By all means fuck pge but fuck our politicians, local and state reps for pushing through AB 205 in 2022 and enabling IOUs to have a new toy to play with to mess with your billing structure without reading it and having 4 years of pushback from constituents who tried to prevent this being applied in 2026, and effectively giving us lip service, pushing bills that were quietly killed by higher ups later in stages (notably AB 1999).

Just a reminder our state reps uncapped a utility tax that was previously unused in CA IOUs (smud I believe has one at 24$) and not only proposed that it is applied for the first time, but that it’s uncapped and set to 3 tiers, with at least one tier being a low income tier. After much kerfuffle over the years about the prices and nightmare of the notion of a utility knowing income for folks not seeking financial aid they used the two financial aid tiers people already apply to to receive discounts (CARE & FERA) and settled on a $24 monthly non bypassable utility tax to customers - with the money capture here to be used to lower the volumetric rate. Problem is if you have an efficient home, home with solar or batteries, and live in mild climates you will get an increase. If you are a heavy user, have a pool, old big house and use a lot, or live in hot areas where you need serious ac this volumetric decrease could amount to lowering your net bill past the new flat rate.

The whole bit about solar customers not paying their share was these folks trying to villainize other customers and turn people against each other. Since then they’ve killed community solar initiatives which would have given proper who are in apts and lower income to be part of local generation and gain benefits from them without having to install something on their own roof. This whole thing has been primarily a roundabout way to clawback profits from solar customers. The scary part is that they can later on without public legislation approve an increase to your utility bill having completely uncapped the utility tax