“Extra charges based on income” - does this mean that if you earn more, you pay more for electricity?

So you're now required to share your tax documents with the local utility company, and they will charge you a monthly fee just for earning more money?

No, the plan was changed to have a fixed monthly fee in addition to the cost per kWh for all, but lower income households will have a lower fixed monthly fee.

How do they distinguish those lower-income households without referring to tax documents?

I have no idea about this particular program, but similar programs already exist for other utilities, you can look at how they do it (open the "What information do I need to provide..." section): https://www.att.com/internet/access/

Previous proposals would have required everyone to provide income data to their utility which the utility would verify “somehow” (never fully articulated AFAIK)

The latest proposal (which has been accepted by the CPUC) has fixed charges applied for everyone (much lower than previously proposed fixed charges) with discounts available based on existing low-income programs ( https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/financ... )

So yes in order to get the discount low-income customers need to declare income and may need to verify that income with tax documents (depending on how much fraud these program plan to tolerate) but other customers do not need to provide income information.

Yes. But put differently "if you earn less you pay less." It depends one what you call the "normal" price.

A lot of cities in california have their own public water and power company. LADWP is probably the largest by far.

> the only winning move is not to play.

And with so much sun, that is a very viable option. A roof covered in solar and some batteries and you'll never deal with this nonsense ever again.

It is illegal in California to disconnect a residential house from the grid.

It’s ca. They wouldn’t make it THAT easy to opt out of their insanity.

Source?

Lawyers argued that Title 24 required that residential buildings be interconnected with the grid [0] [1], but 2022 updates to the code seem to have clarified that standalone solar PV systems with storage are OK (though they should still be meet the same standards as grid-connected systems would) [2]

In any case the small number of people who can afford to do so and want to do so seem to be doing so [3]

[0] https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/gri...

[1] https://klinedinstlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/how-tit...

[2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/build...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/168mlxw/possiblelega...

Are there fixed costs to having a connection? As in can one have a connection to the grid as a backup pay negligible amounts every month since they don’t use it?

They added a new fixed fee to cover this exact situation. Even if you do not use any power you’d be billed that fixed fee every month.

Anyone living in CA want to check their bill? I think there's a fixed fee for grid connection similar to nat gas. Curious what this is

If you stop payments, do they turn off their service?

> It is illegal in California to disconnect a residential house from the grid.

Huh? Are you saying I'm forced into a contract with a private company with a monthly fee?

... what happens if I simply have no money, and get the service terminated due to lack of payment?

Yes

Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible.

Actual criticism of real problems in California (which seems to be doing better than most states in most ways, but isn't perfect) gets buried under tribal political nonsense, where everything is an outrage.

> Progressive taxation to support a basic shared infrastructure with strong network effects is entirely sensible.

It isn't crazy, but it is a bad idea. There should be one debate where we work out how much support successful people are expected to provide for their less successful peers, and one transfer payment to cover it. Then everyone pays for things as equals.

Setting up multiple parallel societies where everyone has a different experience and financial incentives is wasteful. It ends up in situations where the electricity provider needs to consult with someone's accountant to work out what to charge customers. That is kinda crazy. A customer's tax position has nothing to do with the services they are provided and linking them is going to have weird second order effects.

It is the same lunacy as linking paying for medical services and employment together and we have all seen how that worked out for the US. Linking parts of the system together at random is not the path to a high-functioning administrative state.

> linking paying for medical services and employment together

which arose out of government-imposed price controls on labor in the first place...

When you see really goofy progressive taxes, if you look behind them, you'll usually see a strong legal or political barrier behind more sensible ones. This is why you are always hearing about ridiculous Amazon taxes coming out of the state of Washington; the place has no income tax, and progressive income taxes have been held to be unconstitutional there. So they have to get creative if they want a progressive tax.

Of course, the barrier in California is the infamous Proposition 13. You're right that charging people different rates for energy based on their income is silly; if they want to let the poor off the hook they should just tax them less, or even give them money. But the state's lawmakers are operating in a constrained environment.

(It's also the case that subsidies and means-tested benefits are trendy in Democratic policy-making circles, despite being dumb and inefficient compared to simpler and less directed benefits.)

1. CA already has progressive taxation.

2. The “income-graduated fixed charge” is not taxation - it is paid to a corporation, not a government entity.

The most successful social democracies actually have significantly flatter taxes than the US. IMO, overly progressive taxes are the reason why nobody gives a shit that the government is so inefficient at spending money. Those who benefit the most from government services aren't paying for the waste, and the rich either are privileged enough not to care or become overly antagonist towards the government altogether.

The problem with this is that many Californians who can afford solar can afford batteries too. If you live in socal its not unreasonable to decide you're just going off grid entirely in the face of income based fees. Then utilites will have to raise the price even more on the poor customers who arent being subsidized anymore

You do get a discount when you buy more ahead of time, and guarantee that you will buy it.

This is different from wanting a fixed price for a spot-priced product.

you cannot do this with PG&E unless there is some plan I haven't heard about?