California is building a new electrical power system that is cleaner, more robust and more reliable. The whole sale prices of electricity in California is the same or less than than the national average.
These high retail prices are driven by the following added cost on wholesale prices: high taxes, cost of new power plants, grid updates, fire protection improvements, water improvements, and other environmental improvements.
Yes prices are high all over California, but they are also rising rapidly in other areas of the US where inflation is impacting electrical generation and distribution. Georgia will be paying for Vogtle 3&4. Florida, North Carolina and Texas are rebuilding due to multiple climate change storms. The PJM grid is horribly short on power generation and transmission limes after decades of neglect.
Too much of anything might be detrimental. Why don’t you drink about 2 gallons of nice, clean, water, over a space of about 4 hours, and report back on the results?
It is not my opinion. I have my SDG&E bill right here in front of me. I know how to read it. I also know how much money I have to pay this month in order to keep this computer powered up and to keep the food from spoiling in the refrigerator.
The ratepayers in Georgia are already paying for Vogtle 3 & 4, since both of those plants are now in commercial service. As of November 2024, the average price of electricity in Georgia was 14.2 cents/kwh for residential customers. The average price in California was 31.92 cents/kwh. Georgia remains below the national average, while California is the highest in the US, except for Hawaii. Even Alaska is now cheaper than California, which used to be inconceivable.
As much as the people you (the collective you) elect choose for you to pay. That’s how it works, elect people whose policy is expensive electricity … get expensive electricity.
I would be very happy if you - and everybody - would pay the actual price, including externalities, which include things like air pollution, acid rain, nuclear waste disposal, and so on.
I am not so naive as to think you can capture every penny of every externality (what to charge for safe shipping in the Middle East and our military’s role in it? For example.) but at the moment there’s not a penny for cleaning up the air pollution that results from burning fossil fuels, not to mention the effects past, present, and future of global warming.
There is a negative correlation between those area which try to do something about it (because it makes their fuel prices high) and the free riders who do nothing, enjoy cheap energy, and then watch the wind blow their pollution over to the neighbors’ homes.
Regarding the nuclear waste item on your list, that cost is rather small. It is only about 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. That was the cost added to customers’ utility bills for a number of years, until the federal government demonstrated that it wasn’t going to follow the law and they shut down the Yucca Mountain plan. The courts then stopped collection of the fees. The fees could be started up again sometime in the future, if the government ever gets its act together, which I doubt.
From the link: The 1982 US Nuclear Waste Policy Act committed the DoE to begin taking used fuel from nuclear utilities from 1998, for final disposal in a federal facility - namely the Yucca Mountain repository. To pay for this, it began the collection of a surcharge of one-tenth of a US cent per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity. The surcharge netted some $750 million per year, and the accumulated funds are estimated to currently stand at around $30 billion.
Totally agree. Where this discussion went off the rails is the false conclusion that renewables are expensive based on consumer price instead of looking at why electricity delivered to the consumer side is expensive.
If the hypothesis that high prices are the result of high renewable usage is correct, then those states should have high prices. So let’s test the hypothesis outside of California (which is number 11, by the way):
State
Cents/Kwh
Iowa
13.60
Kansas
14.32
South Dakota
13.04
New Mexico
14.61
Oklahoma
12.49
Colorado
15.10
US Average
16.52
Hmm, the hypothesis immediately breaks down. States with the most renewables have lower than average prices. Based on this, can we conclude renewables lead to lower prices? No. That’s the same correlation equals causation fallacy. You have to look at all of the inputs. How power is regulated plays a huge roll in consumer prices. You can’t ignore important things like that and come to any meaningful conclusion about consumer prices.
It is also fallacious thinking to lump all renewables together as if they are all the same thing. Solar power is different from wind power because almost nobody owns a personal wind turbine, while many people have solar panels on their roofs. The solar owners are not paying their share of upkeep on the grid, so everyone else who doesn’t have solar has to pay for the grid. Solar owners use the grid too. They are not totally separated from it. They get all of the benefits without paying as much as they should.
It is almost 4:00 pm, so I need to turn off the computer and any lights that might be on. The electricity is about to become very expensive, again.
How much do you think solar owners should pay towards the grid?
You should install some batteries. Charge them up before 4pm with cheap electricity and then use that stored electricity after 4 when it becomes very expensive!
False claim. The users are charged by the power companies for the grid costs. Because those costs are spread over decades AND large numbers of users, the costs are fairly low per month.
At the low end of a very long time scale. But humans have found the concentration over the last couple centuries quite suitable. A cavalier attitude wrt CO2 concentration, going forward, may not be so beneficial for humans, not to mention some other organisms on the planet.
12/17/2014
State utility regulators voted Tuesday to allow Georgia Power to raise its rates again starting in January, the latest in a series of increases that have raised customers’ electric bills sharply.
The new rates, which will take effect Jan. 1, were approved unanimously by the five members of the Georgia Public Service Commission. All five are Republicans.
I wonder why you picked November of 2024 to discuss residential rates when you knew that new rates took effect on January 1, 2025.
The Georgia PSC will keep granting rate increases to Georgia Power ro pay for Vogtle 3&4.
When people choose to live in dangerous areas, they have already agreed to pay whatever the cost might be to live there.
Power companies can not refuse to provide power to those areas because the local govt has stated those locations are suitable for delivering power via standard wiring, etc. Thus, the power companies should sue the ^%F# out of the regulatory agencies for NOT requiring wiring be buried, etc in order to prevent fires, etc. Negligence of the govt, not the power companies.
