety of human history.

People hardly notice (much less appreciate) when they benefit at other people’s expense but are morally outraged when someone else benefits at at their expense. There are infinite examples.

Ranting about when the pendulum swings away from you just shows lack of insight about the times it swings back toward you. Plus it isn’t healthy to be consumed by frustration and anger about things that so far out of your control.
Click to expand...
I agree that "for the better good" people pay for things that may not affect them directly whether it's infrastructure, schools, or what not. However there is a level at which that does stop, not going to get into where that should end now since that is a discussion better left to politicians who can actually stop it. But just to leave an example, we pay a bridge toll to cross any of the bay area bridges, why? That's under the umbrella of Caltrans, shouldn't maintenance for that come out of the totality of the Caltrans budget? It seems to be method of charging the "local" area for the infrastructure/maintenance because we are the ones that use it.

And this isn't a matter of being consumed with frustration about how the pendulum is swinging, it's about being frustrated about why the swinging pendulum (which ever way it was supposed to swing) didn't do anything. And lets be clear, while PG&E is subjected to rules set by the CPUC, they are in no way a non-profit. So shareholders, and executives were happily counting their pennies all the while claiming they had to up rates to do whatever whenever however.

Anyways, I figured out why my bill was so expensive, it was due to me needing to pay another true up, plus rates did jump, but the bill simply didn't list any details at all just said "Electricity: $xxx.xx" without giving a break down of usage.
 
I agree John, however, pge is no where near a perfect example of us paying for things for other people in a way that makes sense. Pge has been bleeding us dry as much as possible for as long as possible, and at the same time shirking their safety responsibilities, and even worse yet, straight up lieing about it. I don’t think it’s we the people who should foot the bill for a companies actions(and lack thereof) that have cause devastating loss of life and property, as well as environmental damage in many ways. Yes they should be able to make money, but they should also be held accountable for their crimes. They should not at all be able to just turn around with their hands out (one with a bucket and one with a gun) for financial help when what happened (over and over again) is their fault and theirs alone. They new the risks of falsifying safety reports about gas pipeline(s), but they were too greedy/lazy/busy paying their exact huge bonuses to actually do their job. I want to see jail time for as many of those responsible as possible. Murder/manslaughter or whatever is a pretty serious crime. Are we really supposed to look the other way AND pay to bail them out? My answer is clearly NO. I find pge to be a reprehensible, dangerous, entity that is way too big, and extremely out of control. They don’t “serve” us at all, they allow us to pay them so they can continually shirk their safety responsibilities and continue causing huge disasters that could have easily been avoided. Fool us once, shame on them, fool us dozens of times?!? No sir!
I am absolutely willing to help me fellow humans rebuild their lives and homes, and I have donated to those efforts directly, I do not care to pay the perpetrators and hope they take care of their victims. I wouldn’t donate to a rapist so their victims could sue them.
 
Time to put that gas heater on my tank that I have been thinking about.

My largest expense is heating the tank, and I bet that applies to a lot of people here.
 
Mark, yeah I went back and forth about putting in the tubing under the floor when I was rebuilding it just to have it ready in case I ever wanted to hook it up to the water heater. However I decided against it just due to the fact I was not really down for hooking it up to my water heater, and figure if it ever gets that bad I can always do like Chicken (forgot what his name was) did and just get a separate tankless one that you can mount outside. Of course it requires running a gas line, and then making sure your source gas line is big enough to supply it, but overall it seemed like an easier solution.

Of course plan B is to simply get more solar panels and install them myself, I purposefully had the solar guys install a larger capacity inverter in case I wanted to add more later, I forget exactly how large but I think I can double my solar production, which should bring things back in line to normal. In the June/July months I use less than 0 power, so it says two things to me 1) I make more than enough power to run the tank (and the rest of the house) so if I can stick the tank in an "insulated" area I might be able to mitigate some of the heating needs (which is kind of the plan I'm shooting for) and 2) the reason I don't make enough power in other months is a combination of colder house = more heat in tank and less daylight hours (and sun angle and more cloudy days) translates into less power so if I can add more power I might lessen the power hit in non-summer months and increase the power in summer months to make up for non-summer months.
 
Another option is a solar hot water heater.
cheaper than solar electric -> electric heater.

The roof solar panel has water in it, not photovoltaic, so it heats water directly.
But they are special evacuated tubes with reflectors, not the cheap plastic pool solar heaters.
That gets circulated into a hot water heater tank, for bulk storage overnight. 120+ degrees.
As needed, you circulate water through that into your fish tank.
 
Why is it that EBMUD is a non profit water agency while PG&E is a for profit private company? How does a for profit company benefit customers when their first priority is their share holders and pockets? Does anyone else think our electric and gas provider should be a non profit like EBMUD?
 
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