Remember when gas was only $5 per gallon? Those were the days. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the game has changed post-pandemic. Unprecedented stock market gains and losses, record prices for homes, sky-high costs for everyday items like groceries and gas.
A picture is worth a 1000 words and this video from Reddit user u/jcceagle does an amazing job showing how the cost of everyday things have gone up since the pandemic started.
When the price of natural gas has gone up 233.5% since March of 2020 and PG&E is expected to keep your lights on 99.99% of the year, something has to give. Stack on the cost of lawsuits from fires and repairing a vast network of grid systems and you see why your rates are skyrocketing.
The reality is, while it would be easy to point to one root cause, don't be fooled. We live in the time of global commerce. It comes with incredible luxuries like the fact that you can order a sofa from your... sofa and that product arrives at your door with a few clicks. But as consumers, we really don't have the first clue what that supply chain looks like and it's only when we can't get things we've come to expect, like hot sauce or toilet paper, that we realize everything that happens in the world has a ripple affect.
PG&E is often painted as the enemy, and in many cases that's a fair assessment, but when we talk about their rates rising it's important to understand WHY. Why is it that they got approval from the California Public Utility Commission to raise their rates 11.3% in one fell swoop earlier this year with plans to raise them again later this year?
If they were a non-profit like SMUD or other municipal irrigation districts around CA it might be an easier pill to swallow. Regardless, it's just costly to manage an ageing grid, even if the price of everything wasn't going up. It's part of the reason why PG&E is pushing so hard for Net Energy Metering 3.0 aka N.E.M. 3.0 so they can cut some of their losses from the droves of homeowners who have gone solar.
And look, we're not PG&E apologists but we feel compelled to embrace reality with you. Prices for PG&E are never going down, ever, and it's now more compelling than ever before to replace PG&E with solar energy. We're seeing PG&E homeowners flock to solar and energy storage in droves and it's no surprise why.
Owning 25 years of power is fundamentally cheaper than renting it. Be on the right side of history, your wallet will thank you.