• scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    3 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·
      1 hour 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·
        50 minutes 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·
          17 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.