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

PG&E's most transparent fraud is by forcing people to move everything to electricity and then forcing them to use less electricity, and then complaining they aren't making enough money so that they raise electricity rates. Last year, PG&E raised rates 6 times. I'm now paying double the per kWh rates from only 4 years ago.

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.

Isn't a lot of this the government insisting that PG&E act as the de facto California wildfire insurance provider and collect the premiums out of everyone's electric bill?

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.

There are a bunch of places in California where humans shouldn't live that PG&E is required to provide electricity to and then getting blamed for setting fires... which I suppose it did set those fires but much of the state is being required to subsidize these inhabited uninhabitable places either through paying for fire damage or paying the incredibly expensive process of burying power lines which doesn't fundamentally alter the risk or rate of wildfires.

One of the many questionable political situations in California.

Renewables could be used to power these remote locations, or at least allow utilities to abandon them (with some warning.)

If pigs had wings they could fly, but here and in a lot of California politics rational solutions aren't what is lacking.