The Grid

Electricity and Petroleum are big issues right now, with politicians being sensitized to ecological issues. Gasoline prices are especially high in California. But the state seems to have a special ongoing problem with their electrical grid. Is your state having any problems like this?

Here's the Real Reason PG&E Rates Are Skyrocketing in California

California now holds the ignominious prize for the highest electricity rates in the nation, except Hawaii. How did we get into this predicament?

Because the California Public Utilities Commission -- the five-member agency appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom that regulates the prices, service and reliability of private energy utilities -- has failed to do its job.

There are other government entities that hand out cookies to energy companies without a care for who pays the bill. But the buck stops at the Public Utilities Commission to protect utility customers.

When a private utility like PG&E decides it needs to build new infrastructure -- say, to protect against wildfires -- it's the commission that determines if the infrastructure is necessary, if the utility's proposed costs for that infrastructure are fair, and if better and cheaper alternatives exist.

The commission enjoys limited scrutiny by the courts. Decisions made by other state agencies can be appealed to Superior Court. But only an appellate court can hear commission appeals, and taking that case is discretionary. This limited judicial review means that the Public Utilities Commission essentially answers to the governor alone.

As a former commission president, I know what keeping energy prices down requires . . .

Guess who wrote that?

Give up?

Loretta Lynch.

Anyway, that was originally published on April 20.

Big rate increases were passed for PG&E customers, not only for electricity, but also for advertisements so PG&E could tell customers what a great thing it was that they were being charged for PG&E burying electrical cables.

Big increases for SOME PG&E Customers, that is:

April 19:

California Power Companies Proposing Income-Based Rates for Electric Bills

I recently noted that Los Angeles passed a "Mansion Tax" that had the elites in the area scrambling to sell their properties and contributing to the mass of "Left-ugees" now fleeing California.

The number of left-ugees will likely explode, fueled by the latest scheme now being proposed. Since California's energy rates are skyrocketing, power companies propose income-based pricing in response to an Assembly bill.

If you live in California, your electricity bill could soon be affected by how much money you earn, and your bill will start to look different by 2025.

California's three largest power companies - Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric - submitted a joint proposal to the Public Utilities Commission outlining a fixed rate restructuring that would be based on one's income.

Here are the numbers being put forth for consideration:

Put simply, the more you earn the more you pay for recurring charges (not related to energy usage) . . .

Anyway, on to April 26:

Who killed California utility bill legislation?

A bill to rein in a proposed monthly fee on California electric bills has been quietly shelved in the Assembly without receiving a single vote.

Assembly Bill 1999, written by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, was a response to the California Public Utilities Commission's proposal on fixed charges. The version to be voted on next month would let California's largest for-profit utility companies charge customers $24 per month -- with fees as low as $6 for lower-income customers -- as a kind of membership fee for the power grid.

In exchange, power providers would be required to lower the rate that customers pay for every unit of electricity consumed. Customers who draw relatively little from the grid -- including those with solar panels -- would likely face higher overall bills. Customers who buy more electricity from the utilities are more likely to see their bills decline.

Irwin's legislative rejoinder would have capped the set fees at $10 per month -- and just $5 for lower income customers.

But that effort appears to be on ice, though Rivas' office says that while the bill will not move forward in its current form, talks with Irwin on possible amendments are ongoing.

Bills that cost the state money, like AB 1999, have until today to make it out of their first policy committees. . .

See the political details at the link.

The income-based legislative wranglings above may have something to do with one solar company's sales people claiming that they are not a solar company, but rather an alternative power provider to PG&E offering lower rates, merely using your home as a place to put one of their little power plants and your wall as a place for one of their battery arrays. This is a desperate sales line which still requires the salesperson to get the mark's recent bills to see if they "qualify" as a location for that placement of a power plant on their roof.

This is related to the PG&E rate hikes. Geege Welborn wrote it last October:

CA Having the Darnedest Time With Electricity

The magic juice. It ebbs, it flows, sometimes it just dang shuts off.

Old timers in Southern California - like we were, having lived in Orange County during the golden 80s decade thru early 90s - love to tell the youngsters of today about the times they've never really experienced. Cheap water - our water bill ran about $12 every...TWO MONTHS. There was natural gas for stoves and the furnace (the one night out of a thousand winter night you might need it), and there was electricity...ALWAYS...at 6.5? kwhr. San Onofre, Diablo Canyon, the coal plant in Carlsbad - Southern California Edison had it humming along, and life was good.

The infrastructure hasn't kept up with the state's population needs itself, less mind the grandiose plans, mandates, and deadlines imposed on citizens and utilities alike. They're also hamstrung by regressive progressive policies as far as proper fire control for the semi-arid desert scrub most of them inhabit. Every year CA burns. Every year aging powerlines fall into scrub and brush that was never cleared or control burned off to minimize that very outcome.

And instead of using proper fire suppression techniques?

Every year it's lather, rinse, repeat. The aging lines and poles stay the same, and the power to customers gets turned off "just in case" when the Santa Anas start to blow.

Like now. . .

California really was a Golden State before all of this . . .

They sure financed some fancy, if useless, environmental experiments through the power companies (and by the state) instead of clearing brush.

Climate Change or Weather?

I missed this last year. But maybe there would have been more fires if California hadn't shut off the electricity when the wind blew.

DRAMATIC

Environmentalists care about environmentalists

Steven Hayward: Environmentalists vs. the Environment

Funny thing has happened on the way to the glorious "energy transition" to a net-zero economy: environmentalists keep getting in the way.

It is well understood that the maniacal drive to install massive wind and solar power projects, not to mention large new battery farms and "carbon-capture" facilities, all require substantial expansion and upgrading of the electricity grid. When Sen. Joe Manchin finally capitulated in 2022 to supporting President Joe Biden's blowout "green energy" subsidy bill (the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act"), it was supposed to be part of a deal in which regulatory and permitting reform would follow, not only to allow for a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia that is dear to Manchin, but other infrastructure projects, especially to enable new green energy supplies.

But the permitting reform legislation never passed Congress. Environmental fundamentalists, including 70 Democratic House members, opposed any permitting reform. The chief achievement of decades of environmental activism is the patchwork of laws at the national and state level, such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that have empowered environmentalists to slow and sometimes block development of all kinds. While NEPA and its state-level versions have not stopped all development, they can delay or increase the cost of projects sufficiently that many projects are simply deterred from even being proposed. When one lawsuit fails, environmental lawyers are often ready at the courthouse steps to file a dozen more, and the cycle of delay repeats.

Environmentalists are loath to give up their superpower, even for the supposed "climate change" kryptonite of "green energy." . .

The Sierra Club is irritating to people in California for obstructing their access to undeveloped land for recreation and such. The details here are interesting.

The Sierra Club, for example, has spent six years blocking a proposed transmission line intended to import emission-free hydropower from Canada. The Sierra Club has also opposed proposed solar power projects in California's desert areas. (The silver lining here is that the Sierra Club is in deep financial trouble at the moment, with internal rifts and mass layoffs imminent, according to The New Republic.) The Washington Post editorial page took note of this perverse state of affairs in a recent editorial, "Environmentalism Could Stop the Clean-Energy Transition."

Heh.

There's more. Fun reading.

Weekend

The Week in Pictures, Steven Hayward

Music

With bonus Storytime:

He used to get up in the morning and sit at the window to drink his coffee, listen to the birds sing, and balance a sneaker on his head.

"I've got too much pride for somebody who's got so much to be humble about," he once said. "And trying to keep a stinking shoe from falling off the top of my head is a good way to get a little humility to start the day."

But I think he had plenty to be proud of.

Tex Ritter dubbed him "The Storyteller." Johnny Cash called him the best in the business. Kurt Vonnegut said "I'm glad that he writes songs instead of short stories or a lot of us would be out of work." Critics called him a Hillbilly Poet and the Countryfried Philosopher. The rest of us called the same thing his sainted momma called him -- Tom.

Tom T. Hall was to writing songs what George Jones was to singing them: natural, unassuming, peerless. Admittedly, Tom wasn't a great singer, but boy could he spin a yarn. He didn't so much write songs as translate life into lyrics. A Tom T. Hall tune was never an abstract meditation, never untethered and ephemeral. His melodies were concrete, incarnate creatures who first walked around in cracking leather boots upon this tired earth long before they ever crawled into our ears to rest. In a word, his songs were real.

His first hit, "A Week in a Country Jail" was drawn from his own experience of being arrested and held seven days for a speeding ticket while the judge, who had just lost his mother, apparently needed a full week to grieve before handling arraignments. "Harper Valley PTA," the chart-topper he wrote for Jeannie C. Reilly, was about a widow woman from his hometown in Kentucky. "The Ballad of Forty Dollars" was drawn from his time spent working as a gravedigger in his youth. "The Year that Clayton Delaney Died" was indeed biographical with only the names changed. And "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine" was a retelling of a conversation he had in a barroom outside the Democratic National Convention. Such examples could be multiplied. . .

More at the link.

And here's That'sHow I Got to Memphis

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, April 20, Demons in K-12

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