Phred Dvorak of The Wall Street Journal reports that Californians are footing the bill for the green-energy transition, and it is breaking household budgets, with some electric bills exceeding monthly rents. To make matters worse, California is throwing away roughly 840,000 megawatt-hours a month because there aren’t enough batteries to store the excess electricity generated. Dvorak writes:
California is doing all it can to expand renewable energy production and rebuild its electrical infrastructure after flaws led to a series of devastating wildfires.
The state’s big utilities are spending billions to bury power lines and insulate wires, while at the same time moving quickly away from fossil fuels by building big solar and wind farms and transmission lines to carry the power.
As a result, resident Jessica Simpson Nehrer, who lives in Borrego Springs, near San Diego, has seen her electricity bill for her ranch-style house soar. It hit $1,873.90 in June, far exceeding her $1,200 rent and around double what it was two summers ago.
Grocery store owner Rodger Gucwa tried cutting his power bill by raising the thermostat to 85 degrees—but found that the chocolate bars melted.
Nationwide, the costs of utility companies’ capital investments are being passed on to customers. Those added fees, combined with higher inflation and a series of heat waves, mean painful bills for many this summer. […]
Battery Shortage
“California is sort of the cutting edge” in terms of rising power rates, said Severin Borenstein, an energy-policy expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “It’s primarily due to what climate change is doing to us, and particularly wildfires. But it’s also due to what California is trying to do to reduce climate change.” […]
U.S. utilities asked regulators for $18 billion in rate hikes last year, the third straight year of record requests. For the 12 months through May, the price of electricity nationally has risen at nearly double the rate of consumer prices overall.
“To pretend that the world will electrify without spending money is kind of like Alice in Wonderland,” said Ahmad Faruqui, a California-based energy economist who has spent much of his career advising utilities on rate designs.
In addition to producing more with renewables, greening the energy system requires investment in infrastructure to balance the surges and dips of generation that varies with the weather and time of day.
California now has so much electricity during the day in some months because of its growing portfolio of solar power that the grid operator is turning increasing amounts away—roughly 840,000 megawatt-hours in April alone, enough to power more than 930,000 homes. There aren’t enough batteries to store the excess. Then, not enough power is generated after dark, when it’s needed most, as people come home, turn on their air conditioners and watch TV or do household chores. […]
“At the beginning it was hard like everything,” Levy said. “If you have to get used to it, you have to get used to it. What else are you going to do?”
Read more here.
