We are not doing this in this thread (or any thread in this subforum). Post that in electric vehicles, or one of the vehicle subforums if you are interested in one of the teslas (but I know you arent).
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PG&E EV2A rate went up by 20% March 1
- Thread starter sorka
- Start date
We are not doing this in this thread (or any thread in this subforum). Post that in electric vehicles, or one of the vehicle subforums if you are interested in one of the teslas (but I know you arent).
Sorry ... my bad....should not even have taken the bait
The more likely reason those municipalities have lower rates is because they have a lot more electric meters per mile than PG&E. PG&E pays for a lot of infrastructure spanning a lot of land with relatively very few meters. Add in the cost of subsidies for “low income“ rate payers, the shifting of costs of rate payers with solar to those without solar, and the massive cost going forward to underground the electrical lines to help prevent forest fires.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Or also, you know, they are generally non-profit - so immediately a good 10% more efficient than everyone’s favorite IOU, paying out guaranteed returns to investors regardless of how terrible they’re managed.
Privatized profits, socialized losses - the American dream!
Municipalities take their “profits” and shift the dollars to other parts of the city budget. So there is a lot of pressure on municipalities from city officials (politicians) to get more “profit“ from the rate payers so they can use the money on spending for their initiatives. I’ve worked for “non-profit” and “for-profit” companies and by far the most expensive operations and waste was with the non-profits because they didn’t have the shareholders holding them accountable.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
It’s an interesting comparison, but hard to rationalize for me. I just can’t get onboard with the idea that PG&E is actually more efficient than all the municipal PoCos that wipe the floor with them in terms of rates, they just have 2-3x higher distribution costs so of course their rates are astronomical.
I’m not buying it.
One more analog. Communism is the municipality. There‘s no ”profit“ yet it’s extremely inefficient.
Capitalism, there are profits, yet everyone fares better.
Capitalism being efficient requires a free market. The IOUs being a government appointed monopoly means inefficiency plus profits.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I learned the same in my high school government class.
Capitalism is the best system we've got for most things, no question. However IMO it is fundamentally incapable of efficiently and equitably addressing certain matters of basic need, such as health care and utilities that are a matter of life and safety and should be a fundamental right. Every other developed country on the planet does this stuff better than us, so the "capitalism good, communism bad" platitudes we all had drilled into our heads over the past 50 years don't really have the same effect on me that they used to, and PG&E is exhibit 1A.
Not that we're capitalist to begin with... it would be hard to describe the US as anything but "corporatist" for the past ~100 years.
That's an interesting hypothesis. Some people just don't realize or don't care...Yeah we were talking about this in the thread about how to interpret your bills. The EV2A rate keeps moon-shotting because PG&E knows the vast majority of people on EV2-A are EV drivers who by and large are more wealthy. They have been jacking up EV rates for years and the EV drivers never seem to complain.
Like this TMC's main auto-sub-forums are filled with tens of thousands of EV drivers in NorCal; who presumably are using the EV rates to charge. And hardly anyone ever says anything about this. People just see petrol prices shooting through the roof and keep thinking Electricity is a bargain in comparison.
Here's an article from 2019 where nobody cared about a +25% increase back then either.
PG&E Raises Costs for Electric Cars by 25%. Nobody Blinks.
A large group of EV owners now pay 25% more for their electricity. Here's why nobody got upset at a change that would drive gasoline consumers nutswww.forbes.com
PG&E could probably triple the EV2A off-peak rate right now and I bet nobody would care lol.
Before one of my non-EV driving co-workers moved to the other side of the country once the pandemic hit, I was describing just tiers for E-1 and maybe how E-6 works. He was on PG&E but he had no idea and seemed surprised I knew the workings. Perhaps he doesn't look at his PG&E bill and he wife takes care of it? He hadn't been in the Bay Area for that many years yet. He lived on the other side of the country previously and originally was from the UK.
Years ago, I tried to explain to another co-worker (a female) about the tiers on E-1 and she didn't seem to want to listen to understand despite her complaining about her PG&E bill. She kept talking about days and I said, no, you could in theory blow thru tier 1 in a few days or not hit at after a month (I'm usually within tier 1). It depends on your baseline and how many kWh you use each billing period. We both work in tech.
I think I did take a quick look at her usage graph and her baseline usage when everyone was sleeping was already so high that she'd be past tier 1 from only that usage if it was at that level 24/7.
I suspect a decent % of PG&E customer EV drivers fall into one of these buckets:
- don't care
- no idea
- have sufficient solar to cover their usage
- have cheap or free EV charging at work (me)
I've been driving BEVs as my primary car since end of July 2013 and have been ICEV-less since end of Jan 2019. I almost never charge my EVs at home. I have free L2 charging at work. During the pandemic when we weren't supposed to go to the office or it was discouraged or not so safe, I had access to some free charging (e.g. DrivetheARC (now over)) or cheaper charging (e.g. 19 cent per kWh DC FC, if it wasn't broken). I charged my only BEV at the time (Bolt) on the latter two.
I mentioned the no maintenance above. No oil change, no plugs to change, no fluid change, no hoses to worry about and brakes last forever
But then the guy loses the ability to make the excuse they’re working on the car to hide away in the garage.
With an EV, it means there will be more time to assess the EV2A rates on the energy bill, but that’s less enjoyable than working on a car.
Watts_Up
Well-Known Member
Did you also check your Natural Gas billing with PG&E?
January 2021 - $1.60 / Term
January 2022 - $2.353 / Term
