Plenty of costs don’t depend on how much usage there is. If a tree falls and takes out a power line it cosrs the same whether that line was being used at 1% capacity or 100%
Comment on If you save, we will charge you more
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gee it seems like they could come up with a simple algorithm to protect low income people who are conserving.
Aaaand why aren’t costs going down as usage goes down?
CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.world 1 day ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
True, true. Other costs should track with usage though, like fuel. If they had said “when usage falls, costs don’t fall AS MUCH due to fixed costs” then I would totally get it. The way they phrased it makes it sound like costs going down just isn’t a thing that happens. Maybe that’s me.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
Fuel is not the biggest cost especially in areas with renewable sources. The machinery that keeps the grid going is very complex and expensive. There are needs to be redundancy and flexibility build it which costs even more.
Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com 1 day ago
I think it’s more like this: Say maintenance of a grid costs $1 million/year, power generation costs another $1 million/year and people use 10 million kWh at 20¢ per. Everything is balanced. Then half the people cut their usage in half. Grid maintenance still costs $1 million/year, generation dropped to $750,000, but revenue dropped to $1.5 million. They have to raise the price 16% to go back to paying for maintenance. You’re still saving money if you dropped your usage more than 16%, but those that didn’t pay the difference.
Since you generally have to be fairly well-off to afford the massive upfront labor costs involved with solar, its adoption has disproportionately raised the living expenses of the lower class.
The alternative is a base services charge, where everyone pays a flat percentage of the grid maintenance costs and then his or her usage is on top of that. No idea why it’s taking this long for PG&E to adopt that model, but adding charges for solar is a big improvement in equity.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah I’ve got it, some costs are fixed.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
Prices aren’t going down because the costs aren’t going down. The infrastructure costs about the same either way.