UTILITIES KEEP TRYING TO LOOK MAGNANIMOUS WHEN THEY'RE NOT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

"UTILITIES KEEP TRYING TO LOOK MAGNANIMOUS WHEN THEY'RE NOT”

 

Twice every year, California’s privately-owned utility companies make a big effort to appear generous, when they’re actually being the opposite.

 

It happened most recently late last fall, when all three of the big privately owned electric providers, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, included messages in their monthly invoices informing customers they’d be getting a credit soon.

 

This was the state’s climate credit, part of a decade-old program requiring power plants, natural gas distributors and other greenhouse gas emitters to buy carbon pollution permits. The state – not the companies – redistributes much of the money to consumers through their utility bills, with electricity credits coming every April and October and one natural gas credit each April.

 

But the utilities often make their notices read as if the money came from them as some sort of rebate.

 

Rather than being generous, the companies, aided by their steadfast accomplices at the state Public Utilities Commission in making things ever harder on customers, actually seem to apply continually for permission from their so-called regulators to increase rates.

 

Each utility is normally entitled to apply every couple of years for rate increases or decreases (can anyone remember the last decrease?), but often apply in between for increases to pay for things like cutting back undergrowth near power lines to prevent wildfires and updating transmission lines for the same reason.

 

The companies are also about to start a new billing system including a flat monthly rate for infrastructure on all residential bills and some small businesses. The new structure takes effect in late 2025 and early 2026, with a flat rate of $24.15 per month for most customers and discounted rates of $6 or $12 for low-income persons and those living in deed-restricted affordable housing. The flat rate will allegedly also result in lower prices per kilowatt used.

 

The new system is supposed to lower rates statewide, the PUC claiming this will make electric cars and home appliances more attractive to potential buyers. 

 

Consumer groups have long been skeptical the new flat fee will actually create any overall savings, nor does anyone know how customers will prove their incomes are low enough to get discount rates. That was one problem with the flat rate system from the moment it was conceived, but the PUC pressed ahead anyway. Because tax returns, Census questionnaires and much other financial data is supposed to be private, it’s difficult to say how the utilities will get accurate income information.

 

But this won’t deter them. The plan will proceed, even if some pricing has to be based purely on guesswork.

 

Meanwhile, the utilities, the PUC and Gov. Gavin Newsom were also taking further action to discourage rooftop solar, the single most efficient way homeowners and public schools can economize on electricity costs.

 

That came when Newsom vetoed a bill that could have made it cheaper for schools and renters to install new rooftop solar panels and storage batteries.

 

The vetoed bill would have seen rooftop solar lower the amount of electricity homeowners and renters now buy from utilities. By vetoing it, Newsom assured that renters and schools must keep selling virtually all their solar output to the utilities for three cents per kilowatt hour and then buy it back for much higher rates. Not many individuals or school boards will invest in rooftop solar under those conditions, which will leave rooftop solar now largely for homeowners, who at least can use their own power, even after the PUC last year reduced the price utilities must pay for any excess power homeowners sell off.

 

Newsom used a false utility claim – that the former prices (still current for homeowners with pre-existing long-term contracts) paid by utilities for rooftop solar were causing higher power rates for others – to justify his veto.

 

These actions and many others put the lie to any notion that California’s big private utilities are the least bit generous or magnanimous. Rather, these companies strive always to up their profits, with the state’s highest officials as willing accomplices.

 

 

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net