from Hacker News

PG&E Rates Could Drastically Change Based on Your Income

by devadvance on 4/16/23, 4:08 PM with 41 comments

• by saltcured on 4/16/23, 6:17 PM

  While I understand the desire to have a progressive pricing scheme to offset some of the criticism around solar subsidies being "subsidies for the rich", I think this would be a terrible precedent as far as invasion of privacy. I think it is cynical overreach. There is absolutely no reason that the utility company should gain access to household income data of their entire market.

  If the CA government thinks we should have this kind of pricing or means-based support of the utilities, I think they should design it into the income tax code and provide subsidies to the utility from collected tax revenue.

  An alternative might be to extend current CARE, FERA, and Medical Baseline Allowance programs to extend discounts or payment assistance for households in need. But I think these programs may also be flawed in that they endanger the privacy of those needing assistance. The state tax board already has the necessary data and the state should not be supporting the creation of additional parallel systems.

• by balderdash on 4/16/23, 7:15 PM

  Isn’t this just going to incentivize the people can afford to, to install residential solar/battery and go off grid? Which probably has negative consequences for the low/moderate income people who will have to share a larger portion of the fixed costs?

• by midhhhthrow on 4/17/23, 12:29 AM

  Taxation should be done by government not utility companies. I’m deeply disturbed that such a thing could even be proposed

  And handing out subsidies for electricity/energy usage is the last thing global warming needs.

  And this is huge subsidy to high energy users from those who are saving and reducing their energy usage.

• by raylad on 4/16/23, 10:13 PM

  This is a horrible proposal. Whether or not you are upset about PG&E knowing your income, the mere fact that it would be a flat rate reduces or eliminates the incentive to reduce electricity usage.

  If this goes through, we will probably see people running their AC and heat more because there's no incremental cost for them to do so.

  We need to be incentivizing reduction in energy use, not making it free to use more.

• by JPws_Prntr_Fngr on 4/16/23, 6:26 PM

  The bill in question seems to be AB 205 [0]:

  > Existing law authorizes the PUC to authorize fixed charges that do not exceed certain amounts per residential customer account per month, as provided. This bill would delete the requirement that each electrical corporation offer default rates to residential customers with at least two usage tiers. The bill would additionally require the PUC to ensure that the approved fixed charges do not unreasonably impair incentives for beneficial electrification and greenhouse gas reduction. The bill would instead authorize the PUC to authorize fixed charges for any rate schedule applicable to residential customer accounts. The bill would eliminate the cap on the amount of the fixed charge that the PUC may authorize. The bill would require the fixed charge to be established on an income-graduated basis, as provided, with no fewer than 3 income thresholds so that low-income ratepayers in each baseline territory would realize a lower average monthly bill without making any changes in usage.

  Since the income bracketing is a legal requirement, the CA state government will be sharing income data with these utility corps. I would imagine. So the bill’s obviously being positioned as relief for low income households, but what it would do is hand these utility oligopolies access to intelligence on their captive customers so it can fully exploit their price elasticities.

  [0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

• by pengaru on 4/16/23, 9:20 PM

  What business does the power company have knowing my income level? I already get offers to sign up for substantial low-income discounts from SCE, and it never strikes me as a good idea to pursue despite likely qualifying on my long sabbatical style stints of self-employment. My usage is so low in general it's just not an optimization worth further compromising my privacy for.

  Furthermore why would we want to disconnect cost from utilization? This seems ridiculous on the face of it, and the rates they're describing for the high-earners strike me as low compared to how wasteful such households tend to be.

  Am I missing something? Is some millionaire with an electric heated outdoor pool going to be paying $92/mo in this scheme? That's madness and incentivizing the wrong things entirely.

  Or are those figures listed just averages expected under the new scheme, but still scaled by utilization?

  Also what happens if you refuse to provide proof of income level under this scheme? Does it just default to the highest bracket? Many actual low-income folks won't be filing paperwork proving their taxed income level with the power company, will this just fuck them over by treating them as high earners?

• by gbtw on 4/16/23, 5:43 PM

  So rich people who can afford their accountant fees to hide their income, like with taxes, will pay almost nothing for energy, while the essentially broke person will pay more.

• by noodlesUK on 4/16/23, 10:34 PM

  I think that having energy be more affordable for people who are less well off makes sense. What this article seems to suggest is making electricity unmetered and cost a fixed amount based on your income. This completely discourages people to be economical about saving energy. Rich people already tend to use their heating and AC more than poorer people. We should not incentivize people to be inefficient. Adjusting a unit price would be reasonable, but people should be charged just that — a unit price.

• by lsaferite on 4/16/23, 5:43 PM

  Is PG&E electricity super cheap already or something? I pay 2x-3x the top tier they are talking about in FL for electricity.

• by olliej on 4/17/23, 2:52 AM

  So if a billionaire has retired and no longer has "income" does that mean that their power bills become cheaper?

• by fwungy on 4/16/23, 6:34 PM

  You can't do the flim flam without the shim sham.

• by say_it_as_it_is on 4/17/23, 12:04 AM

  The rich don't pay any taxes so they probably won't pay anything for utilities under this policy

• by hedora on 4/16/23, 11:08 PM

  Ok, $92/month is $11,400 for ten years.

  It would cost me about twice that to upgrade my current solar and battery for 100% off grid. ($10K would go to a backup generator that we need anyway because PG&E pulls about 1 nine of reliability around here).

  So, if this proposal passes, I’ll strongly consider just not paying for electrical service anymore. I suspect most high income houses will be looking at similar numbers as the cost of solar plus battery continues to drop.

  This will only accelerate California’s power grid death spiral.

  Edit: They should make the variable part of your electric bill proportional to carbon footprint (negative bills for net negative housholds), and legalize community net metering. This would allow poor people to buy into non-profits that lower their bills, so they could benefit economically form solar panels, just like rich people do. Also, this would even more rapidly decarbonize California’s power grid.

  They could make it revenue neutral for PG&E by raising the base rate for interconnect, by giving PG&E cap and trade credits, or by giving individuals the cap and trade credits in lieu of a discount off their bills.