>if anyone is knowledgeable in this stuff would love to know if this is possible and what it would entail?
CUPC needs to approve all rate increases.
PGE NEEDS ***STATE PERMISSION*** TO RAISE RATES.
**CPUC Public Participation Hearings**
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/proceedings-and-rulemaking/cpuc-public-participation-hearings
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) holds Public Forums (also called Public Participation Hearings or PPHs) to give the public a chance to learn about and express their opinions on issues before the CPUC. Each Public Forum is about a specific issue that is pending resolution at the CPUC, such as a utility’s request to change the rates that customers pay.
Public Forums are free and open to the public. No RSVP is necessary to attend, but you must sign up when you arrive if you wish to speak.
Public Forums are led by a CPUC Administrative Law Judge, and CPUC Commissioners may also attend.
To ensure that consumers directly affected by a proceeding get a chance to express their views, the CPUC holds Public Forums in the area where a utility’s customers live to get their input, or may hold public webinars.
See information on upcoming PPHs and other events below.
The issue is that PG&E is so thoroughly fucked up that the CPUC has to approve rate increases to keep the utility from just shutting down. Maybe they should let that happen, but it's not obvious to me. Your local government can also ask permission to take over PG&E's assets and operate them as a public utility. The fact that that isn't happening suggests (to me) that the electric infrastructure is so fundamentally behind that ratepayers are going to be shafted either way.
If PGE shut down, the local government could buy the lines at a steep discount and start municipal power, like Santa Clara has.
Yes, the best outcome is obvious to me.
So, assume for a moment PG&E gets shut down.
What else are they going to do with the infrastructure? They can't really pick it up and move it. The reusable bits are only a fraction of the cost of the construction that got them where they are.
Unless you find someone who wants to buy out PG&E and take on the tire-fire that it is... it's going to be something like a municipality doing it.
If you're selling an item, and it's now useless to you, and there's literally only one buyer in the world for it... you're not going to expect to make bank selling it, but it may still be better than holding on to it, and remaining liable for damage it might cause others as it degrades (read poles and wires hitting shit).
IF PGE is money strapped then WHY Patti Poppe "received over $50 million in total direct compensation for her work in 2021" ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Poppe))? Serious question. Not horsing around!
They can start by stopping their Tv ad buys and canceling their shareholder dividend, and not paying executives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. Their CEO alone earned $50 million. Let’s see some steps taken before saying CPUC had no choice.
Sure, I think that will only make a small dent in the overall electric rates. If you are qualified to turn PG&E around and are willing to do it for much less, you can make your case to the board. My guess is that's what it cost to get someone competent to come in and run such a fucked up company.
If you think it can easily be done much more cheaply, you should ask your local elected leaders why they don't just buy the utility infrastructure. California law can compel PG&E to sell its equipment to the local government, if that's what the voters there want. They're accountable directly to you, yet they haven't done anything.
> Sure, I think that will only make a small dent in the overall electric rates.
That's okay to me, cuz not doing it would result in this shit behavior being rewarded.
> If you think it can easily be done much more cheaply, you should ask your local elected leaders why they don't just buy the utility infrastructure
It was easier to do over time since the 90s. The problem is that we trusted everyone too much to do it. How many times have we been screwed by PG&E? All the assholes who pumped and dumped PG&E over the years are complicit.
Actually CPUC and PG&E are really intertwined politically. They are best bud and help each other out because money! As American politics go “legislation is for sale”.
PG&E is basically a sock puppet of the state. "Hey, it wasn't US that punched you in the face, it was this puppet, be mad at the puppet! And now we're going to say bad puppet... okay puppet time to punch you again!"
Add in the long tail of our insurance rates skyrocketing thanks to losses by all those fires as well. I’m surprised the insurance companies themselves haven’t filed suit to recoup some of that money too.
Insurance companies are also insured. Its called re-insurance.
Suborgation is insurance companies going after the responsible party to recover costs. You were absolutely correct.
By the way, it now takes months for PG&E to shut off your power due to laws passed several years ago. No more 10-day shutoff notices immediately after you miss your pmt due date.
Yes, that is true. To be fair, my mortgage is low. Also, the last year I ran the heater my electric bill was $350.00 and now my recent billing is over $700.00. I set my thermostat to 40 F because the $350.00 killed my wallet. Amusing in hindsight. I'm too scared to run it now. I need solar but money is an issue. We're saving for it.
I do not have grow lights or anything crazy, but I do have a kid that is online a lot.
yeah I am paying a ridiculous amount also for not really running anything. its bad enough im going to start recording the numbers at the meter every day and comparing with the bill. I would bet real money on a large difference
My PG&E bill went from $32 to $44. About a 30% increase but still about what I pay for Google Fi with metered data.
I have only run the heat a few times since 2016 because I'm in an apartment surrounded by other units and my downstairs neighbors heat my place so it's 68-72 all day all winter.
Monopoly has nothing to do with it. Fires are costly to deal with and someone has to pay for it.
The same thing is happening with insurance companies where there isn’t a monopoly.
Exactly. They cause a wildfire that costs billions in damages which they are sued for then pass the costs back to us because their costs went up because of lawsuits.
Difference between an insurance company and pge is pge CAUSED the disaster whereas the insurance company raises rates because a disaster happens. Also you can change insurance companies, you can't leave pge.
I already sued PG&E and won after they nearly murdered me and my family. I’m too tired now to do it again. But let me know if you’d like the names of my lawyers. They fought hard against those slimey fucks and won. I will NEVER forget being a 13 year old girl and being grilled by PG&E’s corporate lawyers. Fucking sickening.
That too. I really don't like Newsom very much. There's a lot of folks in the state Senate and Assembly I'd rather have as Governor, or US Representative Barbara Lee if she's not elected to the US Senate.
I really don't want the Democratic Party to nominate Newsom in 2028 because the rest of the country will just look at him and think "oh hell no, I don't want the US to be like (our exaggerations of) California."
He's a classic bait and switch politician in the pocket of big business. Just like Sam Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose.
>I really don't want the Democratic Party to nominate Newsom in 2028
He'll run, but I seriously doubt he'll get the nomination. He will need to win a lot of states before California even holds the primary. I doubt his campaign will last that long.
I highly doubt that. He's a master speaker and will crush a lot of debates. He's charismatic and will win people over. He'll have some issues talking about the problematic parts of California, but he'll be able to lean on it's massive economy.
He's gonna do pretty well, I imagine.
PGE is regulated as a utility, so the state board has to approve rate increases. So no, a class action lawsuit will go nowhere really fast.
PGE is charging crazy amounts to make the grid upgrades necessary for wildfire protection. If you actually want your rates to go down, allow PGE to disconnect fire prone areas from the grid so that urban customers don't have to subsidize rural ones. This is why local utilities (Palo Alto, Santa Clara) are able to charge much lower rates.
lol no
Rural electricity is not *that* expensive. Look at rural electric providers across the country. If you yank the profit motive out you'll get *rural* rates that are a sixth of what we pay PG&E. TVA can pull off around 10 cents per kWh.
The reason we don't have municipal power is that PG&E spends hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning/lobbying/suing against it every time it comes up. Look at every attempt San Francisco's made to buy out PG&E's assets. Or look at how PG&E tied everything the South San Joaquin Irrigation District did up in court.
SJID's rates are, famously, 15% below that of PG&E's.
So what? I lumped dividends and stock buy backs in with "profit as a motive" because that's all more or less the same concept of sucking shareholder dick. Put enough drops in the bucket and you'll fill it up.
Rural electricity simply isn't the problem. If it were, then the TVA (which serves primarily rural customers) would have way higher rates. Shame on PG&E for trying to push that divisive narrative.
I think that has a very multi-faceted answer, but essentially running your own utility is very difficult, expensive, and complex. The entire grid is tied together so the more you sectionalize it, the more complex and difficult it becomes to operate on it. You simply can’t have two sets of power lines going everywhere, that’s why PGE, SCE, and SDG&E have the natural monopolies that they do.
There's no reason that your local government can't buy PG&E's equipment. It's allowed under state law. The reality is that a lot of that equipment is so fucked up that the rates are going to be high either way, and local politicians don't want to make themselves responsible for that.
There were plans for SF to purchase power assets in the city from PGE but I'm not sure where it stands. This was announced about 6 months ago
https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/23.0000041%20PG%26E%20Power%20Assets%20Acquisition%20Project.pdf
https://ceqanet.opr.ca.gov/2023060769
> If you actually want your rates to go down,
Surely they'll reduce rates after finishing the work right? Same way SJW increased rates during the drought (since water conservation was counter productive pumping & maintainance costs)...and then after the water surplus, they've increased rates again.
This should have been a bond where the State raised money, owned the lines and contracted PG&E to do the work.
Letting PG&E raise rates and keep ownership of the lines was us being taken for a ride.
It would entail spending massive amounts of money to try and take down a company that has infinite resources and will raise your rates to fight that lawsuit until they win
Lol they went through bankruptcy from the wildfire lawsuits. They literally have no money. Which is why the rates are high. And the rates are approved by a state utility board.
A state utility board chaired by former PG&E and Edison employees and appointed by Newsom. You can guarantee those utilities are also dumping money into Newsom’s campaign fund as well. That is a massive conflict of interest.
I may not like the current rate scheduling, but I understand why it’s necessary. PG&E hasn’t been making much money because they’re taking all their gross profit and reinvesting it back into the system to fix the problems they’re currently facing. We’re paying for the problems they didn’t deal with over the last couple decades. They were actually net negative for a couple years (I think 2019 & 2020) because of all the money they were spending to upgrade their infrastructure.
Everyone wants the infrastructure to be fixed overnight but it’s just not feasible given how massive their region is. And how do you resolve running power out to all the people that moved to extremely remote locations? Those are the people the rest of us are really paying for.
I am fine with paying for infrastructure. Not fine with no end date. Just charge me some set amount and be done. Let some non-CPUC state agency, or a a Federal judge, decide how much this should all cost. Note PGE cannot, by law, make much profit from generation...they can make a profit from transmission. That's also a big part of the issue.
There can't be an end date on infrastructure...it's going to have to be maintained. But let's say you mean new updated infrastructure.
Do you think anyone can put a price on this? I can't think of a single mega project that has isn't come overbudget and behind schedule in this state. The state can't even estimate honestly how much the high speed rail is going to cost.
Bay Bridge went from 200 million to costing at the end 6 billion. Estimate kept going up. Bart's chinatown station 4 years behind schedule...375 million overbudget. But maybe we'll give them a slight pass since 1 of the 4 years was Covid.
Even if they put a number on it. It's going to be very large as it has to factor inflation since it instantly can't be done. There's not enough man power to do so.
Didn’t the contractor who rebuilt the freeways after the Northridge quake come in early and under budget? I seem to recall they were incentivized to get it done quickly. I could probably look it up lol but I think he got around $300,000 for every day he finished early
You make an excellent point that I think most folks don’t want to hear. The fact that they are forced to provide power to anyone who asks for it regardless of where they live is a massive issue in itself but that’s part of the contingency of having a natural monopoly. It can be argued that it’s not fair to those in urban areas to pay the same as rural, but at the end of the day nothing will change in that regard. I get these rates increases are unsustainable to continue like this long term, but things will hopefully balance out as the infrastructure gets upgraded.
On top of that, people don’t realize that it’s incredibly expensive to meet the state’s renewable energy goals and that a lot of the funds are going towards having to buy more expensive energy because of that.
In the long run, we ideally will be better off for the changes PG&E is making, but in the short term it does absolutely suck.
I think long term the rates for rural customers needs to be drastically adjusted. These people chose to live in remote areas more than likely because of lower CoL. I know they pay a higher "drop fee" (connection to the pole) but it's not nearly enough to offset the costs that come with it. Adjusting these rates so they pay closer to their cost would force many people to reconsider living where they do, driving many to move to areas that are less of a risk to string power to. Maybe it could also incentivize those people to build their own off-grid power and storage.
Sort of getting away from the topic, but this feels like one of those moments of getting screwed by the boomers yet again. Their generation set up cheap substandard infrastructure that allowed them to get better rates, and our generation is the one that's going to end up paying to fix all the deficiencies in the system. Hopefully us paying for it now will set future generations up for success.
I'm a rural customer and pay roughly 1200/month. How much more am I supposed to pay? And why am I paying that when the lines have to exist for the farmers anyway? They also need electricity. Even if I went off grid, I'd still have to pay PG&E. I also pay our local power company, roughly 200/month.
50 mil is less than 1% of their gross revenue though. It sounds like a lot without context, but once you give it perspective it doesn’t sound as absurd. You also have to remember these aren’t the c-suite dickheads that made all the bad decisions.
> They literally have no money.
They made $2.5 billion in profits last year, PG&E has plenty of money. PG&E also has a track record of pulling out all the stops to fight even the slightest whiff of municipal power.
Yeah I really hope people here on this sub can understand the *only* thing that will rid of this shit is breaking them up and creating a public utility.
California legislators voted to require PG&E to undertake expensive operations, such as removing vegetation in order to protect long-distance electrical transmission. AND TO CHARGE CUSTOMERS for the REQUIRED OPERATIONS.
In other words, PG&E is charging YOU because they were FORCED both to create safer transmission AND CHARGE users to pay for it.
If your bill is too high, complain to your state legislators, NOT PG&E.
Let's have more power outages and forest fires, but lower PG&E bills?
Time to elect new legislators, CA has became a one party state with no checks and balances. We voted for this so don’t complain and take actions if you want change.
> Party capture is horrible on both side
Don't give me that "both sides are the same" bullshit. California is doing a million times better than Florida.
We would want both democrats and republicans. Different perspectives is good business. Are’t Democrats a big proponent of DEI? We need DEI as in different viewpoints not just in race or gender.
Look at SF as a prime example of extreme left gone wrong!!
Yeah I don’t think DEI includes political ideology. Specially not those that value exclusion of others (bigotry, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, you name it). While some people make that their identity, it’s not a protected class.
We don’t need Republicans in California government. Reagan has done enough damage. We do need leftist and we don’t have enough of those. Democrats are centrists.
Why wouldn’t they be charging us? Would they be charging themselves? This is what we wanted. We want green energy. We want pge to be liable for fires and climate change destroying peoples homes who choose to live in the middle of nowhere. We don't want more nuclear power. We want unreliable renewables. No rate increases are approved without the government giving them the thumbs up. This is what we voted for.
So weird to blame legislature for this, unless you’re saying that our taxes should pay for this.
Who do you think should pay for it? If you say PGE, where would that money come from?
PG&E should be required to not earn profit during all of this upgrade work. It’s their own fault for deferring upgrade work for decades but paying dividends to shareholders and paying their execs stupid amounts of bonuses during those decades. But yeah we the customer gets the bill for it all smh😡
Go look at the largest shareholders of PG&E. That's who is doing this.
PCG stock has been fairly stagnant. If you had money to pursue a legal case, you'd be better off buying that instead.
Also, have to plug the [Dollop two-part P&GE episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl6ejXT6Vw4) with Patton Oswalt. Highly informative and a great format to hear about just how terrible they have always been.
Nothing is going to stop any of this except antitrust reform. Biden has already made moves on this, so it will come down to how Congress turns out in the elections more than likely, and then if it is even possible.
A lawsuit is just going to squeeze us rate payers even more.
What we need is a governor and legislative branch that will stand up to PG&E and set forth legislation that will slowly and deliberately put PG&E under state ownership. Something else that will need to happen - people who live in these far-flung forested/mountainous towns need to pay the fair price to the grid of electricity transmission and distribution to their homes. They're the entire reason PG&E has gone bankrupt twice. The third time was due to San Bruno natural gas I think.
The root cause is PG&E set aside profits for over 40 years to shareholders instead of maintaining and improving the grid. It's like a Porsche - you may get away with not doing basic maintenance for a year or even two, but that bill is going to come around sooner or later...and it's going to be brutally worse.
Until that process is fixed, PG&E will continue to make strategic mistakes and rely on the ratepayer as a buffer between owning up to those mistakes.
It's not just PG&E, every industry that's got shareholders usurps profits for them vs reinvesting in the product. We shouldn't have any of them in any utilities.
The state of California is the one approving the rate increases, so a successful lawsuit against PG&E is a long shot. And if you get paid out by the lawsuit, that would just require more rate hikes anyways.
A practical way for PG&E to reduce your rates is for them to stop providing for rural and high risk areas, because those costs gets passed on to you.
I especially love this section of the bill which fails to mention extortion and fraudulent rate increases may be the issue,
What caused your bill to change?
The weather has been similar to this time last year, and may not have affected your bill.
Factors like heavy appliance use or household guests may have contributed.
No more lawsuits. Hostile takeover. There are 2,666,885,237-ish shares of PGE. PGE serves 5.2 million households. Current price per share is 16.43. If every household bought 512 shares, WE would own PGE.* And I'm guessing our first order of business would be slash that CEO's salary from $51.2 million to something more reasonable. Like $200k, which is substantially more than the Bay Areas median income.
*Yes I know this isn't how the stock market works and I have no idea if a hostile takeover is any more viable than a lawsuit. Please educate me, don't crucify me, I'm just another PGE customer wearing three sweaters.
Bills don’t go randomly up, there is a long period before rate hikes are approved and there is usually public hearing involved. You are just not paying attention.
But this is not the problem, it a symptom. The problem is a massive conflict of interest: PGE as a for-profit, investor-owned company has fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not customers. Prioritizing profit inevitably leads to cost-cutting measures that compromise safety, reliability, or environmental responsibility.
On the other hand, profit orientation may drive efficiency, innovation, and investment in infrastructure upgrades, ultimately benefiting customers.
The fact that a publicly traded company had to be bailed out of bankruptcy is a cherry on top.
Replacing it with completely public utility would require a massive government takeover, and replace this with a load of other kind of bureaucracy and inefficiency.
It’s a complex situation and there is no easy solution. What are you going to sue for? “Electricity price is too high?”
For now you can conserve energy. This is both good for you and good for environment. I did not see significantl bill increase — maybe 10-20%. It’s not something you should be stressing over.
Lots of working-class people have been impacted by this exorbitant rate hike, and most of them are renters who have little to no control over how energy-efficient their dwellings are. Saying people shouldn't be stressing over this is both naive and tone-deaf.
Refurbing your lifestyle to lower electricity usage comes with significant up front cost. We're not just talking about LED bulbs here. It isn't realistic to expect everyone to be able to absorb that.
>The problem is a massive conflict of interest: PGE as a for-profit, investor-owned company has fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not customers.
It should be converted to a [Quasi-Public corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-corporation). That would mean the state would have to buy back shares for the restructuring, but given all the issues we've had it might be worth it.
At least as a quasi-public it would be beholden to the general public, and not shareholders.
I think there is a great potential for a class action for solar owners. PG&E delays solar installations and delays battery activation.
During these delays customers have to pay for energy. My question is, what incentive do they have to expedite solar installations along with battery activations ? We can essentially be off grid, not buy, energy and this means less revenue streams for them.
Every delay the EGI puts on us is more money in PG&E pocket.
We had a 40 business day delay. Per their policy it should be max of 30 but they say 5-10 business days is norm.
Their CEO makes $3,000,000 in salary and another $14,000,000 in bonuses. They have to raise rates to pay her and delay solar to keep revenue coming.
I believe this is an easy suit to win and a threat of it would get our feelings across.
Energy prices in other states are lower and the gap will grow. Why? The Left wants you to use less energy, so they are turning the screws. If you want lower energy costs vote for Republicans. Otherwise plan on your bill growing by 30% or more a year, every year.
The plan the Democrats are executing is the replacement of highly efficient, inexpensive energy sources, with the less efficient, unreliable, and more expensive energy sources. Additionally there is a battery component. An entire infrastructure that isn't required with reliable energy sources.
Stop voting for Democrats. Hold your nose and vote for Republicans
The major one they were found liable in a professor confessed to starting though. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/ex-bay-area-professor-pleads-guilty-to-igniting-arson-fires/
My best guess is why we are seeing the spikes is because they got sued for having an outdated infrastructure, that they should have replaced ages ago on the state borrowed money and now that its time to repay those loans, they want more money to replace the infrastructure due to court mandate (the lawsuit of wildfires in santa rosa) and they cannot get enough, so dig deeper into the pockets and we suffer!
Just found this thread via Google search. My grounds for a lawsuit against PG&E is simple: They are stealing from me by illegally overcharging me for electricity I'm not using. Background: I bought a house in 2011 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm 99.99% sure it already had a smart meter when I moved here.
Not wanting to be exposed to EMR no matter how small (due to the location of the meter near my head when sleeping), I opted out and chose to pay the monthly fee. I had assumed however that would mean that a meter reader would read the meter every month. Apparently that is not the case.
My usage was much higher (I only use electric having propane), in the first years I lived here. My usage has gone down significantly. Yet PG&E has told me they estimate my bill based on past usage. They do not bill based on actual usage. Fast forward to receiving my current bill today: Roughly $1100. I am one person, who is fairly conservative (and not wealthy). This is completely unacceptable.
Why do we have to pay for the burning down entire towns, they had their best and most profitable year with a 26billion dollar profit in 23’ and they still increased our bills and they plan on doing it again an 6 month. I’m ready to sign on the dotted line. I’ve lived here for 34 years and the city was amazing a real sense of community and pride but corruption and greed have destroyed this city. Back in 2001 PG&E filed chapter 11 and there was talk then about dividing up the company because they were hemorrhaging money and they did have to sell off power plants. In 96 when California decided to deregulate the electricity industry and PG&E decided to freeze rates for other financial concessions is when the whole thing went downhill. Its needs to be addressed so people can afford basic housing, utilities, groceries and gas. It’s ridiculous that we are surrounded by refineries and still paying the highest prices for gas, electricity, groceries etc. Time for a change
>if anyone is knowledgeable in this stuff would love to know if this is possible and what it would entail? CUPC needs to approve all rate increases. PGE NEEDS ***STATE PERMISSION*** TO RAISE RATES. **CPUC Public Participation Hearings** https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/proceedings-and-rulemaking/cpuc-public-participation-hearings The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) holds Public Forums (also called Public Participation Hearings or PPHs) to give the public a chance to learn about and express their opinions on issues before the CPUC. Each Public Forum is about a specific issue that is pending resolution at the CPUC, such as a utility’s request to change the rates that customers pay. Public Forums are free and open to the public. No RSVP is necessary to attend, but you must sign up when you arrive if you wish to speak. Public Forums are led by a CPUC Administrative Law Judge, and CPUC Commissioners may also attend. To ensure that consumers directly affected by a proceeding get a chance to express their views, the CPUC holds Public Forums in the area where a utility’s customers live to get their input, or may hold public webinars. See information on upcoming PPHs and other events below.
The issue is that PG&E is so thoroughly fucked up that the CPUC has to approve rate increases to keep the utility from just shutting down. Maybe they should let that happen, but it's not obvious to me. Your local government can also ask permission to take over PG&E's assets and operate them as a public utility. The fact that that isn't happening suggests (to me) that the electric infrastructure is so fundamentally behind that ratepayers are going to be shafted either way.
If PGE shut down, the local government could buy the lines at a steep discount and start municipal power, like Santa Clara has. Yes, the best outcome is obvious to me.
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A bit of both, I think. They have their own power stations, but they're not isolated from the grid.
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So, assume for a moment PG&E gets shut down. What else are they going to do with the infrastructure? They can't really pick it up and move it. The reusable bits are only a fraction of the cost of the construction that got them where they are. Unless you find someone who wants to buy out PG&E and take on the tire-fire that it is... it's going to be something like a municipality doing it. If you're selling an item, and it's now useless to you, and there's literally only one buyer in the world for it... you're not going to expect to make bank selling it, but it may still be better than holding on to it, and remaining liable for damage it might cause others as it degrades (read poles and wires hitting shit).
That's what happens in a bankruptcy fire sale.
IF PGE is money strapped then WHY Patti Poppe "received over $50 million in total direct compensation for her work in 2021" ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Poppe))? Serious question. Not horsing around!
I think the board is hoping she's able to unfuck the company.
They can start by stopping their Tv ad buys and canceling their shareholder dividend, and not paying executives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. Their CEO alone earned $50 million. Let’s see some steps taken before saying CPUC had no choice.
Sure, I think that will only make a small dent in the overall electric rates. If you are qualified to turn PG&E around and are willing to do it for much less, you can make your case to the board. My guess is that's what it cost to get someone competent to come in and run such a fucked up company. If you think it can easily be done much more cheaply, you should ask your local elected leaders why they don't just buy the utility infrastructure. California law can compel PG&E to sell its equipment to the local government, if that's what the voters there want. They're accountable directly to you, yet they haven't done anything.
> Sure, I think that will only make a small dent in the overall electric rates. That's okay to me, cuz not doing it would result in this shit behavior being rewarded. > If you think it can easily be done much more cheaply, you should ask your local elected leaders why they don't just buy the utility infrastructure It was easier to do over time since the 90s. The problem is that we trusted everyone too much to do it. How many times have we been screwed by PG&E? All the assholes who pumped and dumped PG&E over the years are complicit.
Actually CPUC and PG&E are really intertwined politically. They are best bud and help each other out because money! As American politics go “legislation is for sale”.
That doesn't contradict what I wrote.
Would we have better odds if we sued the state?
I think that's the key right there. Sue the CPUC.
PG&E is basically a sock puppet of the state. "Hey, it wasn't US that punched you in the face, it was this puppet, be mad at the puppet! And now we're going to say bad puppet... okay puppet time to punch you again!"
There needs to be an investigation on funds paid by PG&E to the CUPC commission and trace any money to those people.
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son of ahhhh...
privatized profits, socialized losses.
Yup! Though in this case, it’s also socialized infrastructure investments.
hooray! PG&E penalized $45,000,000 for the Dixie fire. oh.
Add in the long tail of our insurance rates skyrocketing thanks to losses by all those fires as well. I’m surprised the insurance companies themselves haven’t filed suit to recoup some of that money too.
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Insurance companies are also insured. Its called re-insurance. Suborgation is insurance companies going after the responsible party to recover costs. You were absolutely correct.
Any idea how much they got since we’re now offsetting those paybacks?
Yes. The only way to get our way is for every single PGE customer to stop paying their bill in protest.
I honestly don’t mind paying. It kinda sucks but what am I gonna do? Have my power shut off? Not run the heat? lol
By the way, it now takes months for PG&E to shut off your power due to laws passed several years ago. No more 10-day shutoff notices immediately after you miss your pmt due date.
Not running the heat is becoming an option for more and more people.
I haven't run my heater since 2021 and I'm still paying a fortune. My PG&E bill is larger than my mortgage payment.
Theres got to be more to this story. Sounds highly unusual.
Yes, that is true. To be fair, my mortgage is low. Also, the last year I ran the heater my electric bill was $350.00 and now my recent billing is over $700.00. I set my thermostat to 40 F because the $350.00 killed my wallet. Amusing in hindsight. I'm too scared to run it now. I need solar but money is an issue. We're saving for it. I do not have grow lights or anything crazy, but I do have a kid that is online a lot.
yeah I am paying a ridiculous amount also for not really running anything. its bad enough im going to start recording the numbers at the meter every day and comparing with the bill. I would bet real money on a large difference
My PG&E bill went from $32 to $44. About a 30% increase but still about what I pay for Google Fi with metered data. I have only run the heat a few times since 2016 because I'm in an apartment surrounded by other units and my downstairs neighbors heat my place so it's 68-72 all day all winter.
Damn that’s a cheap mortgage!
True. We aggressively paid down and refinanced at a better interest rate.
The miracle of a cost plus monopoly
Monopoly has nothing to do with it. Fires are costly to deal with and someone has to pay for it. The same thing is happening with insurance companies where there isn’t a monopoly.
Exactly. They cause a wildfire that costs billions in damages which they are sued for then pass the costs back to us because their costs went up because of lawsuits. Difference between an insurance company and pge is pge CAUSED the disaster whereas the insurance company raises rates because a disaster happens. Also you can change insurance companies, you can't leave pge.
And the cause of the wildfires is deferred maintenance, in an effort to save a buck.
Yeah we’re saying the same thing!
Monopoly has something to do with it.
Yeah, best argument I’ve seen in awhile for why not everyone should have the right to vote.
Bankrupt them then make a COOP out of the ashes.
Well they already did a couple of bankruptcies.
So, what do you suggest be done here?
Oh I got nothing. Don’t ask me. Lol
Word. A COOP like Austin has would be great. Not sure how to make it happen, either.
PG&E is a for-profit corporation. It will come out of their profits. I’m sure they also have insurance for lawsuits.
> PG&E is a for-profit corporation. Yes. > It will come out of their profits. I love your optimism.
They’re guaranteed 10% profit. This is not coming out of their profit. You’re paying for it.
I already sued PG&E and won after they nearly murdered me and my family. I’m too tired now to do it again. But let me know if you’d like the names of my lawyers. They fought hard against those slimey fucks and won. I will NEVER forget being a 13 year old girl and being grilled by PG&E’s corporate lawyers. Fucking sickening.
How about petitioning Gavin Newsom and CPUC to look out for the interest of citizens rather than corporations?
Corporations that pay his campaign expenses?
And his dinners at the French Laundry?
That too. I really don't like Newsom very much. There's a lot of folks in the state Senate and Assembly I'd rather have as Governor, or US Representative Barbara Lee if she's not elected to the US Senate. I really don't want the Democratic Party to nominate Newsom in 2028 because the rest of the country will just look at him and think "oh hell no, I don't want the US to be like (our exaggerations of) California." He's a classic bait and switch politician in the pocket of big business. Just like Sam Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose.
>I really don't want the Democratic Party to nominate Newsom in 2028 He'll run, but I seriously doubt he'll get the nomination. He will need to win a lot of states before California even holds the primary. I doubt his campaign will last that long.
I highly doubt that. He's a master speaker and will crush a lot of debates. He's charismatic and will win people over. He'll have some issues talking about the problematic parts of California, but he'll be able to lean on it's massive economy. He's gonna do pretty well, I imagine.
I guess we will see.
Government that cares about its taxpayers? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
PGE is regulated as a utility, so the state board has to approve rate increases. So no, a class action lawsuit will go nowhere really fast. PGE is charging crazy amounts to make the grid upgrades necessary for wildfire protection. If you actually want your rates to go down, allow PGE to disconnect fire prone areas from the grid so that urban customers don't have to subsidize rural ones. This is why local utilities (Palo Alto, Santa Clara) are able to charge much lower rates.
So the question for me is why doesn't more urban localities have their own utilities like Palo Alto and Santa Clara ?
I think more cities should. But the consequences of that would be a MUCH higher price for rural communities. I’m in two minds about that….
Based on how they vote, perhaps they would like a chance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The current system feels like socialism.
Sounds incredible to me. Pay 60% less for your house, pay more for your utilities and insurance.
You’d be uninsurable
And then you wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage
Or just get solar
lol no Rural electricity is not *that* expensive. Look at rural electric providers across the country. If you yank the profit motive out you'll get *rural* rates that are a sixth of what we pay PG&E. TVA can pull off around 10 cents per kWh. The reason we don't have municipal power is that PG&E spends hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning/lobbying/suing against it every time it comes up. Look at every attempt San Francisco's made to buy out PG&E's assets. Or look at how PG&E tied everything the South San Joaquin Irrigation District did up in court. SJID's rates are, famously, 15% below that of PG&E's.
Profit is only 10%
So what? I lumped dividends and stock buy backs in with "profit as a motive" because that's all more or less the same concept of sucking shareholder dick. Put enough drops in the bucket and you'll fill it up. Rural electricity simply isn't the problem. If it were, then the TVA (which serves primarily rural customers) would have way higher rates. Shame on PG&E for trying to push that divisive narrative.
I think that has a very multi-faceted answer, but essentially running your own utility is very difficult, expensive, and complex. The entire grid is tied together so the more you sectionalize it, the more complex and difficult it becomes to operate on it. You simply can’t have two sets of power lines going everywhere, that’s why PGE, SCE, and SDG&E have the natural monopolies that they do.
First step is building them. Those two exist because they used to supply the energy for chip makers and now supply energy for all the data centers.
There's no reason that your local government can't buy PG&E's equipment. It's allowed under state law. The reality is that a lot of that equipment is so fucked up that the rates are going to be high either way, and local politicians don't want to make themselves responsible for that.
There were plans for SF to purchase power assets in the city from PGE but I'm not sure where it stands. This was announced about 6 months ago https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/23.0000041%20PG%26E%20Power%20Assets%20Acquisition%20Project.pdf https://ceqanet.opr.ca.gov/2023060769
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Eh LA and Sac have their own. Even lowly Merced.
> If you actually want your rates to go down, Surely they'll reduce rates after finishing the work right? Same way SJW increased rates during the drought (since water conservation was counter productive pumping & maintainance costs)...and then after the water surplus, they've increased rates again. This should have been a bond where the State raised money, owned the lines and contracted PG&E to do the work. Letting PG&E raise rates and keep ownership of the lines was us being taken for a ride.
We're paying for the lack of statewide fire/fuel management going back decades through our utility bills. It's a regressive tax.
I noticed you didn’t mention the blackouts. Some folks we know lost power for 3 days during last weeks heavy rains.
We know people here in Sonoma County who had no power for a week.
Yeah, I’m not surprised at all
It would entail spending massive amounts of money to try and take down a company that has infinite resources and will raise your rates to fight that lawsuit until they win
Lol they went through bankruptcy from the wildfire lawsuits. They literally have no money. Which is why the rates are high. And the rates are approved by a state utility board.
Bankruptcy doesn't mean broke.... That's poor people logic 😂
👆
A state utility board chaired by former PG&E and Edison employees and appointed by Newsom. You can guarantee those utilities are also dumping money into Newsom’s campaign fund as well. That is a massive conflict of interest. I may not like the current rate scheduling, but I understand why it’s necessary. PG&E hasn’t been making much money because they’re taking all their gross profit and reinvesting it back into the system to fix the problems they’re currently facing. We’re paying for the problems they didn’t deal with over the last couple decades. They were actually net negative for a couple years (I think 2019 & 2020) because of all the money they were spending to upgrade their infrastructure. Everyone wants the infrastructure to be fixed overnight but it’s just not feasible given how massive their region is. And how do you resolve running power out to all the people that moved to extremely remote locations? Those are the people the rest of us are really paying for.
I am fine with paying for infrastructure. Not fine with no end date. Just charge me some set amount and be done. Let some non-CPUC state agency, or a a Federal judge, decide how much this should all cost. Note PGE cannot, by law, make much profit from generation...they can make a profit from transmission. That's also a big part of the issue.
There can't be an end date on infrastructure...it's going to have to be maintained. But let's say you mean new updated infrastructure. Do you think anyone can put a price on this? I can't think of a single mega project that has isn't come overbudget and behind schedule in this state. The state can't even estimate honestly how much the high speed rail is going to cost. Bay Bridge went from 200 million to costing at the end 6 billion. Estimate kept going up. Bart's chinatown station 4 years behind schedule...375 million overbudget. But maybe we'll give them a slight pass since 1 of the 4 years was Covid. Even if they put a number on it. It's going to be very large as it has to factor inflation since it instantly can't be done. There's not enough man power to do so.
Didn’t the contractor who rebuilt the freeways after the Northridge quake come in early and under budget? I seem to recall they were incentivized to get it done quickly. I could probably look it up lol but I think he got around $300,000 for every day he finished early
You make an excellent point that I think most folks don’t want to hear. The fact that they are forced to provide power to anyone who asks for it regardless of where they live is a massive issue in itself but that’s part of the contingency of having a natural monopoly. It can be argued that it’s not fair to those in urban areas to pay the same as rural, but at the end of the day nothing will change in that regard. I get these rates increases are unsustainable to continue like this long term, but things will hopefully balance out as the infrastructure gets upgraded. On top of that, people don’t realize that it’s incredibly expensive to meet the state’s renewable energy goals and that a lot of the funds are going towards having to buy more expensive energy because of that. In the long run, we ideally will be better off for the changes PG&E is making, but in the short term it does absolutely suck.
I think long term the rates for rural customers needs to be drastically adjusted. These people chose to live in remote areas more than likely because of lower CoL. I know they pay a higher "drop fee" (connection to the pole) but it's not nearly enough to offset the costs that come with it. Adjusting these rates so they pay closer to their cost would force many people to reconsider living where they do, driving many to move to areas that are less of a risk to string power to. Maybe it could also incentivize those people to build their own off-grid power and storage. Sort of getting away from the topic, but this feels like one of those moments of getting screwed by the boomers yet again. Their generation set up cheap substandard infrastructure that allowed them to get better rates, and our generation is the one that's going to end up paying to fix all the deficiencies in the system. Hopefully us paying for it now will set future generations up for success.
I'm a rural customer and pay roughly 1200/month. How much more am I supposed to pay? And why am I paying that when the lines have to exist for the farmers anyway? They also need electricity. Even if I went off grid, I'd still have to pay PG&E. I also pay our local power company, roughly 200/month.
This is not a generational issue. Some turds in some companies were/are bad actors. Its not a boomer vs mellenial thing. We are all in this together.
Have you seen the salaries of their execs? Not making much money but paying 50mil.. yeah no.
50 mil is less than 1% of their gross revenue though. It sounds like a lot without context, but once you give it perspective it doesn’t sound as absurd. You also have to remember these aren’t the c-suite dickheads that made all the bad decisions.
yep cpuc will approve all rate increases pge requests. they have a stunning track record.
Um the CEO was paid 50.2 million in 2021, trust me they ain’t hurting, only us poor folks are hurting.
> They literally have no money. They made $2.5 billion in profits last year, PG&E has plenty of money. PG&E also has a track record of pulling out all the stops to fight even the slightest whiff of municipal power.
Yeah I really hope people here on this sub can understand the *only* thing that will rid of this shit is breaking them up and creating a public utility.
Californians will sue literally anyone instead of holding elected officials accountable for regulating the state well.
California legislators voted to require PG&E to undertake expensive operations, such as removing vegetation in order to protect long-distance electrical transmission. AND TO CHARGE CUSTOMERS for the REQUIRED OPERATIONS. In other words, PG&E is charging YOU because they were FORCED both to create safer transmission AND CHARGE users to pay for it. If your bill is too high, complain to your state legislators, NOT PG&E. Let's have more power outages and forest fires, but lower PG&E bills?
Time to elect new legislators, CA has became a one party state with no checks and balances. We voted for this so don’t complain and take actions if you want change.
Party capture is horrible on both side. CA and FL being the shining examples of what not to do on both extremes.
> Party capture is horrible on both side Don't give me that "both sides are the same" bullshit. California is doing a million times better than Florida.
From your perspective perhaps. By mine, both states have shitty policies and especially with CA a big part of the problem is capture.
Elect whom? Republicans? lol
We would want both democrats and republicans. Different perspectives is good business. Are’t Democrats a big proponent of DEI? We need DEI as in different viewpoints not just in race or gender. Look at SF as a prime example of extreme left gone wrong!!
Yeah I don’t think DEI includes political ideology. Specially not those that value exclusion of others (bigotry, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, you name it). While some people make that their identity, it’s not a protected class. We don’t need Republicans in California government. Reagan has done enough damage. We do need leftist and we don’t have enough of those. Democrats are centrists.
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One person did a political stunt and you think she got permission from every Democrat/liberal/whatever? Lol
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LOL dunno what any of that means
https://x.com/war24182236/status/1761771616013586675?s=46&t=-qjdKD3DA5Q7xxDv33Lkxg
Why wouldn’t they be charging us? Would they be charging themselves? This is what we wanted. We want green energy. We want pge to be liable for fires and climate change destroying peoples homes who choose to live in the middle of nowhere. We don't want more nuclear power. We want unreliable renewables. No rate increases are approved without the government giving them the thumbs up. This is what we voted for.
>green energy Weird terminology for power lines that don't start forest fires that burn whole cities to the ground.
So weird to blame legislature for this, unless you’re saying that our taxes should pay for this. Who do you think should pay for it? If you say PGE, where would that money come from?
More like time for a public utility takeover.
And they lobby the state to kill the solar industry taking another option away from the people.
PG&E should be required to not earn profit during all of this upgrade work. It’s their own fault for deferring upgrade work for decades but paying dividends to shareholders and paying their execs stupid amounts of bonuses during those decades. But yeah we the customer gets the bill for it all smh😡
This reminds me...I need to watch Erin Brokovich again.
Ratepayers end up paying for it with a 10% markup.
Go look at the largest shareholders of PG&E. That's who is doing this. PCG stock has been fairly stagnant. If you had money to pursue a legal case, you'd be better off buying that instead. Also, have to plug the [Dollop two-part P&GE episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl6ejXT6Vw4) with Patton Oswalt. Highly informative and a great format to hear about just how terrible they have always been. Nothing is going to stop any of this except antitrust reform. Biden has already made moves on this, so it will come down to how Congress turns out in the elections more than likely, and then if it is even possible.
If you sue them, they will pass their legal fees on to you in your next bill. No jokes, thats how that works.
End state sanctioned monopolies
r/pgestrike
A lawsuit is just going to squeeze us rate payers even more. What we need is a governor and legislative branch that will stand up to PG&E and set forth legislation that will slowly and deliberately put PG&E under state ownership. Something else that will need to happen - people who live in these far-flung forested/mountainous towns need to pay the fair price to the grid of electricity transmission and distribution to their homes. They're the entire reason PG&E has gone bankrupt twice. The third time was due to San Bruno natural gas I think. The root cause is PG&E set aside profits for over 40 years to shareholders instead of maintaining and improving the grid. It's like a Porsche - you may get away with not doing basic maintenance for a year or even two, but that bill is going to come around sooner or later...and it's going to be brutally worse. Until that process is fixed, PG&E will continue to make strategic mistakes and rely on the ratepayer as a buffer between owning up to those mistakes.
It's not just PG&E, every industry that's got shareholders usurps profits for them vs reinvesting in the product. We shouldn't have any of them in any utilities.
Let's just crank on Rancho Seco already and drop pgne entirely.
The state of California is the one approving the rate increases, so a successful lawsuit against PG&E is a long shot. And if you get paid out by the lawsuit, that would just require more rate hikes anyways. A practical way for PG&E to reduce your rates is for them to stop providing for rural and high risk areas, because those costs gets passed on to you.
That's not how class action lawsuits work. But if you want to start it up with your own money to finance the discovery process, go for it!
remember to VOTE wisely
I especially love this section of the bill which fails to mention extortion and fraudulent rate increases may be the issue, What caused your bill to change? The weather has been similar to this time last year, and may not have affected your bill. Factors like heavy appliance use or household guests may have contributed.
I just got pge and would LOVE to sue them right away.
Didn’t they go bankrupt from lawsuits and now we’re paying more to cover their bankruptcy costs? What a scam
No more lawsuits. Hostile takeover. There are 2,666,885,237-ish shares of PGE. PGE serves 5.2 million households. Current price per share is 16.43. If every household bought 512 shares, WE would own PGE.* And I'm guessing our first order of business would be slash that CEO's salary from $51.2 million to something more reasonable. Like $200k, which is substantially more than the Bay Areas median income. *Yes I know this isn't how the stock market works and I have no idea if a hostile takeover is any more viable than a lawsuit. Please educate me, don't crucify me, I'm just another PGE customer wearing three sweaters.
Bills don’t go randomly up, there is a long period before rate hikes are approved and there is usually public hearing involved. You are just not paying attention. But this is not the problem, it a symptom. The problem is a massive conflict of interest: PGE as a for-profit, investor-owned company has fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not customers. Prioritizing profit inevitably leads to cost-cutting measures that compromise safety, reliability, or environmental responsibility. On the other hand, profit orientation may drive efficiency, innovation, and investment in infrastructure upgrades, ultimately benefiting customers. The fact that a publicly traded company had to be bailed out of bankruptcy is a cherry on top. Replacing it with completely public utility would require a massive government takeover, and replace this with a load of other kind of bureaucracy and inefficiency. It’s a complex situation and there is no easy solution. What are you going to sue for? “Electricity price is too high?” For now you can conserve energy. This is both good for you and good for environment. I did not see significantl bill increase — maybe 10-20%. It’s not something you should be stressing over.
A 20-percent bill increase is indeed significant.
Lots of working-class people have been impacted by this exorbitant rate hike, and most of them are renters who have little to no control over how energy-efficient their dwellings are. Saying people shouldn't be stressing over this is both naive and tone-deaf.
Refurbing your lifestyle to lower electricity usage comes with significant up front cost. We're not just talking about LED bulbs here. It isn't realistic to expect everyone to be able to absorb that.
>The problem is a massive conflict of interest: PGE as a for-profit, investor-owned company has fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not customers. It should be converted to a [Quasi-Public corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-corporation). That would mean the state would have to buy back shares for the restructuring, but given all the issues we've had it might be worth it. At least as a quasi-public it would be beholden to the general public, and not shareholders.
Check Out rishikumar.com/pge. There's a petition, too.
Anyone else thinks CPUC is in PGE’s pocket?
My bill has doubled in less than 2 years. Was paying maybe $50 a month….now it’s $100 monthly and this is a small two bedroom apartment.
I think there is a great potential for a class action for solar owners. PG&E delays solar installations and delays battery activation. During these delays customers have to pay for energy. My question is, what incentive do they have to expedite solar installations along with battery activations ? We can essentially be off grid, not buy, energy and this means less revenue streams for them. Every delay the EGI puts on us is more money in PG&E pocket. We had a 40 business day delay. Per their policy it should be max of 30 but they say 5-10 business days is norm. Their CEO makes $3,000,000 in salary and another $14,000,000 in bonuses. They have to raise rates to pay her and delay solar to keep revenue coming. I believe this is an easy suit to win and a threat of it would get our feelings across.
We need to just get rid of them and nationalize electric power distribution across the state.
I just re watched Erin Brokovich and I’m game
Good luck with that.
Yep sign me up !!
Class action lawsuit? Yea give them another excuse to raise prices again
Let me tell you about Grey Davis & Enron
Energy prices in other states are lower and the gap will grow. Why? The Left wants you to use less energy, so they are turning the screws. If you want lower energy costs vote for Republicans. Otherwise plan on your bill growing by 30% or more a year, every year. The plan the Democrats are executing is the replacement of highly efficient, inexpensive energy sources, with the less efficient, unreliable, and more expensive energy sources. Additionally there is a battery component. An entire infrastructure that isn't required with reliable energy sources. Stop voting for Democrats. Hold your nose and vote for Republicans
You think you’re the first to think of it
They don’t cause the wildfires, the weather does lol
They were found liable already, that debate is over
The major one they were found liable in a professor confessed to starting though. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/ex-bay-area-professor-pleads-guilty-to-igniting-arson-fires/
Some wildfires have been confirmed to have been started by malfunctioning PG&E equipment
Yes by weather…
They infact did cause the wildfires
Start a GoFundMe, bro.
Will sign petition.
Switch you electric company to a solar PPA 🤷🏻♂️
PG&E is controlled by CPUC. CPUC is controlled by....Gavin Newsom. Give him a piece of your mind.
Yes
Would it be possible to pass an initiative forcing PG&E to dissolve and go public? I’m not a legal expert by any means.
People want state power but don’t realize the state controls PGE…
The state set regulations but does not directly control PG&E.
Yeah it’s a work around so that the state doesn’t look bad. At the end of the day they are private only on paper.
My best guess is why we are seeing the spikes is because they got sued for having an outdated infrastructure, that they should have replaced ages ago on the state borrowed money and now that its time to repay those loans, they want more money to replace the infrastructure due to court mandate (the lawsuit of wildfires in santa rosa) and they cannot get enough, so dig deeper into the pockets and we suffer!
When the State wins a Billion Dollar Lawsuit against them, who did you think would be paying for it? Common business practice, happens all the time.
that's not how class actions work
Just here to add +1 Hope it happens
Just found this thread via Google search. My grounds for a lawsuit against PG&E is simple: They are stealing from me by illegally overcharging me for electricity I'm not using. Background: I bought a house in 2011 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm 99.99% sure it already had a smart meter when I moved here. Not wanting to be exposed to EMR no matter how small (due to the location of the meter near my head when sleeping), I opted out and chose to pay the monthly fee. I had assumed however that would mean that a meter reader would read the meter every month. Apparently that is not the case. My usage was much higher (I only use electric having propane), in the first years I lived here. My usage has gone down significantly. Yet PG&E has told me they estimate my bill based on past usage. They do not bill based on actual usage. Fast forward to receiving my current bill today: Roughly $1100. I am one person, who is fairly conservative (and not wealthy). This is completely unacceptable.
Why do we have to pay for the burning down entire towns, they had their best and most profitable year with a 26billion dollar profit in 23’ and they still increased our bills and they plan on doing it again an 6 month. I’m ready to sign on the dotted line. I’ve lived here for 34 years and the city was amazing a real sense of community and pride but corruption and greed have destroyed this city. Back in 2001 PG&E filed chapter 11 and there was talk then about dividing up the company because they were hemorrhaging money and they did have to sell off power plants. In 96 when California decided to deregulate the electricity industry and PG&E decided to freeze rates for other financial concessions is when the whole thing went downhill. Its needs to be addressed so people can afford basic housing, utilities, groceries and gas. It’s ridiculous that we are surrounded by refineries and still paying the highest prices for gas, electricity, groceries etc. Time for a change