Here's something you might be interested in.
In the business section of this morning's diminishing daily paper, Onell Soto has a Q&A of what is going on with us using a lot less electricity then getting a lot higher rates for the savings.
The second question: "OK, so why is our usage so low?"
My answer: Who says it's low? It sure wasn't SDG&E saying that under oath to CPUC!
The entire rationale for SDG&E's PeakShift at Work/PeakShift at Home rate hike scheme is that there are way too many customers using way too much electricity when bigger, fatter industrial-sized customers need all that power during the business day. In fact, PSW/PSH is meant to reduce the need for SDG&E to build more fossil-fueled peaker power plants, something used as a selling point for the Sunrise Powerlink project but a benefit we apparently aren't actually getting from the Sunrise Powerlink project enough to avoid PSW/PSH rate hikes on small businesses and residential SDG&E customers.
If anything, our rates are so high that SDG&E gets ordered by CPUC to refund over $100 million to customers from overcharging us... while SDG&E is looking for $118 million from us to tell us how much we are going to like higher rates under PSW/PSH.
Soto's Q&A points out something that I've been expecting for a while: there is a consumer market trend SDG&E cannot avoid that dictates grid usage by customers will go down when SDG&E rates go up to maintain that 35-40% dividend on retained earnings that Sempra Energy speculators are sucking on every quarter. CPUC had it right when it found that Sempra Energy, as a utility holding company over SDG&E, gets the benefit of SDG&E profits from gross utility bill receipts, but hesitates to infuse SDG&E with the needed working and other capital for SDG&E to provide safe service. Simply put every day, Sempra Energy takes money away from SDG&E that could have been used to put power lines underground now - and stop preventable utility liability for wildfires now - instead of waiting to do it fifty years after the end of the Mayan calendar.
In the business section of this morning's diminishing daily paper, Onell Soto has a Q&A of what is going on with us using a lot less electricity then getting a lot higher rates for the savings.
The second question: "OK, so why is our usage so low?"
My answer: Who says it's low? It sure wasn't SDG&E saying that under oath to CPUC!
The entire rationale for SDG&E's PeakShift at Work/PeakShift at Home rate hike scheme is that there are way too many customers using way too much electricity when bigger, fatter industrial-sized customers need all that power during the business day. In fact, PSW/PSH is meant to reduce the need for SDG&E to build more fossil-fueled peaker power plants, something used as a selling point for the Sunrise Powerlink project but a benefit we apparently aren't actually getting from the Sunrise Powerlink project enough to avoid PSW/PSH rate hikes on small businesses and residential SDG&E customers.
If anything, our rates are so high that SDG&E gets ordered by CPUC to refund over $100 million to customers from overcharging us... while SDG&E is looking for $118 million from us to tell us how much we are going to like higher rates under PSW/PSH.
Soto's Q&A points out something that I've been expecting for a while: there is a consumer market trend SDG&E cannot avoid that dictates grid usage by customers will go down when SDG&E rates go up to maintain that 35-40% dividend on retained earnings that Sempra Energy speculators are sucking on every quarter. CPUC had it right when it found that Sempra Energy, as a utility holding company over SDG&E, gets the benefit of SDG&E profits from gross utility bill receipts, but hesitates to infuse SDG&E with the needed working and other capital for SDG&E to provide safe service. Simply put every day, Sempra Energy takes money away from SDG&E that could have been used to put power lines underground now - and stop preventable utility liability for wildfires now - instead of waiting to do it fifty years after the end of the Mayan calendar.