Received "the Letter" from SCE today!

Yeah, this is a head scratcher. What was the PUC thinking?

 

I recently moved to SoCal from NY. In Upstate NY my utility bills ran $200 to $300 per month. Most everything is pretty costly in SoCal but my utility bills have been trimmed to about $15.

Yes we have a solar system. We lean on the SoCal grid every night and in the morning before the sun comes up. It seems $120 a YEAR for grid services is not too expensive. A battery system to achieve the same thing would be far more expensive!

 

Agreed. But would be far more fair to charge everyone connected a grid service fee. So get rid of the minimum charge, and bill a connectivity fee directly to all.

If someone wants off the grid, more power to him/her. Just makes no sense that the heavy solar generators or low electricity utilizers should have to shoulder the costs of the grid connectivity that the others need even more.

 

Utility companies already profit from solar arrays.
When I am producing more energy than my house uses, it goes out to the grid. However, it doesn't go very far.
It simply powers my neighbors houses, and perhaps their neighbors houses. Most of the time it doesn't even go through the neighborhood transformer.

As such, line losses are much less. In other words, 1kWh of excess energy that is used by my neighbor means the utility doesn't need to generate 1.08 kWh of energy (to account for line losses).

 

I think both our electrical and natural gas bills have some "cover charge" elemements. Agree, it's frustrating, when you're doing your best to minimize usage, makes these constant charges all the more apparent.

 

Why would you anticipate being paid the retail rate when you are offsetting power purchases from the wholesale market that would be below the retail rates. In effect if they purchased power from you at the retail rates all your non solar neighbors would be subsidizing you.

 

don't blame the utility, their job is to make money. blame the legislature for dropping the ball.

 

Some of the extra charges on our utility bills are actually unrelated to the commodity, just a tax some level of government has insisted they collect.

 

Agree that the California PUC does a vary bad job.

Austin Energy charges everyone $6.50/mo for things ike grid maintenance and operation, help for the poor to get electricity, etc.

I think your anger should be at the PUC, and the california power regulation. Remember SCE went bankrupt and california decided that rate payers needed to pay of the bad decisions. Then SCE tried to increase San Onofre nuclear power plant, and the PUC decided that they could charge rate payers for botching that and shutting it prematurely.

California appears to be the home of the most privaged power producers, and one of the most incompetant regulators, but no you don't deserve to get paid retail for the power you produce. You simply get to opt out of SCE incompetance. Wholesale on both would be fair for up to a zero power bill, but grid charges would be on top of that. Over 0, that depends on what the grid operator needs to pay to incorporate your power. In southern california with the dead nuke, I would think you should be able to produce a much higher amount than 0 net bill, but that probably should only pay around $0.03/kwh.

 

should be is a matter of philosophy. i happen to agree with you, but if i owned one, i'd soak the ratepayers for everything i could get. it's up to the voters to pressure government to control the natural urge for profit taking.

 

Maybe to get away from fossil we've gotta take another look at nuclear? Don't want to open a can of worms tho. Just forget I said that, lol.

 

prices are coming down however. And when it pencils out things are really going to start putting the hurt on SoCal Edison.
.

 

like tobacco, they see the writing on the wall. but their not going down without a fight. it's too lucrative. just look at what the ceo's are making in salary, bonus and stock options.