It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
Alternative: Create more energy, preferably renewable. Penalize heavy users only (raise costs). Incentivize (lower costs) those using renewables like solar panels. Raising costs for all is the laziest way.
In the case of PG&E, they have to pay for killing a bunch of people and burning down some towns, so they’re passing the expenses onto everyone else. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses baybeee. Gotta love state sanctioned monopolies.
Except people are going to cheat like they always do
Nah fam, here in Cali, you get charged extra for solar.
You’re charged a monthly fee to be able to sell your excess energy back to the grid. But you can’t opt out and disconnect from the grid, because CA regulations require all homes to be connected to the grid (probably for emergencies).
And pay pennies on the dollar for your excess energy.
I’ve heard that in fees alone, you still end up paying around $100/mo even if you’re breaking even on energy (excess sold during the day >= grid consumption at night).
Ohh, and it’s $0.53 / KwH during peak hours. Off-peak is $0.50, saving you a whopping 3 cents per kwh!
And then there’s super off peak at around $0.22 which is like 10pm-5am (might be off by an hour or two), which is only good to do like one load of laundry before bed, and charge an EV over night.
Good info, thanks. Generally, that’s what I would expect from any area owned by the oil and gas industry (and/or just exceptionally corrupt). Kind of surprised that California still doesn’t have more progressive energy policies. And allows PG&E to regularly embarrass the state.