While solar users generate power that decreases their bills, they still rely on the state’s electric grid for much of their power consumption - without paying for its fixed costs like others do. “When households adopt solar, they’re not paying their fair share,” Fowlie said. And while the bills of older, wealthier Californians continue to decrease as they adopt cost-efficient alternatives like the state’s Net Energy Metering solar program, costs will keep rising for a shrinking customer base composed mostly of low- and middle-income renters who still use electricity as their main energy source. However, because lower-income residents use only moderately less electricity than higher income households, they end up with a disproportionate share of the burden, according to the study. These are legitimate expenses, Fowlie said. #TEXAS UTILITY BILLS SKYROCKET SERIES#PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2019, after being held financially responsible for a series of deadly and destructive wildfires in 20. Those costs don’t change based on how much electricity residents consume, yet between 66% and 77% of Californians’ electricity bills are used to offset the costs of those programs, the study found. One reason is that California’s size and geography inflate the “fixed” costs of operating its electric system, which include maintenance, generation, transmission, and distribution as well as public programs like CARE and wildfire mitigation, according to the study. “California’s retail prices are out of line with utilities across the country,” said UC Berkeley assistant professor and study co-author Meredith Fowlie, citing Hawaii and some New England states among the outliers with even higher rates. Even low-income residents enrolled in the California Alternate Rates for Energy program paid more than the average American. The study analyzed the rates of the state’s three largest investor-owned utilities and found that Southern California Edison charged 45% more than the national average, while San Diego Gas & Electric charged double. PG&E customers pay about 80% more per kilowatt-hour than the national average, according to a study by the energy institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School with the nonprofit think tank Next 10. PG&E customers pay 80% more than national average.Ĭalifornia’s electricity prices are among the highest in the country, new research says, and those costs are falling disproportionately on a customer base that’s already struggling to pay their bills.
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