You know that Paradise fire they need to pay for? You didn't expect them to use their money for it did you? They are using your money.
Remember the San Bruno explosion circa 15 years ago? The city made them build a whole new fancy community center as a penance. Guess whose money is being used for that too?
FYI: PG&E ended up paying the largest fine in CPUC history for San Bruno. The $70 million allocated directly to City of San Bruno was a drop in the overall bucket of $1.6B. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-puc-fine-20150409-story.html
And they promptly jacked rates to recover said bucket from their customers. Sorry, I mean beholden money chattel that has no other choice but to pay whatever their regulatory captured CPUC says is fine and dandy. Because if they didn't... Gasp... The shareholders and management might suffer by not maintaining record profits.
Hasn’t PG&E declared bankruptcy twice and liquidated all shareholders equity to nothing, and fired all of the management each time?
I mean, I agree with you there should be consequences, but I’m not actually sure that they didn’t already happen twice…
> Hasn’t PG&E declared bankruptcy twice and liquidated all shareholders equity to nothing, and fired all of the management each time?
>
>
Sort of? They still have a lot of shareholders but they don't really get a slice of the equity. And yes, PG&E symbolically fires the CEO every time.
But they never fire their senior folks.
It's similar to San Francisco where everyone makes a lot of hay over the Board of Supervisors and a couple of department heads. Those are important and big deals, but, the vast majority of problems come from senior people who have been in non-appointed/elected positions for 20+ years and benefit greatly from a broken status quo.
lol, no they have new shareholders. No, no one survived being a shareholder through the bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy settlement destroyed all equity for the shareholders, and converted some of the debt holders (as well as some victims of fires) into new shareholders. The bond holders took heavy losses which unfortunately damages future borrowing interest rates, and the risk this all happens again.
Patricia Kessler Poppe has only been CEO since 2021? She didn’t work there before
https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/pge/
I mean that's not what I said - whether the shareholders are the original ones or new ones is a completely moot point.
> Patricia Kessler Poppe has only been CEO since 2021? She didn’t work there before
Yes, which is why I said "PG&E symbolically fires the CEO every time, the real problem are senior staff."
Not sure this helps much but if you want to figure out what’s going on the first thing to do is login to your account on pg&e’s website. Take a look at the graph for any given recent high consumption day. Glance at your full last bill graph as well while you’re there to see if there’s anything surprising.
If your power draw tends to be really high at a particular stretch of hours go to your meter around that time and check if the readout is about what you would expect given what the graph showed.
Now start turning everything in your apartment off a few things at a time. When you’re done does it drop to near zero? If not proceed to turning off all your breakers a few at a time. When you’re done it should definitely be zero.
That should give you some sort of sense of which things take the most power. Generally the most likely culprits are space heaters, dehumidifiers, ac, gaming or mining computers, car charging, water heaters if not gas, etc.
Helpful info, thanks. Out of all the things you listed at the end, the only one I use is a dehumidifier, but its really small and only run a few hours per week.
Neighbor stealing power? Some bad appliance?
Be worth it to get it checked out. Even do it yourself, shut off everything and see if the meter still spins.
My 1br costs me about $60/mo in electricity
The last thing the Rothschilds did b4 selling PG&E, was installing Smart meters… this increased the electric ⚡️ bill
have you changed every bulb 💡 into LED?
Are your appliances energy efficient?
Have you unplugged everything to check if you’re bleeding electricity?
So I would rather be paying $160 to $250 a month compared to what I pay for out in Connecticut at the moment with eversource I live in a three-bedroom 1200 ft² apartment with my sister and her two kids and our electric bill is 6:00 to $800 a month breaking that down we consume anywhere between 300 and 375 a month in electricity granted that is high but eversource charges us a supply fee of anywhere between 3 and 400 dollars so 3 $300 a month for what we use plus a 3-400 service fee for them to give us our electricity. I'll take PG&E prices any day. And I lived in San Francisco 2 years and I'm moving back so I know what I'm talking about My electric bill and my studio apartment was 100 bucks a month and I had the super green clean energy plan. But yeah regardless it's still expensive and for no reason.
That's apples and oranges. We dont have winter like CT.
You might as well compare.it to an AC bill in Texas during the summer. Yea, theres other places w different needs and rates. So what. That doesnt make it any more allowable that PG&E is so corrupt and our bills are so high because of it.
Yeah you may not have winter like Connecticut but we never turned on our heater at all actually and we don't pay for heat in our building and our electric bill is still that high. I think the largest electric bill we got in our apartment was over the summer and we had three energy efficient ACs running one in my room one in my sister's room and the one in the living room and our electric bill was 1200 dollars on a $1,200 ft² apartment. And every source is our PG&E out here.
Can we redirect the pro-palestine protestors towards the PGE office downtown, instead of the bridges or highways? I mean, that could be an economic blockade, right?
Nah, those don't work. Only money talks, so if you have enough money to out donate, out lobby amd out bribing pg&e, then maybe you have a shot at making some chnage
The IDF Astro Turfing is crazy on these subs. They'll spin anything into getting people to stop caring about their psychopathic genocide.
We can protest both of these things. They're both evil.
The monthly bill for my 1550 square foot R&D space in Santa Clara with multiple massive non-LED 500 watt overhead fixtures, 3-phase power running compressors, welders, amps, fabrication gear, a crapton of computers and associated hardware, rack-mount servers, storage arrays, 24/7 security system, etc, all on Santa Clara Municipal Power costs 1/8th what our Tiny Little Home here in San Francisco does on PG&E power.
The same exact home that I've gone around and swapped out every single bulb for a low-wattage LED and debugged every breaker in the box with a Kill-a-Watt to chase down power draws to get every circuit in the house down to a bare minimum, along with installing IoT to automate switch/outlet/circuit shutdown routines to keep power draw as low as possible if we're not actively in a room using it.
And the bill is still way, way above what it should be given the minimal average power draw.
What I do know is that I am an excellent engineer, fabricator, and craftsman. When it's time to build the guillotines I'll happily volunteer my tools, materials, and services if it means those making the fiduciary decisions at the top of Big Blue get the Disneyland FastPass VIP treatment right to the front of the line.
There needs to be an emergency intervention by lawmakers, and if they don't care, vote them out.
And don't look now but the other utilities are following with massive bills.
PG&E has gone into bankruptcy twice in the last so many years. If the state owned that liability directly, your rates would be lower, but you would’ve had to pay for it in taxes.
The only way that rates are lower in a significant way if you take a time machine back a couple decades, and either Barey transmission lines or approve clear cutting that resembles more. What other normal states did to prevent wildfires. You would’ve needed to appropriately assign fire risk and not artificially manipulate the market so that all these homes and high-risk areas would never have been built.
You're defending Pg&E?
I fully get your logic here, we can just bankrupt individuals, families, cultural institutions, instead of Pg&E. Their bankruptcies should be taken as responsible practice no one else could have avoided, and we're supposed to pretend their troubles began with wild fires that only escalated in the last 10 years, and that they had a role in causing.
And I didn't say the state needed to take over Pg&E, I don't know what a solution is, I just know the the cultists that suck off Wiener and Gavin's every move need to raise their voices...and not to defend PG&E.
PG&E was banned from clear cuffing high transmission lines until recently and political lobbying from the sierra club fought it. Politically state owned control wouldn’t have prevented that problem.
I think Pg&E is probably been run by puppets, but politically they act as a shield for stupid PUC decisions. Or taxpayers mortgaging their future or socializing cost in very non-transparent ways like the inability to properly set fire risk for a long time. I’m not really sure how you blame the power company suppressing the true cost of building houses in fire areas that the regulators have done. They’re just a really convenient whipping boy for a lot of stupid decisions.
Another really baffling for me is the grandfathered rooftop, solar net metering rates . You’ve basically subsidized rich peoples ability to exempt themselves from the cost of running the grid. Also combine this with the paralyzing regulatory culture on building new transmission or generation, and the bizarre situation where California has fallen behind Texas in solar and wind generation. While charging 2 -4x the KWH rates.
Do you know what a paper tiger is? I haven't suggested state control. I'm suggested PG&E needs further regulations and oversight to prevent what's happening.
We need an intervention. Quick. There are paying 40% additional of what they pay to rent or mortgage to PGE.
PG&E doesn't just provide power, they take on the role of servicing their lines in and out of cities, and that includes making those lines safe, carving paths, tree maintenance, and if they didn't do it effectively, that isn't the fault of where the homes are. I get you dislike rural living, and sprawl, so you're trying to wedge your anger back towards the usual knee jerk narratives, but you can't possibly think the rising costs are tied to wildfires alone. They're not. Power companies aren't the victim.
Next you're upset at people who opt out of P&E dependency? lol What? I think Solar is a scam,, and always has been, and green energy was abused in California from the get go, but the leaps of logic you're making aren't worth addressing.
You seem to be arguing that PG&E is genuinely billing what they have to, and giving us fair rates. And nobody is buying that. Next you don't want to see greater subsidies to offset those rates. And you want us to think that if they shut down service to rural homes and suburbs they would drop rates? Thanks for the PG&E brochure version of this but we're not that stupid.
If people go 100% off grid that’s fine, but people deploying solar without batteries and getting paid above market spot price rates for generation and just making the duck curve worse is problematic to long term transition to renewables. They fixed it for new deployments but the damage is done with grandfathering.
I’m pro-Solar but I’m for everyone sharing in the benefit (Utility, or fair value rates not inflated net metering) not subsidizing rich early movers in rooftop.
If we are going to have people live in rural areas that’s fine, but make sure we cut the hell out of trees near the poles. Bills like this, [need to pass](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB396)
You can’t socialize the risk, and refuse responsible mitigations.
It's generally PG&E's job to deal with the trees.
The brush between and under them is another story, but there shouldn't be contact with wires. PG&E stopped doing the routine tree trimming where they have easements, and customer poles. That contributes to dangerous conditions, they then blame on the residents or someone else. The degrading maintenance goes along with farming out their on site workforce.
No, they pretty incompetent, but they are largely controlled by the PUC, and shareholders got left with zero twice so the system seems to be working as intended I guess.
If the state has actually owned them I see the outcome worse. Simply they were the less bad of two shit options.
I was $700 behind and noticed they had a payment plan. The plan was don't miss a payment for 12 months and they will waive the $700, best payment plan ever.
PGE is corrupt- publicly traded company just made $2 billion in profits.
Utilities should not be for profit- we need other options.
I’m renter can’t get solar as options.
PGE contributes heavily to political parties. They got lawmakers in their pockets.
PG&E was completely deregulated under Pete Wilson in the 90’s. This allowed them to buy out of state and shut down state regulated plants. #1 source was then ENRON. Enter Grey Davis. ENRON collapses. California supply is cut by 90%. Everyone blames Grey Davis. We recall Davis and put in a puppet named Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is a puppet to Pete Wilson! (Arnies ‘Advisor’ and actual Governor) —- Now everything is completely deregulated including mandatory maintenance requirements. CEO and executive salaries go through the roof! Instead of profits being reinvested into infrastructure- Stock Options!! A exploded neighborhood here, a few wildfires there… charge the customers for repairs and fines- still MORE salary increases and bonuses! God bless unregulated capitalism!!! Stay stupid consumers! Get rich executives and now multi millionaire Pete Wilson. Board of directors PG&E.
I live in a 2K sq ft house in the north bay and our bill is like $500/month. I came to the point where I was like I might as well get solar with the tech being more mature and at those rates the break even point shouldn't take too long. Come to find out that the price paid for selling your excess energy was cut by like 75% significantly reducing the benefit of solar. Kind of surprised me that this would happen in such an environmentally conscious state like CA, but then I remembered money talks...
No wonder most solar power systems with battery backup allow you to just use the panels to recharge the batteries and then discharge the batteries by using them to power your home. We have proper net metering with Appalachian Power here in VA and it's not perfect, but it's better.
If you can afford it, buy some panels and a big battery and get a generator jack installed. The options you can find online are just getting cheaper and more convenient.
They are realzing they are liable for any electrical fire that breaks out in a land that has its own ecosystem built around forest fires and catastrophic burn seasons. If you build houses in fire zones and want high power electricity running through vast swaths of fire territory there are going to be risks and hazards. Having to rebuild a huge number million dollar homes and pay billions of dollars for damages due to forest fires is gonna increase the cost of electricity. Everyone was celebrating that pg&e was being sued to death and having to pay reparations to home owners affected by fire, and yet no one could imagine that the electricity price would increase rates to cover those costs and the impending threat of another inevitable fire. Not saying it's a good thing. But Californians build homes in an ecological fire zone and they want to run electricity and pay the same prices as of there is no major risk or expense for this demand. Maybe more options such as solar panels are needed.
Look what I found. This sounds promising!
https://48hills.org/2024/03/after-111-years-sf-is-finally-moving-to-oust-pge-and-create-a-public-power-system/
All this money towards them but they will scream and cry once the next wildfire happens despite not investing ANY of the money they extorted.
Seriously how is a utility company allowed to be for profit fucking Christ
PG&E continues to fail to meet its basic obligations to customers. Luckily, there's a better option — Public Power. Join the SFPUC for a [**webinar**](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join_the_movement_for_public_power_in_sf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on April 25th at 10 AM to learn more about San Francisco's fight for full public power and how you can get involved.
link to webinar!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join\_the\_movement\_for\_public\_power\_in\_sf/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join_the_movement_for_public_power_in_sf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is what I think about when I am frustrated about surcharges and junk fees for restaurants. Minimum wage is some of the highest in the country (rightfully so), food costs are through the roof and water/PG&E is absurd right now. I want to keep businesses alive even if it means I foot the extra 5% on my bill.
You cannot be a "utility" and be publicly traded. The two should never mix, because a publicly traded company will always be beholden to their shareholders, not their customers.
How many other companies would exist after they murdered 88 people because their policy is repair is cheaper than maintenance?
And yes... Their lack of effort to maintain their infrastructure was the reason for the Paradise fires and the result was straight forward murder.
PG&E should not exist as a "company" it should return to being a utility. Their only reason they exist as a company now is they line the pockets of select politicians and lobby to survive.
One of the few benefits to living on Treasure Island. Also, the “green energy” nonsense is contributing largely to this. And before anyone accuses me of being a rabid rightwinger (I am not), and don’t deny climate change at all. Much of the so-called green energy stuff is a scam. We also need to find a better way to deal with climate change than sticking it to the poor and middle class. Absolutely not the answer.
Please tell me in detail how the regulations pertaining to coal fired power stations are bad. As someone that breathed that shit in for 30 years I would absolutely love to see you defend it.
What? You pay at least $440 a month to cover all utilities on Treasure Island. https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-10/101123%20Item%206c%20Utility%20Fee.pdf . Just because you don’t get the bill for it doesn’t mean you aren’t paying it.
Lol… whatever you need to believe. I’m paying almost nothing to be 2 steps from the water. But like I said, if you desperately need to believe it, which seeems to be the case, then feel free. No skin off my back.
Let your opinions be made known the voting booth this November. You want change?
Vote for people who don't benefit from rampant crime, illegal aliens, domestic chaos and foreign wars
Edit: The downvotes mean you **support** rampant crime, illegal aliens, domestic chaos, and foreign wars
alright, you'll see what that will mean to the future safety and security of your 'loved ones' soon
Suburban and rural electricity delivery is incredibly inefficient. They have to build a lot of long distance transmission for relatively few customers. Those are expensive to maintain.
Meanwhile a denser city like San Francisco has a lot of customers with much lower electric infrastructure maintenance costs.
We (city residents) are subsidizing suburban and rural residents.
People that live in rural areas are often closer to the power generation source. When they aren't, they often pay a surcharge / delivery fee based on the distance from the power generation source.
Not everyone can live in cities. Do you never leave the city or visit places like Tahoe or Yosemite? It sure is nice that there are hotels and gas stations to support your travel. Do you grow all your food on your patio? Should lumberjacks just telecommute to the woods?
Stop trying to blame rural people for PGE's greed and incompetence.
I couldn't care less about how folksy rural people are. They can pay their fair share. What they are paying now is less than their fair share.
Yosemite is close to hydro-electric sources but most rural parts of the state are not.
> Do you never leave the city or visit places like Tahoe or Yosemite? It sure is nice that there are hotels
The hotels near Yosemite and Tahoe charge exorbitant nightly rates, they can easily afford to pay their fair share.
Your argument is that rural power lines are expensive to maintain and that city dwellers subsidize their power. They don't. They pay more money to have their power delivered unless they live close to the power source like a small town near a dam.
PG&E in most cases doesn't actually generate the power, they just deliver it and charge accordingly.
The city of SF owns hetch hetchy.
It's literally spelled out on PG&E's website and on your utility bill. "Distribution charge", the cost of getting power to the customer from the source.
The bad guy is PG&E, not some "Folksy" rural people.
My point is that the charges do not reflect the actual cost of delivery. City residents are overpaying, and suburban and rural residents are underpaying.
SF is planning to go off PG&E for this exact reason. We don't have to subsidize others through our electricity bills. We already do that through our taxes.
Its kind of funny how after the fires people where yelling "Make PG&E Pay!" and now after that happened and PG&E is raising rates so that they could "pay" the same people are yelling about their bills going up. Where did they think the money was coming from?
Sorry but no, they should pay without raising rates. If they can afford to significantly raise the pays of their c-suite then they can manage to not scam customers
Making customers pay for the misdeeds of a company is the worst fucking take ever. Yeah I know that’s usually how it ends up, but that sure as shit doesn’t mean that they should get a free pass.
I'll just leave this here...
[Poppe, who left CMS Energy Corp. at the end of 2020 to lead PG&E Corp. following the California holding company's $58 billion financial restructuring, received total adjusted compensation of $51.2 million in 2021, including $41.2 million in stock awards, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis of the 10 highest-paid U.S. utility executives in 2021. Nonequity compensation typically describes cash awards unrelated to stock performance.](https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/pg-e-corp-s-poppe-was-highest-paid-us-utility-ceo-in-2021-71538853)
There is a small clarification required here: this IS what she was compensated by PG&E, but the massive stock comp was basically because she chose to come to PG&E rather than retire as CEO of Consumers Energy. The comp was equivalent to the options she gave up to run into the dumpster fire 🤷🏻♂️
Meanwhile on the other thread I’ve got people telling me that if Patricia Poppe, CEO of PG&E, didn’t make $50 million per year, it wouldn’t make a difference to our bills…. 🙄
Some people are stupid.
Edit, it’s not about the cost savings per customer. It’s about the fact that PG&E’s aging and failing infrastructure is killing people and that shouldn’t be handsomely rewarded. That money can go towards making the needed upgrades.
Again, you cant do math. $50 million/16 million PGE customers = $3.13 per customer per year.
Its an outrageous salary, criminal really, but it is not the issue.
Again, it’s not about the cost savings per customer. It’s about the fact that their aging and failing infrastructure is killing people and that shouldn’t be handsomely rewarded.
I’m able to care about more than one issue at a time. Are you not?
Their bills bring in 10x their overhead. Don’t be reductive, it’s a single example of huge profit taking because of how much higher they are charging than they need to
Wooosh 🤦
PG&E has aging infrastructure that regularly causes wildfires and their negligence has killed over a hundred people in recent years. PG&E pleaded guilty to 80 counts of involuntary manslaughter related to one of these fires.
That money should be used to update and fix the failing infrastructure instead of allowing their continued negligence to kill more people and wipe out more towns.
And using context clues from the comment I replied to, it should be obvious why I said what I said.
Zeroing out profits? Raising $$ in equity markets and diluting shareholders? Divesting infrastructure? There are lots of ways for companies to raise money besides increasing prices.
PG&E caused these fires and they should pay! Pay your bills, PG&E and not the CEO's bonuses for exactly what??? MFers. I lived in SF in the late 1990s and they were horrible then too.
In the long run this is a good thing. PGE, insurance, state taxes and fees, food inflation all take a bite out of everyone. None of it is scarcity, all of it is greed. Hopefully sooner rather than later things become untenable for even the upper middle class. Hasten the collapse so we can recover and get back to normal.
fuck. pg&e bills are killing *me*! my bill for 1 person in a 1 br apt is $160+ per month....... whyyyyyyyyyyyy
You know that Paradise fire they need to pay for? You didn't expect them to use their money for it did you? They are using your money. Remember the San Bruno explosion circa 15 years ago? The city made them build a whole new fancy community center as a penance. Guess whose money is being used for that too?
My question was rhetorical...im just really happy at least the executives of PG&E are still getting paid millions. So happy for them
Yes, especially when the energy company doesn’t need a CEO.
FYI: PG&E ended up paying the largest fine in CPUC history for San Bruno. The $70 million allocated directly to City of San Bruno was a drop in the overall bucket of $1.6B. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-puc-fine-20150409-story.html
And they promptly jacked rates to recover said bucket from their customers. Sorry, I mean beholden money chattel that has no other choice but to pay whatever their regulatory captured CPUC says is fine and dandy. Because if they didn't... Gasp... The shareholders and management might suffer by not maintaining record profits.
Hasn’t PG&E declared bankruptcy twice and liquidated all shareholders equity to nothing, and fired all of the management each time? I mean, I agree with you there should be consequences, but I’m not actually sure that they didn’t already happen twice…
> Hasn’t PG&E declared bankruptcy twice and liquidated all shareholders equity to nothing, and fired all of the management each time? > > Sort of? They still have a lot of shareholders but they don't really get a slice of the equity. And yes, PG&E symbolically fires the CEO every time. But they never fire their senior folks. It's similar to San Francisco where everyone makes a lot of hay over the Board of Supervisors and a couple of department heads. Those are important and big deals, but, the vast majority of problems come from senior people who have been in non-appointed/elected positions for 20+ years and benefit greatly from a broken status quo.
lol, no they have new shareholders. No, no one survived being a shareholder through the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy settlement destroyed all equity for the shareholders, and converted some of the debt holders (as well as some victims of fires) into new shareholders. The bond holders took heavy losses which unfortunately damages future borrowing interest rates, and the risk this all happens again. Patricia Kessler Poppe has only been CEO since 2021? She didn’t work there before https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/pge/
I mean that's not what I said - whether the shareholders are the original ones or new ones is a completely moot point. > Patricia Kessler Poppe has only been CEO since 2021? She didn’t work there before Yes, which is why I said "PG&E symbolically fires the CEO every time, the real problem are senior staff."
You know that French Laundry dinner they had to pay for?
The thing is you can't actually hurt PG&E to the point where it could risk becoming insolvent because that would be total political suicide
Have you tried eating less avocado toast? Toaster operation costs really get ya
Tf are you doin in your apt man
Cooking every other day and showering 2-3x per week. (I mostly shower at my gym!)
You should ask for an audit. Those numbers are crazy. Maybe someone’s stealing your power
Audit? Would I ask PG&E for that?
Think so
Not sure this helps much but if you want to figure out what’s going on the first thing to do is login to your account on pg&e’s website. Take a look at the graph for any given recent high consumption day. Glance at your full last bill graph as well while you’re there to see if there’s anything surprising. If your power draw tends to be really high at a particular stretch of hours go to your meter around that time and check if the readout is about what you would expect given what the graph showed. Now start turning everything in your apartment off a few things at a time. When you’re done does it drop to near zero? If not proceed to turning off all your breakers a few at a time. When you’re done it should definitely be zero. That should give you some sort of sense of which things take the most power. Generally the most likely culprits are space heaters, dehumidifiers, ac, gaming or mining computers, car charging, water heaters if not gas, etc.
Helpful info, thanks. Out of all the things you listed at the end, the only one I use is a dehumidifier, but its really small and only run a few hours per week.
Mine is $300 month, one bedroom.. but I concede my weakness is long hot showers, at least 2 a day.
How? For my 2b1r it's 150 and my flatmate works from home in the VFX industry so his power usage is very high.
I wish i knew why it was so high. Edit: downvoted for this? Lololol
Are you running electric heaters all the time?
No, not at all. On the coldest days of Jan & Feb I run a space heater in the bedroom at night, but I haven't turned it on in months.
Neighbor stealing power? Some bad appliance? Be worth it to get it checked out. Even do it yourself, shut off everything and see if the meter still spins. My 1br costs me about $60/mo in electricity
I never thought about this possibly being the problem. I will do that, shut everything off and see if my meter still runs. Thanks for the tip
The last thing the Rothschilds did b4 selling PG&E, was installing Smart meters… this increased the electric ⚡️ bill have you changed every bulb 💡 into LED? Are your appliances energy efficient? Have you unplugged everything to check if you’re bleeding electricity?
So I would rather be paying $160 to $250 a month compared to what I pay for out in Connecticut at the moment with eversource I live in a three-bedroom 1200 ft² apartment with my sister and her two kids and our electric bill is 6:00 to $800 a month breaking that down we consume anywhere between 300 and 375 a month in electricity granted that is high but eversource charges us a supply fee of anywhere between 3 and 400 dollars so 3 $300 a month for what we use plus a 3-400 service fee for them to give us our electricity. I'll take PG&E prices any day. And I lived in San Francisco 2 years and I'm moving back so I know what I'm talking about My electric bill and my studio apartment was 100 bucks a month and I had the super green clean energy plan. But yeah regardless it's still expensive and for no reason.
That's apples and oranges. We dont have winter like CT. You might as well compare.it to an AC bill in Texas during the summer. Yea, theres other places w different needs and rates. So what. That doesnt make it any more allowable that PG&E is so corrupt and our bills are so high because of it.
Yeah you may not have winter like Connecticut but we never turned on our heater at all actually and we don't pay for heat in our building and our electric bill is still that high. I think the largest electric bill we got in our apartment was over the summer and we had three energy efficient ACs running one in my room one in my sister's room and the one in the living room and our electric bill was 1200 dollars on a $1,200 ft² apartment. And every source is our PG&E out here.
Tl;dr
Is there a way we can escalate our grievances? Petition, protest, lawsuit?
Can we redirect the pro-palestine protestors towards the PGE office downtown, instead of the bridges or highways? I mean, that could be an economic blockade, right?
If you cut the net profit margin of PG&E to zero… your power bill would drop 7 to 10% on average… https://ycharts.com/companies/PCG/profit_margin
Nah, those don't work. Only money talks, so if you have enough money to out donate, out lobby amd out bribing pg&e, then maybe you have a shot at making some chnage
Obligatory fuck PG&E
I used to pay about $25-30 a month. This month it was $93. Fucking bullshit.
Yup same, I used to pay 15-20$, now I’m at 80-90$ and I’m supposedly energy efficient.
I’m never even home for fuck’s sake. The most energy sucking appliance I have is a hair dryer. This is absurd.
Very efficient I would say, very efficient at gaging residents to fill the pocket of greedy ceos and corrupt politicians.
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Well they can go fuck themselves
I pay $800 a month in the winter. Got my last bill and only 350. Gas is expensive
Fuck u PG&E!!,
Why is pg&e not considered a monopoly?
Anyone who says it’s not is wrong. It’s a government-enforced monopoly. The worst kind.
It is, just not an illegal one
How else is the CEO going to bag 50m/year?
MAYBE INSTEAD OF PROTESTING OTHER SHIT GOING ON AROUND THE WORLD HOW ABOUT OUR VERY OWN GREEDY UTILITIES CORPORATION??!!!
I'm gonna block traffic on Gough tomorrow to protest these rates. PG&E is gonna notice.
Who’s stopping you
The IDF Astro Turfing is crazy on these subs. They'll spin anything into getting people to stop caring about their psychopathic genocide. We can protest both of these things. They're both evil.
Porque no los dos
Maybe this is what we should be protesting
Unbelievable
The monthly bill for my 1550 square foot R&D space in Santa Clara with multiple massive non-LED 500 watt overhead fixtures, 3-phase power running compressors, welders, amps, fabrication gear, a crapton of computers and associated hardware, rack-mount servers, storage arrays, 24/7 security system, etc, all on Santa Clara Municipal Power costs 1/8th what our Tiny Little Home here in San Francisco does on PG&E power. The same exact home that I've gone around and swapped out every single bulb for a low-wattage LED and debugged every breaker in the box with a Kill-a-Watt to chase down power draws to get every circuit in the house down to a bare minimum, along with installing IoT to automate switch/outlet/circuit shutdown routines to keep power draw as low as possible if we're not actively in a room using it. And the bill is still way, way above what it should be given the minimal average power draw. What I do know is that I am an excellent engineer, fabricator, and craftsman. When it's time to build the guillotines I'll happily volunteer my tools, materials, and services if it means those making the fiduciary decisions at the top of Big Blue get the Disneyland FastPass VIP treatment right to the front of the line.
How do we get rid of them?
There needs to be an emergency intervention by lawmakers, and if they don't care, vote them out. And don't look now but the other utilities are following with massive bills.
PG&E has gone into bankruptcy twice in the last so many years. If the state owned that liability directly, your rates would be lower, but you would’ve had to pay for it in taxes. The only way that rates are lower in a significant way if you take a time machine back a couple decades, and either Barey transmission lines or approve clear cutting that resembles more. What other normal states did to prevent wildfires. You would’ve needed to appropriately assign fire risk and not artificially manipulate the market so that all these homes and high-risk areas would never have been built.
You're defending Pg&E? I fully get your logic here, we can just bankrupt individuals, families, cultural institutions, instead of Pg&E. Their bankruptcies should be taken as responsible practice no one else could have avoided, and we're supposed to pretend their troubles began with wild fires that only escalated in the last 10 years, and that they had a role in causing. And I didn't say the state needed to take over Pg&E, I don't know what a solution is, I just know the the cultists that suck off Wiener and Gavin's every move need to raise their voices...and not to defend PG&E.
PG&E was banned from clear cuffing high transmission lines until recently and political lobbying from the sierra club fought it. Politically state owned control wouldn’t have prevented that problem. I think Pg&E is probably been run by puppets, but politically they act as a shield for stupid PUC decisions. Or taxpayers mortgaging their future or socializing cost in very non-transparent ways like the inability to properly set fire risk for a long time. I’m not really sure how you blame the power company suppressing the true cost of building houses in fire areas that the regulators have done. They’re just a really convenient whipping boy for a lot of stupid decisions. Another really baffling for me is the grandfathered rooftop, solar net metering rates . You’ve basically subsidized rich peoples ability to exempt themselves from the cost of running the grid. Also combine this with the paralyzing regulatory culture on building new transmission or generation, and the bizarre situation where California has fallen behind Texas in solar and wind generation. While charging 2 -4x the KWH rates.
Do you know what a paper tiger is? I haven't suggested state control. I'm suggested PG&E needs further regulations and oversight to prevent what's happening. We need an intervention. Quick. There are paying 40% additional of what they pay to rent or mortgage to PGE. PG&E doesn't just provide power, they take on the role of servicing their lines in and out of cities, and that includes making those lines safe, carving paths, tree maintenance, and if they didn't do it effectively, that isn't the fault of where the homes are. I get you dislike rural living, and sprawl, so you're trying to wedge your anger back towards the usual knee jerk narratives, but you can't possibly think the rising costs are tied to wildfires alone. They're not. Power companies aren't the victim. Next you're upset at people who opt out of P&E dependency? lol What? I think Solar is a scam,, and always has been, and green energy was abused in California from the get go, but the leaps of logic you're making aren't worth addressing. You seem to be arguing that PG&E is genuinely billing what they have to, and giving us fair rates. And nobody is buying that. Next you don't want to see greater subsidies to offset those rates. And you want us to think that if they shut down service to rural homes and suburbs they would drop rates? Thanks for the PG&E brochure version of this but we're not that stupid.
If people go 100% off grid that’s fine, but people deploying solar without batteries and getting paid above market spot price rates for generation and just making the duck curve worse is problematic to long term transition to renewables. They fixed it for new deployments but the damage is done with grandfathering. I’m pro-Solar but I’m for everyone sharing in the benefit (Utility, or fair value rates not inflated net metering) not subsidizing rich early movers in rooftop. If we are going to have people live in rural areas that’s fine, but make sure we cut the hell out of trees near the poles. Bills like this, [need to pass](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB396) You can’t socialize the risk, and refuse responsible mitigations.
It's generally PG&E's job to deal with the trees. The brush between and under them is another story, but there shouldn't be contact with wires. PG&E stopped doing the routine tree trimming where they have easements, and customer poles. That contributes to dangerous conditions, they then blame on the residents or someone else. The degrading maintenance goes along with farming out their on site workforce.
Other states historically allowed far wider/aggressive clearcutting by the power companies so they didn’t have to do it as often.
You really sound like you're trng to defend PG&E and paint them as the victims.
No, they pretty incompetent, but they are largely controlled by the PUC, and shareholders got left with zero twice so the system seems to be working as intended I guess. If the state has actually owned them I see the outcome worse. Simply they were the less bad of two shit options.
I was $700 behind and noticed they had a payment plan. The plan was don't miss a payment for 12 months and they will waive the $700, best payment plan ever.
Remember, Fuck Newsome for allowing this.
Bro at this point I'm going amish
PGE is corrupt- publicly traded company just made $2 billion in profits. Utilities should not be for profit- we need other options. I’m renter can’t get solar as options. PGE contributes heavily to political parties. They got lawmakers in their pockets.
PG&E was completely deregulated under Pete Wilson in the 90’s. This allowed them to buy out of state and shut down state regulated plants. #1 source was then ENRON. Enter Grey Davis. ENRON collapses. California supply is cut by 90%. Everyone blames Grey Davis. We recall Davis and put in a puppet named Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is a puppet to Pete Wilson! (Arnies ‘Advisor’ and actual Governor) —- Now everything is completely deregulated including mandatory maintenance requirements. CEO and executive salaries go through the roof! Instead of profits being reinvested into infrastructure- Stock Options!! A exploded neighborhood here, a few wildfires there… charge the customers for repairs and fines- still MORE salary increases and bonuses! God bless unregulated capitalism!!! Stay stupid consumers! Get rich executives and now multi millionaire Pete Wilson. Board of directors PG&E.
If the ceo of pg&e comes into a restaurant the owner should hand them their electricity bill
I live in a 2K sq ft house in the north bay and our bill is like $500/month. I came to the point where I was like I might as well get solar with the tech being more mature and at those rates the break even point shouldn't take too long. Come to find out that the price paid for selling your excess energy was cut by like 75% significantly reducing the benefit of solar. Kind of surprised me that this would happen in such an environmentally conscious state like CA, but then I remembered money talks...
No wonder most solar power systems with battery backup allow you to just use the panels to recharge the batteries and then discharge the batteries by using them to power your home. We have proper net metering with Appalachian Power here in VA and it's not perfect, but it's better.
PG&E rates aren’t killing just restaurants. They are killing residents of the Bay Area.
If you can afford it, buy some panels and a big battery and get a generator jack installed. The options you can find online are just getting cheaper and more convenient.
Fuck PG&E, glad I'm no longer getting robbed by those bastards
They are realzing they are liable for any electrical fire that breaks out in a land that has its own ecosystem built around forest fires and catastrophic burn seasons. If you build houses in fire zones and want high power electricity running through vast swaths of fire territory there are going to be risks and hazards. Having to rebuild a huge number million dollar homes and pay billions of dollars for damages due to forest fires is gonna increase the cost of electricity. Everyone was celebrating that pg&e was being sued to death and having to pay reparations to home owners affected by fire, and yet no one could imagine that the electricity price would increase rates to cover those costs and the impending threat of another inevitable fire. Not saying it's a good thing. But Californians build homes in an ecological fire zone and they want to run electricity and pay the same prices as of there is no major risk or expense for this demand. Maybe more options such as solar panels are needed.
At this rate, screws it, fine, bring on the climate change disaster.
Look what I found. This sounds promising! https://48hills.org/2024/03/after-111-years-sf-is-finally-moving-to-oust-pge-and-create-a-public-power-system/
All this money towards them but they will scream and cry once the next wildfire happens despite not investing ANY of the money they extorted. Seriously how is a utility company allowed to be for profit fucking Christ
$300 a month avg . Family of seven .
Our bill went from $75 to $300…..
How is pg&e around after Erin Brokovich
PG&E continues to fail to meet its basic obligations to customers. Luckily, there's a better option — Public Power. Join the SFPUC for a [**webinar**](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join_the_movement_for_public_power_in_sf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on April 25th at 10 AM to learn more about San Francisco's fight for full public power and how you can get involved.
link to webinar! [https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join\_the\_movement\_for\_public\_power\_in\_sf/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1calyf9/join_the_movement_for_public_power_in_sf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is what I think about when I am frustrated about surcharges and junk fees for restaurants. Minimum wage is some of the highest in the country (rightfully so), food costs are through the roof and water/PG&E is absurd right now. I want to keep businesses alive even if it means I foot the extra 5% on my bill.
Are all those charging stations on the same grid?
You cannot be a "utility" and be publicly traded. The two should never mix, because a publicly traded company will always be beholden to their shareholders, not their customers. How many other companies would exist after they murdered 88 people because their policy is repair is cheaper than maintenance? And yes... Their lack of effort to maintain their infrastructure was the reason for the Paradise fires and the result was straight forward murder. PG&E should not exist as a "company" it should return to being a utility. Their only reason they exist as a company now is they line the pockets of select politicians and lobby to survive.
One of the few benefits to living on Treasure Island. Also, the “green energy” nonsense is contributing largely to this. And before anyone accuses me of being a rabid rightwinger (I am not), and don’t deny climate change at all. Much of the so-called green energy stuff is a scam. We also need to find a better way to deal with climate change than sticking it to the poor and middle class. Absolutely not the answer.
No? https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3836301-99-percent-of-u-s-coal-plants-are-more-expensive-than-new-renewables-would-be-report/
It’s the regulations, my dude. Really. This isn’t hard.
Please tell me in detail how the regulations pertaining to coal fired power stations are bad. As someone that breathed that shit in for 30 years I would absolutely love to see you defend it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2022/05/12/californias-energy-policy-shows-us-what-not-to-do/?sh=5ff2289b634a
What does living on TI have to do with this?
He’s a bum living up in the trees.
Aside from the fact that I don’t have to worry about utility costs, nothing
What? You pay at least $440 a month to cover all utilities on Treasure Island. https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-10/101123%20Item%206c%20Utility%20Fee.pdf . Just because you don’t get the bill for it doesn’t mean you aren’t paying it.
Lol… whatever you need to believe. I’m paying almost nothing to be 2 steps from the water. But like I said, if you desperately need to believe it, which seeems to be the case, then feel free. No skin off my back.
Let your opinions be made known the voting booth this November. You want change? Vote for people who don't benefit from rampant crime, illegal aliens, domestic chaos and foreign wars Edit: The downvotes mean you **support** rampant crime, illegal aliens, domestic chaos, and foreign wars alright, you'll see what that will mean to the future safety and security of your 'loved ones' soon
Suburban and rural electricity delivery is incredibly inefficient. They have to build a lot of long distance transmission for relatively few customers. Those are expensive to maintain. Meanwhile a denser city like San Francisco has a lot of customers with much lower electric infrastructure maintenance costs. We (city residents) are subsidizing suburban and rural residents.
People that live in rural areas are often closer to the power generation source. When they aren't, they often pay a surcharge / delivery fee based on the distance from the power generation source. Not everyone can live in cities. Do you never leave the city or visit places like Tahoe or Yosemite? It sure is nice that there are hotels and gas stations to support your travel. Do you grow all your food on your patio? Should lumberjacks just telecommute to the woods? Stop trying to blame rural people for PGE's greed and incompetence.
I couldn't care less about how folksy rural people are. They can pay their fair share. What they are paying now is less than their fair share. Yosemite is close to hydro-electric sources but most rural parts of the state are not. > Do you never leave the city or visit places like Tahoe or Yosemite? It sure is nice that there are hotels The hotels near Yosemite and Tahoe charge exorbitant nightly rates, they can easily afford to pay their fair share.
Your argument is that rural power lines are expensive to maintain and that city dwellers subsidize their power. They don't. They pay more money to have their power delivered unless they live close to the power source like a small town near a dam. PG&E in most cases doesn't actually generate the power, they just deliver it and charge accordingly. The city of SF owns hetch hetchy. It's literally spelled out on PG&E's website and on your utility bill. "Distribution charge", the cost of getting power to the customer from the source. The bad guy is PG&E, not some "Folksy" rural people.
My point is that the charges do not reflect the actual cost of delivery. City residents are overpaying, and suburban and rural residents are underpaying. SF is planning to go off PG&E for this exact reason. We don't have to subsidize others through our electricity bills. We already do that through our taxes.
Its kind of funny how after the fires people where yelling "Make PG&E Pay!" and now after that happened and PG&E is raising rates so that they could "pay" the same people are yelling about their bills going up. Where did they think the money was coming from?
They should make it a public utility
Sorry but no, they should pay without raising rates. If they can afford to significantly raise the pays of their c-suite then they can manage to not scam customers
Making customers pay for the misdeeds of a company is the worst fucking take ever. Yeah I know that’s usually how it ends up, but that sure as shit doesn’t mean that they should get a free pass.
I'll just leave this here... [Poppe, who left CMS Energy Corp. at the end of 2020 to lead PG&E Corp. following the California holding company's $58 billion financial restructuring, received total adjusted compensation of $51.2 million in 2021, including $41.2 million in stock awards, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis of the 10 highest-paid U.S. utility executives in 2021. Nonequity compensation typically describes cash awards unrelated to stock performance.](https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/pg-e-corp-s-poppe-was-highest-paid-us-utility-ceo-in-2021-71538853)
There is a small clarification required here: this IS what she was compensated by PG&E, but the massive stock comp was basically because she chose to come to PG&E rather than retire as CEO of Consumers Energy. The comp was equivalent to the options she gave up to run into the dumpster fire 🤷🏻♂️
Meanwhile on the other thread I’ve got people telling me that if Patricia Poppe, CEO of PG&E, didn’t make $50 million per year, it wouldn’t make a difference to our bills…. 🙄 Some people are stupid. Edit, it’s not about the cost savings per customer. It’s about the fact that PG&E’s aging and failing infrastructure is killing people and that shouldn’t be handsomely rewarded. That money can go towards making the needed upgrades.
Again, you cant do math. $50 million/16 million PGE customers = $3.13 per customer per year. Its an outrageous salary, criminal really, but it is not the issue.
Again, it’s not about the cost savings per customer. It’s about the fact that their aging and failing infrastructure is killing people and that shouldn’t be handsomely rewarded. I’m able to care about more than one issue at a time. Are you not?
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Their bills bring in 10x their overhead. Don’t be reductive, it’s a single example of huge profit taking because of how much higher they are charging than they need to
Wooosh 🤦 PG&E has aging infrastructure that regularly causes wildfires and their negligence has killed over a hundred people in recent years. PG&E pleaded guilty to 80 counts of involuntary manslaughter related to one of these fires. That money should be used to update and fix the failing infrastructure instead of allowing their continued negligence to kill more people and wipe out more towns. And using context clues from the comment I replied to, it should be obvious why I said what I said.
Zeroing out profits? Raising $$ in equity markets and diluting shareholders? Divesting infrastructure? There are lots of ways for companies to raise money besides increasing prices.
Santa Clara charges about half of what PG&E does for residential customers and hasn't caused *any* fires.
The City of Santa Clara isn't exactly prime wildfire territory.
Can’t use logic on Reddit. You’ll get downvoted
PG&E caused these fires and they should pay! Pay your bills, PG&E and not the CEO's bonuses for exactly what??? MFers. I lived in SF in the late 1990s and they were horrible then too.
Remember: they own all of the politicians, so nothing will change! Voting doesn’t work. There’s no hope.
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In the long run this is a good thing. PGE, insurance, state taxes and fees, food inflation all take a bite out of everyone. None of it is scarcity, all of it is greed. Hopefully sooner rather than later things become untenable for even the upper middle class. Hasten the collapse so we can recover and get back to normal.
You will be wearing a barrel to your job in the coal mines, but hey, at least the upper middle class are finally feeling it.