• qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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    5 months ago

    In California, the major utility provider was found guilty in relation to wildfires, and fined.

    Guess what happened to electricity rates…

    • bradv@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      That’s an argument for making utilities publicly-owned again more than anything else.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        5 months ago

        At least in the Bay Area, there’s a few cities that have municipal utilities (owned and ran by the city). Usually this is because they installed power lines before PG&E existed.

        In those areas, the electricity rates are less than 1/3 of PG&E’s rates. Residential electricity is around $0.16/kWh in Palo Alto and Santa Clara (city, not county), compared to something like $0.55-0.60/kWh in summer peak with PG&E.

        One of the things with PG&E is that customers in city areas subsidise customers in rural areas, since it’s quite a bit more expensive to service customers in rural areas. Most of the price difference is greed, though. PG&E have record profits every year. The municipal electricity providers are non-profits and have an incentive to keep prices low.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      5 months ago

      The thing that confuses me is that California bailed out PG&E when they declared bankruptcy, yet PG&E are still operating as a for-profit company? They essentially just got free money from the government. Why didn’t the government take over the company?