Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I got to thinking about the way that California prices its electricity, which is never a good thing for a man’s blood pressure.
When I was a kid, the goal of the Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric was to provide cheap electricity. The Bonneville Dam and the Shasta Dam were lauded for bringing cheap, renewable electric power to the farms, just like the renewable electricity the Tennessee Valley Authority had supplied earlier. This cheap electricity was seen as liberating housewives from domestic slavery, and supporting business and manufacturing. It was hailed as the wave of the future and the path to success, and rightly so—cheap energy is the reason the developed world was able to lift itself out of poverty. And since we generated our own electric power when I was a kid, and had to live with the results when it went out, I know all about the ability of electricity to lessen even a kid’s load around a cattle ranch.
So … when did expensive energy become the new goal? When did raising the price of energy become a good thing? That’s topsy-turvy thinking.
I started this train of thought when I had occasion to revisit Anthony Watts’ outrageous electricity bill, which he discusses here.
Figure 1. Why California is circling the drain …
Ninety-two cents a freakin’ kilowatt-hour? The utility companies have a monopoly, and they are allowed to charge ninety-two cents a kilowatt-hour? How can that be? Isn’t the California Public Utilities Commission supposed to stop that kind of thing?
The most aggravating part of all of this to me is that so many people see this kind of pricing as being a good thing. Not the ninety-two cents part, most folks find that outrageous.
But lots of folks apparently approve of the part where the higher the demand for the electricity, the more the utilities charge for it. This is called “Time Of Use” pricing, and a lot of well-meaning people think it’s a good idea … not me. I figure that’s because they just never thought it through all the way, they never saw what’s at the other end of the spoon.
Now, the utilities claim that Time Of Use pricing is a good thing because it spreads the load more evenly over the 24 hours … but why should I care? That’s their business, to provide enough power for all conditions when and as needed … but I digress. Hang on, I can likely find an example of their justification style … OK, they say the reason for Time Of Use Pricing is:
“To ensure greater power reliability and a better energy future”.
Impressive, who wouldn’t want a better future. Can I translate that for you?
“Greater power reliability” means so they won’t run out of power. If they were honest they’d say that they have Time Of Use Pricing “to avoid brownouts because we don’t have adequate generation capacity”. And ensuring a “better energy future” means “we hope we can provide future power but only if we raise prices on you today.” I’ll return to this issue in a moment.
But in any case, what kind of heartless bastards charge you more for something when you really need it? Because with “Time Of Use” pricing, when Anthony’s wife and kids are suffering in the scorching heat in Chico and really need the aircon, Pacific Gas And Electric (PG&E) and the California Public Utilities Commission say “Fine, you folks can turn on your air conditioners … but it will cost you almost a dollar a kilowatt to cool down.”
I never in my life thought I’d see electricity pricing used as a weapon against the poor and the old folks like that. That is criminal. What a plan. The seniors can afford to air condition their apartments or their rooms whenever they don’t need to … but when it’s hot, when they really need to air condition them, they can’t afford to. Catch-22, thy name is legion.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m sure the Public Utilities Commission didn’t intend that outcome. I’m not accusing them of deliberately trying to cook Grandma. To do that you’d need some smarts, and anyone implementing a plan like that clearly has no smarts to spare on Grandma. Sadly, it’s just another case of Noble Cause Corruption, where the noble cause of saving the world from Thermageddon™ has overwhelmed native common sense and compassion.
Seriously, folks, this kind of pricing is madness, it’s unacceptable. If we had a water utility, and they charged 5¢ a glass when you weren’t thirsty, and $5.00 a glass when you came in dying of thirst, everyone would scream bloody murder that as a public utility you can’t screw the customers like that. Pick a dang price for a glass of water and stick with it, you can’t be jacking the price through the roof on someone just because they’re thirsty, that’s not on.
But that’s exactly what’s happening with electricity. Air conditioning in Chico is becoming the province of the wealthy, due to the “Time Of Use” pricing policies of the PUC.
However, the PUC are not the villains here. They are caught in the middle because of the stupidity of the voters and of Governor Brown. The voters put in a very destructive “20% by 2020” plan requiring 20% of the electricity supply to come from renewables by 2020 … then Governor Moonbeam had a Brilliant Idea™, so he unilaterally raised it to 33% by 2020. I don’t know how he jacked it by himself, but his daddy was the Governor and he grew up in the state house, so he knows which side of the bread the bodies are buttered on … these things are mysteries to the uninitiated like you and I.
And of course, it’s nearly impossible to build a fossil-fired plant of any kind anywhere in California anyhow. I hear these days when you apply for a license in California to generate electricity from fossil fuels, the State Government just issues you a couple of lawsuits along with the permits, in order to save time …
So you can’t build fossil plants, and renewable plants are few and far between … and as a result the system operators, a company called CAISO, are always balancing on the edge of a “brownout”, when the power doesn’t go out, but you only get 90% of the voltage, or on the verge of rolling blackouts, the next step after brownouts … and we’ve seen both.
And to put the icing on the cake, somewhere along the line, some congenital idiot ruled that hydroelectric power doesn’t count as a renewable energy source. I hope that person roasts in the place of eternal barbecue and HE doesn’t have the money to run the air conditioner. Truly don’t think I’ve heard a more expensive and destructive ruling than that one, especially after the TVA and Bonneville Dam and Shasta Dam have shown that yes, idiots, hydropower is indeed renewable. Yeah, dams have problems and there’s lots of issues, but last I looked the rain is still working both reliably and renewably …
So by 2020 we’re suppose to get a third of our power from solar, and rainbows, and wind, and hydrogen, and biomass, and methane from the digestive apparati of unicorns, and fuel cells, anything expensive and out of reach will do. The suppliers of these nostrums have the state over a barrel, of course, and demand outrageous prices.
And as you would predict, this unbelievable idiocy has left the state woefully short of power. And as a result, the whole program has gone into reverse.
So now, rather than increasing the amount of cheap electric power available to the consumer like a utility should, we’re going the other way. The PUC and PGE aren’t encouraging people to utilize cheap power in order to better their lives. They aren’t doing their job of ensuring an adequate supply of inexpensive power. Far from it.
Instead, they’re doing whatever they can to push people back into the dark ages, because they are UNABLE TO GENERATE ENOUGH LIGHT OUT OF UNICORN ERUCTATIONS TO FILL THE DEMAND …
So that’s why, when they say the pricing is to “assure greater power reliability”, that’s a lie. They are using that pricing to discourage demand. Have you ever heard a dumber thing than a business working to discourage demand? Who anywhere tells their customers to buy less? Why jack your prices to force them to buy less?
Well, because they don’t have the power generating capacity. And this in turn is because for every two fossil-fueled or hydroelectric power plants you build, you need one unicorn-fueled plant, and those damn unicorns are proving much harder to catch than Governor Moonbeam figured …
But even given that that is the case, and given that the PUC is caught in the middle, there has to be a better plan than cooking Grandma to deal with that problem.
The people pushing these rattle-trap schemes, like “Death Train” Jim Hansen, always talk about the grandchildren … meanwhile, every one of their damn plans, of carbon taxes, and cap-and-trade, and subsidies, and requirements for “renewables”, and regulations, and all the rest, every one of them does nothing but screw Grandma and the rest of the poor.
Those plans do nothing but raise the cost of energy with almost no benefit to the environment.
They don’t reduce CO2. They don’t save the planet. They don’t help the environment. At best, with a following wind they might make a difference of a couple hundredths of a degree in a century. And indeed, because they further impoverish Grandma and the poor, they are actively harming the environment.
And meanwhile in the present, far from the ivory towers where they entertain their century-long fantasies, on the other side of the tracks, out of sight from the houses of the wealthy, the reality of these destructive, ugly policies hit Grandma and the poor of California the hardest. The head of the PUC doesn’t have to worry whether he can afford to air condition his sick child’s room … the CEO of PG&E isn’t losing sleep over his electric bill.
I fear I have no magic bullet to solve this. It will be a slow slog back to sanity. All I can do is to highlight the issues, and trust that at some point people will come to their senses.
So all of you folks that think that fighting CO2 will make a difference decades from now, remember the difference that this pseudo-green insanity is making today. Your actions are cooking Grandma, impoverishing the poor, and harming the environment today, and history will not find your part in inflicting pain and deprivation on society’s weakest members to be funny in the slightest. I truly don’t care if you think the poor in 2050 desperately need help from some imagined tragedy. You are screwing the poor today.
My best Independence Day wishes to you all, and remember, the beauty of America is that you’re all free to air condition your houses … but only when it’s not hot.
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hoping for your after the fact permission to copy and send this to my local MP here in New Zealand Willis.
You have managed to write this using less expletives than I would have used, and in a more cogent and intelligent fashion
Thank you
“Have you ever heard a dumber thing than a business working to discourage demand? Who anywhere tells their customers to buy less? Why jack your prices to force them to buy less?”
The local electricity suppliers here in Queensland do this , Willis. Nice TV ads.
I’m waiting for the follow ups from General Motors saying ” we’ve got this really nice new 2013 Holden Commodore with lots of safety features and it is a really, really nice car, but please don’t buy one. Make the old one last”
Crimes against humanity. Posthumous punishment is far too late.
What are the coroners saying?
Meanwhile, buy a diesel generator and plug your airconditioner into that to take the edge off the day.
A floating price is, or should be, a good thing. The missing piece is the ability to shop around, or since we don’t want to fiddle with our smart meter ever 5 minutes, to programme the meter to find the cheapest electricity (or the greenest, or whatever – according to individual preferences).
If Billy Bob could start up his old 10Kw coal plant, and sell you cheap electricity at a time of peak demand (your smart meter would automatically find Billy Bob’s offer on the Internet), then peak prices would be constrained – any attempt to charge high prices would have every amateur with a grid supply box jumping in with offers of cheap power.
In the absence of a functioning market, the only option is to constrain power by legislation – and that is also not occurring, thanks to California’s obsession with all things green.
Even the lower rate jumps ($0.09 – $0.25 – $0.88) are obscene. This will drive people to cook their meals using firewood more often. It will be devastating to the elderly in upper floor apartments on a fixed income.
Kurt in Switzerland
Something all New Zealanders need to see. Click the links in the video description – you will be astounded at the corruption and fraud done in the name of green environmentalism.
Willis, do you channel Robert Heinlein? I swear, you sound like him, you use hard science like him, and your logic is almost always irrefutable. Good luck waking the drones. Unfortunately, this site means you are preaching to the choir. Good luck getting the message across on a normal website. Science rocks, logic rules, but the barbarians and con artists will ALWAYS be at the gate, fleecing the marks.
Bill Blackwell
Willis, you’re wrong – there is not “almost no benefit” to the environment, there is HUGE DAMAGE done to it by so-called “renewables” and the green power mandates in California.
To wit: despoiled landscapes, poisoned and destroyed habitats, all sorts of new pollutants, ranging from arsenic and mercury brought up by geothermal to the toxic lubricants and coatings on wind turbine blades and solar panels; noise pollution from wind turbines; and worst of all, the assault by these contraptions on endangered species.
One might ask why this is so, if it’s all for the environment? But it isn’t for the environment – it’s for control over people’s lives, it’s for perverse motives to cripple the economy, and maybe the most disgusting of all, to enrich der Fuehrer’s crony capitalist buddies and let them make money on grossly uneconomic investments.
The state’s renewable mandate is a piece of energy market manipulation that makes Enron look like child’s play. As a division manager at a California municipal utility, I personally watched the entire power crisis of 2000-2001 unfold – and all the market gaming that took place (in which the state itself, incidentally, was an even bigger participant and culprit than Enron) was peanuts compared to the renewables mandate.
As for cooking Grandma – low-income Grandma is wondering how she’s gonna cook for and feed those grandkids she’s raising when gasoline goes to $10 a gallon (former Energy Secretary Ah-CHU’s target price) and electricity to 40 cents/kWh – and the cost of all other necessaries that move by electricity or motor fuel go up in proportion.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Kalifornia’s (DPRK) renewables mandate is another dimension of the leftist elite’s assault on poor people, as part of their campaign to reduce them and everybody else to utter dependency. When the poor are starving, they’re supposed to go to Uncle Big Brother for help, and vote for der Fuehrer in return for his “generosity”.
That of course is the other option – with prices that high, its seriously worth considering going off grid – using some of the $20 / ton coal to produce household electricity.
Welkom to People’s Republik of Fornicatia. From this day on, official language of Fornicatia will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizen will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on outside so we can check….
You are more right than you know about “cooking grandma.” Elderly people can be dangerously susceptible to excess heat. Those with congestive heart failure (one in my family) can die with less than an hour of temperatures in the ’80s.
They aren’t just cooking grandma, they’re killing her – they just have the order confused – usually you kill then cook. But heck, it’s California.
What will happen in North Carolina when they start clear cutting all its timber to feed Drax UK power station with 7.5 million tonnes of wood pellets per year?
Can anyone explain why hydro is not a renewable in California? Is it because it works?
Smart meters are revealing their true purpose of individual control. Energy slavery is a new phenomenon where less electricity production makes extortionately more money for the energy producers and government.
Smart meters are part euthanasia machines – these enviromentalist created consumer theft devices, where “charging you more than you can afford when you need it” will see the demise of the poor and elderly.
Electricity is now the domain of the rich.
Smart meters = Energy slaves.
martha durham says:
July 4, 2013 at 9:47 pm
Good question, Martha. My guess is that the legislation was influenced or sponsored by the wind or the solar lobby, who realized that if the PUC counted hydro they’d be out of business … but that’s a guess.
w.
“Meanwhile, buy a diesel generator and plug your airconditioner into that to take the edge off the day.”
I have one with an original Yanmar diesel. Max 2800 watt, so around 2000 watt it should last, the generator(Italien).
It uses about 0.5 liter/Hour, I think. Since the diesel is not used for transportation on the road there is no tax on it, still it’s about 1 Euro here in Norway, which means about 25 cents/kWh.
What is happening in U.S.A. And California now is so mad and stupid that I am amazed. The only positive with it is that every politician behind this have failed the test to stay in office.
@ur momisugly martha durham on July 4, 2013 at 9:47 pm
“Can anyone explain why hydro is not a renewable in California? Is it because it works?”
Yes, as usual, Mr. Eschenbach has several things confused if not flat wrong.
California DOES count hydroelectric power as renewable, but only for small plants. Large hydroelectric plants do not count as renewable. This was done to encourage building more hydroelectric plants, and it is working. The last I looked, the cutoff was at 30 megaWatts.
Mr. Eschenbach normally censors my comments, so let’s just see if he censors this.
The only reason I can think of would be that it would meet the mandate and leave no room for the other renewables.
Great post Willis, I just wish I had the brains to write as well as you. But you’re correct, all this mitigation of CAGW is just a giant ponzi scheme con.
Just check the latest from the EIA projections of human co2 emissions until 2035. The OECD emissions will grow by just 6% but the non OECD will grow by 73% and from a much higher base.
By 2035 OECD emissions will be 14.3 bn tonnes and non OECD will be 28.9 bn tonnes or twice as much as the OECD.
The 2010 numbers are OECD 13 bn tonnes and non OECD 18.8 bn tonnes. Of course Germany and others are now building a number of new brown coal fired power stns after wasting over a 100 bn $ on useless solar and wind.
The return on investment for this fraud is zip and won’t make a jot of difference to climate or temp for thousands of years.
Just check out the lag for co2 in the ice core data. BTW if Murry Salby is correct then all bets are off and it’s all BS anyhow.
The power supplier to the Sacramento area should have a massive “accidental” failure of transformers, especially those supplying state governmental bodies & agencies and the governor’s mansion. The “accidental” failure should occur in the hottest part of the year and day and should last, oh, say, three weeks before all the transformers can be replaced. This would give the state government a good taste of the “green medicine” we all must swallow on a daily basis.
Probably wouldn’t hurt to have it happen in D.C, as well.
Need I put the tag [ /sarc?]
A good reason to holiday in Wyoming rather than California. But then, I like all the states between the Mississippi with the exception of the Denver/Boulder area … 😏
oops – between the Mississippi and the Rockies …
Roger Sowell says:
July 4, 2013 at 10:03 pm
Roger, As far as I know, I’ve never censored a comment of yours, but perhaps I’ve forgotten. Certainly it is not something I “normally” do, I rarely censor anything. I’ve occasionally snipped some stuff that was way off-topic, but I’ve never censored a scientific comment.
In any case, Roger, you are correct that small-scale hydro is allowed. I’ve written about that before, I didn’t think it was relevant here … but you didn’t answer her question. Why is big hydro not allowed?
The idea that you would cap the size of dams permitted to “encourage building more hydroelectric plants” makes no sense. Why not allow the building of any size? Why would building a big dam up north discourage building a small dam down south? Doesn’t compute.
Plus, the category is called “renewable”. If you want to rule out big dams, then you are lying about what the category is.
Another problem you’re not dealing with is that when for example California buys energy from Oregon, we can’t buy hydro from Bonneville Dam, that’s evil power. Instead, we have to buy wind power that’s twice as costly. Not only that, but then often Bonneville Dam has to spill the water and lose the power forever because California’s not buying it … we’re buying crappy intermittent wind power instead.
And of course, when wind power comes on line we need to have more spinning reserve, Bonneville is baseline power but windpower can die at any instant. So we have more generators running than we would if we were using the evil big hydro power.
So everyone loses. We are forced to make the wrong choice, between reliable baseline hydro and junky up-and-down windpower we have to choose wind, and we have to burn more fossil fuels to make that wrong choice … so even the alleged excuse of less CO2 is just more bull.
Helluva plan you’re defending there, Roger …
w.
In the UK our politicians seem to want to emulate California, though thankfully we have yet to catch up with you guys. Though in a revival of true British Imperial tradition I believe that plans have been mooted to relive past glories and overtake the world, as some congenital imbeciles (h/t to w. for the phrase ) think we should legislate an 80% reduction in co2 output.
One difference between the UK and California perhaps is that along with the ever growing amount of unicorn legislation, we also have a steady ramping up of requirements for insulation in new-build houses and offices. Some subsidies are from time to time available for insulation of older properties. This may help those able to afford to move into newer housing stock, but as always it’s the poor who will be trapped into paying the higher bills or freezing.
Another peculiarly British anomalies that hasn’t entirely disappeared s the fact that in the UK we have had a charging structure for natural gas and electricity for many years that charged a lower price for units consumed above a certain threshold. Although this shows signs of changing, some utilities still have this feature on some of their many and confusing charging structures. I certainly did the last time I checked the small print on the back of one of my bills. I have never managed to get to the level where those price reductions kick in though.
I don’t think that whatever reductions in central heating use these measures lead to will offset the cost increases caused by the desire of the watermelons to power our homes with rocking horse manure and such like. There comes a point when it isn’t possible to reduce electricity use any further without inflicting either a reduction in the standard of living or real hardship.
Do we reduce to just one fluorescent light bulb in one room perhaps ? Should we cease to use or have a fridge or freezer as these use a substantial amount of electricity. Perhaps we shouldn’t run the central heating pump and instead return to the days when most people had just one gas fire in one room.
These are choices that have already been forced on many pensioners in the UK. Things will get worse before they get better. The watermelon culture is so firmly entrenched amongst our political numpties, that perhaps the only thing that might bring about an awakening is prolonged and steep cooling. We can only wait and see if the Livingston & Penn effect brings a change of direction.
I would have said that hydro being counted would have met the mandate and would have left out renewable such as solar and wind unless they could compete in the marketplace.