Falling panel prices lead to global solar boom, except for the US

PG&E now wants to charge solar panel owners $100+/month just for the privilege of being connected to the grid. This is on top of their $0.41-54/kWh they already charge, the highest in the nation.

PG&E is a government-supported scam that is charging people whatever prices they want with no protection from our politicians because they are all on the take.

Can you say more about this? I don't live in California, so I'm not familiar with what you mean.

- Electric utility must make up to _forward_maximum_kW of electrical energy available to customer, 24x7, at _rate

- Customer may force electrical utility to accept up to _reverse_maximum_kW - without notice, at his sole discretion, and without regard for electrical utility's needs or wishes, at _rate

If so, just talk to any sane businessman about the viability of being stuck on the utility's end of such a deal.

https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

You have wildfires caused by, basically, climate change causing there to be an abundance of fuel (dead wood) waiting for any spark, exacerbated by decades of the government putting out every wildfire when in the natural environment the last fire would have cleared out the dead wood before the next one, causing fuel to accumulate even more.

At that point it doesn't matter what the ignition source is, that much fuel is going to burn, soon. If it isn't some piece of PG&E equipment it will be a lightning strike or something else. But if you can pin it on the power company because a tree caught fire from falling on a power line then the fire insurance companies can sue the power company instead of filing for bankruptcy, and then all you have to do is pass on the cost to ordinary people as $500/month electric bills.

These implicit subsidies used to mostly benefit lower-income households (though not always: properties like seasonal vacation houses also benefited). Now, higher-income households are more likely to benefit from this structure because they are more likely to install rooftop solar (reducing kWh consumption) but still need the grid to work at night. Crediting solar households for grid exports makes this problem especially acute but it would also exist even if solar households were merely reducing the kWh drawn from the grid during daytime.

One remedy could be to fully separate the costs of fixed infrastructure from per-kWh unit charges and set prices directly proportional to costs. But that is probably politically unfeasible because there will be outcry that prices proportional to costs would hurt low-income, low-consumption households.

Another way to remedy it would use the previous approach but give offsetting vouchers to households that would face financial hardship as a result of the change in pricing structure. I don't know why the underlying issue has remained unaddressed in favor of patchy solar-specific changes to the law.

I moved across the road from this government owned power company so i was just out of Palo Alto municipality and suddenly had to pay 4x the price. Sigh.

It's a weird thing moving to the USA. Everyone's been brainwashed "anything government run is more expensive" yet every example I've ever looked into proved the opposite to a dramatic extent. Government run institutions lead to lower overall costs.

I'm not engage in a "conspiracy". She was appointed by Newsom in 2021. This coincides to when the prices started skyrocketing.

One of the many questionable political situations in California.

They took a risk by underspending on upgrading, and we as Californians are paying for them paying out their shareholders.

https://www.finegroupre.com/blog/no-more-gas/

This is all the while cost of the alternative -- electric power -- goes up at least 10% YOY

The things that PG&E has notably been neglecting, resulting in highly destructive wildfires?

The idea that it costs every single ratepayer $100/month to maintain the infrastructure is ludicrous. It's just attempting to deflect blame from PG&E's horrible mismanagement to environmentalists.

In places with honestly run utilities that cost is closer to $5-$10/month per household.

As you stated, PG&E was held liable for billions of dollars of compensation for the impacted people. This led to negative earnings zeroing out the profits of the previous decade [2]. Furthermore, the stock's price is far lower than it was during the hayday of deferred maintenance.

Since the involvement of California state government in PG&E operations, maintenance has improved dramatically. Furthermore, PG&E again has positive earnings, demonstrating that the long-term viability of the company is improved with adequate maintenance budgeting.

Now to address the counterfactual, "the fires would have happened anyway": no. The leading cause of wildfires in California in general, and impacting people and infrastructure in particular, is electrical equipment. This is empirical; after PG&E began cutting power during high-fire danger days, the number and severity of wildfires dropped dramatically [3].

1. How PG&E missed its chance to prevent the Camp Fire: Damning report on utility’s negligence, https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article24357122...

2. Pacific Gas & Electric EPS - Earnings per Share 2011-2025 | PCG, https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-el...

3. Human-caused ignitions spark California’s worst wildfires but get little state focus: In 2019, utilities turned off electricity during high-wind events, and California had its mildest fire season in eight years. Was that a coincidence?, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2020/01/05/human-caused...

That sounds like something lawyers say when they want to sue somebody.

Who determines the "service life" of a conductive piece of metal with no moving parts?

> Now to address the counterfactual, "the fires would have happened anyway": no. The leading cause of wildfires in California in general, and impacting people and infrastructure in particular, is electrical equipment. This is empirical; after PG&E began cutting power during high-fire danger days, the number and severity of wildfires dropped dramatically

Nobody disputes that power lines can be an ignition source. The issue is that there are also other ignition sources and dead trees will eventually burn. Causing the fires to be less frequent actually makes the problem worse, because then when it does happen there is even more fuel, which makes the next fire bigger and harder to contain. It's the same failure mode as putting out natural wildfires and leaving all that fuel to accumulate for next time.

Removing some of the ignition sources means you're going to have fewer small fires this year, but at the cost of having bigger ones later. That's not a win.

Perhaps you might start by explaining how that question is in any way relevant to the current discussion.

The part that was found to have failed was a wire hanger that wore through as it swung in the wind (hint: a moving part) and allowed the power line to fall on the ground.

Somehow (magic or the occult probably) SC Edison and LADWP have not had failures of their physical plant which bankrupted the company. They also had higher maintenance budgets. Hmmm… nope, can’t see how these things are connected.

I live 20 minutes north of you. My power is in fact 4 times expensive in the winter.

BRB, Shopping on amazon for a 20-mile long extension cord

No one is blaming PG&E for all wildfires. We are blaming PG&E for the wildfires THAT THEY CAUSED. These fires could have been prevented if THEY BURIED THEIR POWERLINES back in the early 2000s when it was far cheaper and like they promised. They instead decided to ditch that and instead buyback stock and pay lucrative dividends.

Burying powerlines would 100% prevent wildfires which were caused by sparking or broken power equipment, which has been the documented reason why several extremely large and fatal wild fires were caused by.

There was a quite convincing article claiming the abundance of dead wood was due to bureaucracy more than anything else - two years of paperwork to remove a tree etc.

I think they move from the wind and eventually wear through.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/new-images-of-pge-...

It's unsurprising that companies want to make money, it is, however, shocking how corrupt the CA government is when it comes to the issue.

The government is the cause of the problem.

I haven't actually looked at the real bills to see if it's happening, but the expectation they're setting up is that 2026 will be lower than 2025. we'll see!

Please read citation number three from the parent post. This is not a certainty. Calfire and local agencies do a substantial amount of brush clearing, tree cutting, and when conditions are right, controlled burns. Anything that reduces the frequency of ignition events buys more time for fire control agencies to do this work.

The link is essentially arguing that there are some areas with very few natural ignition sources, so most of the fires are caused by people. But that doesn't get you out of the accumulation of fuel. Even if zero of the fires were caused by power lines or nature, there would still be car fires and campfires etc., and longer durations between them causes larger accumulations of fuel.

> Calfire and local agencies do a substantial amount of brush clearing, tree cutting, and when conditions are right, controlled burns. Anything that reduces the frequency of ignition events buys more time for fire control agencies to do this work.

This isn't a case of there being a fixed amount of brush that only has to be cleared out this once and we need to buy some time to allow the work to be completed. It's a continuous process and they don't have the resources to do it everywhere. If you then prevent more of the "unscheduled" fires in the places where they can't and then more fuel accumulates there, what happens?

To have a fire you need a spark, air and fuel. The air is there all the time. The fuel is there whenever there hasn't been a spark recently. And power lines aren't the only source of sparks.

Once the fuel is there and accumulating, you're playing roulette to see if you're going to have a smaller fire now or a bigger fire later. There is no option for "never have a fire again" in those areas, and the second option isn't inherently better than the first one.

Furthermore, risk to people and property is not uniformly distributed. Fire mitigation efforts are performed disproportionately near population centers. When man-made, preventable ignition causes are concentrated near towns like Paradise, responsible entities have a duty to reduce those risks.

It is not necessary to allow fires to burn houses down to fulfill a concept of accumulated fire risk. Marin County has published a series of videos showing homeowners how to landscape their properties to reduce the spread of fire.

Another intermediate possibility in California is distributed generation and storage to both reduce load on transmission and to allow transmission and distribution to be deenergized during times when fire risk is high. This could then gradually transition over into an entirely distributed system without transmission to some locations.