Your electric bills are going up. There is only one way to do anything about it, and that is with onsite generation using renewable energy. Solar is by far the best option for this onsite renewable generation.
Last Fall the California Public Utilities Commission granted PG&E an 8% increase in their electric rates that will be on your bills starting March 1, 2021. This was granted to pay PG&E for the work they are having done to clear trees from their electric lines. Of course, we all know they have been paid for this for the last 100 years as a part of their fees they have been allowed to charge. They have not done this work until a Federal Judge in 2020 ordered that they do so. Somehow, the fact that they put this work off gave them the ability to charge for this work again. Don’t you wish these policies were applied to your business?
That is the point. PG&E has been politically connected since their inception in 1900. When a bill in 2019 was passed through the California Assembly that would require the rate payers to pay for the damages caused by the 2018 Napa fire, even though it was proven to be caused by PG&E’s negligence, the Sacramento Bee reported that 80% of the lawmakers admitted to accepting money from PG&E.
Rather than accept the damages from the Paradise fire that killed 87 people and burned down the entire town, PG&E filed for bankruptcy so that they could negotiate a much lower amount for which they would be liable through the courts. After a year and a half, PG&E settled for $58.5 billion in damages to victims, with the bankruptcy judge stating that PG&E, including their staff and management, would stay intact with all of their salaries, bonuses and retirements remaining as if nothing had happened.
The last time PG&E filed for bankruptcy, in 2001, rates spiked 40%. They have climbed at 5% per year ever since that time. Meanwhile, the cost of natural gas went way down due to fracking, there was a national credit crisis that effected every industry in America, and other market forces were in place to cause rates to go down. The straight-line rate increases of 5% per year show how politically connected these rate increases were. That rate increase graph is not a market driven graph under any circumstances, let alone the ones in place over the last 20 years. These rates are shown on the PG&E website,
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/rateinfo.shtml
The facts show PG&E is politically connected without any dispute.
PG&E is protected as a monopoly that is allowed to sell electricity to all the customers in their territory. No-one else is allowed to compete with them in any way for this business. Direct access in no longer legal in California. The local semi-public agencies under the Community Choice banner that have offered lower costs for the electrical energy, such as Pioneer, MCE, SVCE, EBCE and several others, tried to enter the market and help. However, PG&E, with the help of the PUC, invented a “Power Charge Indifference Adjustment”, or PCIA. This is a charge invented by PG&E to take away any advantage these Community Choice aggregators offer. You can see this by adding up the credit shown by PG&E, the charge from your Community Choice provider, and the PCIA charge. You will get a very small advantage, as PG&E has found a way politically to take away any monetary advantage these Community Choice aggregators have tried to create.
So, what can you do to counteract these rising PG&E business electric bills? There is only one way. Self-generate your electricity onsite with renewable solar energy while you are still hooked up to the grid. You get all the benefits of having a stable grid necessary to run your business on a day-to-day manner just like you are accustomed. However, by generating your electricity on site, you do not pay anything for that portion of your electrical usage. Because of the monopoly status of PG&E as well as other considerations such as clean air requirements, the only allowed method of self-generation is with renewable energy. This includes solar, wind or hydro.
If you have any questions about how to reduce your PG&E bill, and in some cases virtually eliminate it, please contact us. We have answers for your questions. We will discuss how you operate your business, and see if there are any ways to save on electricity usage with reasonable methods such as LED lighting. If you like, we can produce a no-obligation proposal for reducing your electricity bill. Once you have looked at the information, you can make your mind up just like you do with all of your other business decisions.