• scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    4 hours ago

    Gee it seems like they could come up with a simple algorithm to protect low income people who are conserving.

    Aaaand why aren’t costs going down as usage goes down?

    • CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 hours ago

      Plenty of costs don’t depend on how much usage there is. If a tree falls and takes out a power line it cosrs the same whether that line was being used at 1% capacity or 100%

      • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        True, true. Other costs should track with usage though, like fuel. If they had said “when usage falls, costs don’t fall AS MUCH due to fixed costs” then I would totally get it. The way they phrased it makes it sound like costs going down just isn’t a thing that happens. Maybe that’s me.

        • Ullallulloo@civilloquy.comEnglish
          1·
          53 minutes ago

          I think it’s more like this: Say maintenance of a grid costs $1 million/year, power generation costs another $1 million/year and people use 10 million kWh/yr at 20¢ per. Everything is balanced. Then half the people cut their usage in half. Grid maintenance still costs $1 million/year, generation dropped to $750,000, but revenue dropped to $1.5 million. They have to raise the price 16% to go back to paying for maintenance. You’re still saving money if you dropped your usage more than 16%, but those that didn’t pay the difference.

          Since you generally have to be fairly well-off to afford the massive upfront labor costs involved with solar, its adoption has disproportionately raised the living expenses of the lower class.

          The alternative is a base services charge, where everyone pays a flat percentage of the grid maintenance costs and then his or her usage is on top of that. No idea why it’s taking this long for PG&E to adopt that model, but adding charges for solar is a big improvement in equity.