PG&E Rates

[chicken]

Cross posted from my thread on RC.....

What the **** is up with PG&E. If you guys did not notice a major rate hike went into effect Jan 1st. The 3rd in the last 14 months. We are now paying 47.39 cents per KW/h at the top tier. This is just beyond ridiculous. They can say its expensive in California but the top tier for Southern California Edison is 34.25 cents, San Diego Gas & Electric is 20.2 cents and Sacramento Municipal Utility District is 17.02 cents. This just makes no sense and needs to stop. It sounds like they are pondering even another rate increase later this year possibly just before the summer. I am extremely pissed about this and not sure how the CPUC is letting them get away with it.

Also to rub salt in our wounds, PG&E is single handedly pushing for and spending our rate payers money ($6.5M to date and many Millions more) getting Proposition 16 on the June Ballot. Prop 16 seeks to amend the state constitution so that local governments (city and counties) cannot buy wholesale power and sell it back to their citizens without the a super majority vote in an election. Even further if a super majority vote passes they city/county would need to ask the citizens again in another super majority vote to allow them to sell more power than was initially voted on. PG&E is pushing for this to keep their monopoly growing strong. We need to step up as a group and tell PG&E that we are unhappy. Instead of pushing for things like this they need to focus on delivering us clean and reasonably priced power, not power pricing at nearly 6x the national average. If they did that there would be no reason a city or county would be interested in getting into the power business.

Please check out http://www.powergrab.info/ for more info!!!

 

[sfsuphysics]

Well in defense of PG&E (and I'm not really trying to defend them here ), those rate hikes are affecting the most power hungry users the most, those who can keep it under control (aka non-reefers) only see hikes of about 3 tenths of a cent, where as that top tier saw 10 times that. I think it's their way of punishing people for using what they consider "too much power".

As to the rate differences, SoCal does have quite a few nuclear plants that are quite beefy, maybe that has something to do with it, where as up here PG&E hasn't really pushed for any power generation to be made, as a result they punish those who use too much because they end up having to buy from outside their agreed upon rates.

Thanks for the heads up on Prop16 though, I'll be sure to keep an eye out on that one.

 

[iani]

Put a nuclear power plant on Alcatraz and solve our silly energy problem. J/K of course.

 

[Gomer]

Put a nuclear power plant on Alcatraz and solve our silly energy problem. J/K of course. or am I?!?!! J) >) :8) :X

fixed 0

 

[sfsuphysics]

All the mercury that's in the bay surely that can be used to make power or something right?

 

[GreshamH]

Did anyone catch the latest buzz about San Onofre's nuclear power plant?

http://www.cbs8.com/Global/story.asp?S=12011748

Not good when employees are scared to call a spade a spade when security and safety are concerned.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I wonder if that "fear for their jobs" means they think they'll lose their job if they say something because the plant will be shut down/retrofit/repaired (which honestly is probably the case)

 

[GreshamH]

That's exactly my thoughts as there is a whistle blower law in place to cover them from their bosses. If the plant shut down I doubt they'd get much out of it.