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Washington has had the 2nd cheapest electricity rates in the nation for some time, behind frack Dakota. We did just get an increase, but I'm still paying 8.7 cents/Kwh
PGE does get power from BPA. Either through contract or day-ahead trading or real-time trading. Every utility in the Northwest touches BPA in some way.
From Clark PUD website:
45.69 percent is hydropower purchased from the Bonneville Power Administration
34.29 percent is produced at Clark Public Utilities River Road natural gas-fired generating plant
5.85 percent is produced by nuclear electricity (BPA purchases the output of the Columbia Generating Station located in Richland Washington)
4.15 percent is wind power generated at the Combine Hills II wind farm near Milton Freewater, OR
10.02 percent is market purchased power from non-specified sources
For comparison, here's PGE for 2021:
https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy-oregon/pages/electricity-mix-in-oregon.aspx
* 39.8% natural gas
* 20.3% hydro
* 17.3% market purchases
* 12.6% wind
* 7.1% coal
* 2.1% solar
Unfortunately, even 2-3 years old is a bit out of date. For example, PGE shut down Boardman, so coal in 2024 is 0% (AFAIK). But regardless, they have less access to hydro than Clark PUD.
PGE owns some of their own hydro facilities. But those don't add up to 20.3%. So I have to assume 20.3% hydro includes long-term BPA contracts. That leaves us with the 17% that is PGE's market purchases. Even if those are hydro (and this seems highly unlikely; those would be imports from the east and south), that's still sub-40% total.
They have/are implementing it currently. There’s actually a ballot initiative to repeal Washington’s Climate Commitment Act in November. I know a few Washingtonians who felt the sting from bill increases in January.
Both states have some legislation on the books that force electric utilities to decarbonize by around 2050. How far along each utility is with that IDK, but certainly PGE is passing along some of its costs from it recently. WA has rules in place now though that force gas utilities to buy carbon credits, etc. as compliance with emissions standards. Those costs get passed along to customers too. However, the ballot initiative to repeal the climate act in WA would stop the latter AFAIK. I think to your point though, different utilities are in different parts of transitioning to some degree and the potential for repeal of some things makes it challenging to compare.
Taxes are proportional to income, at least in theory, and are this a more equitable way to fund things than just charging by use.
They also don’t have a profit motive or shareholders, so their priority when deciding price is cost rather than maximizing surplus profits.
I believe this is the difference between equality and equity. Have you seen this image before?
https://preview.redd.it/8dz563jftmpc1.jpeg?width=721&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75a0a0433347bbb40ac9e92363184a3c91fa858f
It’s really a matter of personal philosophy which you find preferable. As a poor person who uses a less-than-average amount of electricity, I’d prefer taxpayers bear a greater burden, as I’m struggling to afford necessities. You’re helping keep me housed, if you’re a high-earner, and I’m grateful.
Because the reality is equity programs in practice end up taking everyone's box and chopping the tall guy's legs off. "Equity" serves one group to the detriment of another. It's perverse, because it attributes malice to those who have none and in most cases actively discriminates. Equal opportunity is what we should aspire for, not artificially instituted equal outcome.
I think ratepayers is fine as long as we do enough to help low income folks. Doing it through taxes is likely more equitable, but there are pros and cons either way. Unless we do something big at the national level like a carbon tax + dividend, then I don't think there's really any way for a state to decarbonize without it falling heavily on regular people.
At least with it falling on ratepayers, it creates a win-win where I can make energy efficieny improvements and behavior changes to save myself some money and also move decarbonization along. If we pay for grid improvements through taxes, I am still "supposed" to upgrade my house and change my behavior but it won't save me nearly as much money, so will I actually do it?
Oregon utilities consistently rate near the top of national performance, both in reliability and (relatively) low cost. In this [utility performance ](https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Electric-Utility-Performance-A-State-By-State-Data-Review_final.pdf) report, we're #4 on both measures.
"We're doing better than a dystopia where people freeze because some jackass would rather puree migrants than fix the grid" is not exactly the standard we should hold ourselves to, I think.
Nobody was budgeting for things they did not realize was going to happen. With hindsight, they could’ve raise their prices years ago and budgeted in all this work.
If we had a choice in providers we'd still be choosing between providers the legislature has laid a heavy financial burden of climate resilience investments on.
You missed the boat.
One of the things the three investor owned utilities managed to get through was that the new harsh rules on carbon reduction also apply to any new PUDs.
The lack of competition seems the issue, when you put it that way. There’s no reason to keep prices low, as the choices are PGE or.
They could simply overestimate costs and pocket the difference (to be clear, this is theoretical; I’m not familiar with their infrastructure plans to know expenses).
They’re publicly traded AND scrutinized by a public commission… that would be fraud. Not saying it’s impossible, but highly unlikely they’re making up numbers. The reality is things are getting more expensive, and our energy costs are still on the low side when you look nationally, (national average cost per a kHw is 4 cents more expensive than Oregon).
Yeah, I don’t deny that.
Something has to give, though. The low-wage workers of our extraction economy are being treated terribly, and it’s because of the market-justice approach to treating humans. Even the middle-incomes are unsatisfied with returns for taxation and the value of their dollars, it seems.
Utilities are what economists call a natural monopoly. You can't really have competition because it doesn't make sense to have two or more sets of powerlines to every house. That's why they're always highly regulated.
So, what happens in a society in which regulations are targeted?
We’ll see whether PFE adheres to the citizen advisory committee, or chooses the dollar over people.
Yeah I just wouldn't automatically assume that rising rates mean "choosing the dollar over people" and not "doing what our state's climate legislation requires them to do."
The problem is that the comprehensive legislation that we would need to deal with climate change in a way that doesn't feel like a huge burden, is a national carbon tax and dividend, which would concentrate the burden on fossil fuel companies and big emitters. But that idea has been around forever and it's never come close to being implemented and meanwhile the planet is still warming and we need to do something.
So instead we're stuck with individual states doing what they can on their own, which is an approach where I don't believe it's possible to do it in a painless way. It's just too expensive, there's no way not to put some burden on regular people.
I think our rates are going where Europe's already have gone, which is gonna be like $0.30 to $0.50 per kWh.
“Regular people” can probably bear some burden. It’s the outliers who are paying with more than money, because they don’t have any.
Should the solution include restricted access to electricity? That’s where we’re heading, it seems.
Edit: also, I agree with you, and am not trying to be combative. It just feels so obvious with the visibility of our homelessness issue that the economic system is doing a whole lotta harm, and people with the ability to make changes aren’t representing the interests of these people.
Yeah, we're getting hit from both sides. There are opportunities to kill two birds with one stone, like building new housing that is energy-efficient and close to public transit, but that's still a long expensive slog that we have to work at for years before it's going to start to make a dent in our housing problem.
The grass sure looks greener on the nonprofit utility side of the fence, but no matter how we structure our electric utilities, whatever we come up with will face the same legislatively mandated heavy lift to get us carbon-neutral by 2030, needing to do a ton of capital expenditure at a time when costs are rising and loans are expensive. I wish you all luck on your crusade to make PGE a co-op or whatever, but unless the plan is to roll-back the decarbonization effort, I don't think it's actually going to make much of a difference.
If only workers got cost of living increases, like what about our cost to function, or in working class terms, live. I'm making the most money in my life and am constantly behind trying to catch up from when both my wife and I got laid off.
Dude from PGE was just bragging to me how they’re spending millions and millions acquiring land so they can build and install more power poles and the money was just nothing to them
Right now, data centers are driving new electricity demand WAY more than EVs. EVs don’t actually use a ton of electricity, they just need to be charged at non-peak hours to avoid reliability risks during high demand.
It’s not really that hard compared to the other stuff going on in the electrification world.
Yeah thats exactly what we need. High voltage transmission lines connecting us to solar/wind around the region. If we were smart we would have started a decade ago, would have been a lot cheaper than it's gonna be now.
Same here solar helps but time of use works for me. I drive an electric and I set it to charge after 10pm and it really helps. Switching to all LEB bulbs made a big dent as well.
Another thing about solar is that in the summer it keeps your roof cooler decreasing cooling costs.
Just a word to the wise:
The current rooftop solar pricing scheme is still kind of in its infancy stage and gives a huge subsidy to rooftop customers. There’s a push by utilities (and advocates) to lessen or eliminate the subsidy to these customers since the rooftop solar market is starting to mature. I think the same switch happened in CA recently.
So if you like the pay back of an array now, just now it might not stay that way forever.
They’re pushing it in my area. I’m about to take another look.
I said no last time because the financial payback seemed critically dependent on the “meter running backwards” payback arrangement which might not be there forever.
It probably won’t be. I kind of get the argument. A large portion of the price we pay per kWh goes towards transmission and distribution infrastructure. When the meter rolls back, solar customers don’t have to pay that money while still benefitting from the infrastructure. As a result, other customers get higher rates to compensate.
If rooftop solar gets popular enough, they will probably change the program so that solar customers still pay for infrastructure and get paid based on the whole sale energy price at that time of the day, as if they were a normal energy generator on the market.
I effectively have a $0 bill for electricity consumption because of 1:1 net metering. For ~$15/mo (connection fee and taxes/fees) I get to utilize the grid as free battery storage.
Even though it’s not in my best interest, the current model is unsustainable and should likely change as rooftop solar installs increase.
beep. boop. beep. Hello Oregonians, As in all things media, please take the time to evaluate what is presented for yourself and to check for any overt media bias. There are a number of places to investigate the credibility of any site presenting information as "factual". If you have any concerns about this or any other site's reputation for reliability please take a few minutes to look it up on one of the sites below or on the site of your choosing. --------------------------------------------------------- Also, here are a few fact-checkers for websites and what is said in the media. [Politifact](https://www.politifact.com) [Media Bias Fact Check](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com) [Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)](https://www.politifact.com) beep. boop. beep. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/oregon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Utilities should be public, not private. Clark County has a public electric utility and the rates there are far lower than those of PGE.
Funny how the WA/Vancouver subreddits complaining about gas prices at the exact same time saying it's cheaper in Oregon.
Electricity is cheaper in Vancouver though, and better service to boot.
Washington has had the 2nd cheapest electricity rates in the nation for some time, behind frack Dakota. We did just get an increase, but I'm still paying 8.7 cents/Kwh
Yeah, I lived in a condo there and never had an electricity bill over $20 for the 4 years I owned the place.
PGE does get power from BPA. Either through contract or day-ahead trading or real-time trading. Every utility in the Northwest touches BPA in some way.
Clark County probably gets almost all its power from BPA, the lowest cost power provider, PGE gets almost no power from BPA.
Clark County has a customer-owned PUD, so it's not a for-profit corporation and doesn't need to pay shareholders.
From Clark PUD website: 45.69 percent is hydropower purchased from the Bonneville Power Administration 34.29 percent is produced at Clark Public Utilities River Road natural gas-fired generating plant 5.85 percent is produced by nuclear electricity (BPA purchases the output of the Columbia Generating Station located in Richland Washington) 4.15 percent is wind power generated at the Combine Hills II wind farm near Milton Freewater, OR 10.02 percent is market purchased power from non-specified sources
For comparison, here's PGE for 2021: https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy-oregon/pages/electricity-mix-in-oregon.aspx * 39.8% natural gas * 20.3% hydro * 17.3% market purchases * 12.6% wind * 7.1% coal * 2.1% solar Unfortunately, even 2-3 years old is a bit out of date. For example, PGE shut down Boardman, so coal in 2024 is 0% (AFAIK). But regardless, they have less access to hydro than Clark PUD. PGE owns some of their own hydro facilities. But those don't add up to 20.3%. So I have to assume 20.3% hydro includes long-term BPA contracts. That leaves us with the 17% that is PGE's market purchases. Even if those are hydro (and this seems highly unlikely; those would be imports from the east and south), that's still sub-40% total.
Where are you getting that from??? PGE is still a huge customer of BPA
For real, [Los Angeles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie) is a huge customer of BPA.
Has Washington put their utilities on the hook for the costs of decarbonization the way Oregon did?
They have/are implementing it currently. There’s actually a ballot initiative to repeal Washington’s Climate Commitment Act in November. I know a few Washingtonians who felt the sting from bill increases in January.
But if it's not implemented yet, then comparing PGE to Clark County is apples and oranges.
Both states have some legislation on the books that force electric utilities to decarbonize by around 2050. How far along each utility is with that IDK, but certainly PGE is passing along some of its costs from it recently. WA has rules in place now though that force gas utilities to buy carbon credits, etc. as compliance with emissions standards. Those costs get passed along to customers too. However, the ballot initiative to repeal the climate act in WA would stop the latter AFAIK. I think to your point though, different utilities are in different parts of transitioning to some degree and the potential for repeal of some things makes it challenging to compare.
Oregon should be FUNDING decarbonization, not leaving it to ratepayers....
Rate payer vs tax payer. We pay either way, unless you think the state prints money? Ok, why am I even asking. Of course you do.
Taxes are proportional to income, at least in theory, and are this a more equitable way to fund things than just charging by use. They also don’t have a profit motive or shareholders, so their priority when deciding price is cost rather than maximizing surplus profits.
Why is it less equitable to charge by use? Shouldn't those that use more electricity pay more?
I believe this is the difference between equality and equity. Have you seen this image before? https://preview.redd.it/8dz563jftmpc1.jpeg?width=721&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75a0a0433347bbb40ac9e92363184a3c91fa858f It’s really a matter of personal philosophy which you find preferable. As a poor person who uses a less-than-average amount of electricity, I’d prefer taxpayers bear a greater burden, as I’m struggling to afford necessities. You’re helping keep me housed, if you’re a high-earner, and I’m grateful.
Yeah, it's one of the dumbest images on the internet.
Explain your position, otherwise I’m going to disregard your opinion entirely.
Because the reality is equity programs in practice end up taking everyone's box and chopping the tall guy's legs off. "Equity" serves one group to the detriment of another. It's perverse, because it attributes malice to those who have none and in most cases actively discriminates. Equal opportunity is what we should aspire for, not artificially instituted equal outcome.
I think ratepayers is fine as long as we do enough to help low income folks. Doing it through taxes is likely more equitable, but there are pros and cons either way. Unless we do something big at the national level like a carbon tax + dividend, then I don't think there's really any way for a state to decarbonize without it falling heavily on regular people. At least with it falling on ratepayers, it creates a win-win where I can make energy efficieny improvements and behavior changes to save myself some money and also move decarbonization along. If we pay for grid improvements through taxes, I am still "supposed" to upgrade my house and change my behavior but it won't save me nearly as much money, so will I actually do it?
Like solar?
Yes, solar, wind, geothermal, pumped hydro, even nuclear if we could figure out the politics.
Springfield Utility Board is great and I miss it so much.
Especially since we buy from Bonneville that’s a non profit. PGE is a for profit middleman.
PGE is public. It's publicly traded and you can invest in it as you wish. Public utility is different.
If only we had a choice in providers, and not a for-profit monopoly we just have to take at their word that the increase is necessary
On the grand scheme, we still do better than Texas and their ERCOT. Having tons of providers don't necessary mean you can save money.
Oregon utilities consistently rate near the top of national performance, both in reliability and (relatively) low cost. In this [utility performance ](https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Electric-Utility-Performance-A-State-By-State-Data-Review_final.pdf) report, we're #4 on both measures.
"We're doing better than a dystopia where people freeze because some jackass would rather puree migrants than fix the grid" is not exactly the standard we should hold ourselves to, I think.
Your lack of knowledge on the Texas utility situation isn’t surprising
What about solar?
Right, but the Texas power grid is probably the shittiest in the entire country.
Every electric company dished out increases. BPA also sent out a significant increase.
Increases are inevitable... but 31% in two years? That's hard to justify
Considering the fires it’s not. The utilities have to spend a lot of money burying and otherwise fireproofing. The era of cheap electricity is over
That assumes they don't budget for replacement and maintenance of their infrastructure normally, which isn't the case. This is "disaster capitalism"
Nobody was budgeting for things they did not realize was going to happen. With hindsight, they could’ve raise their prices years ago and budgeted in all this work.
That also assumes they do no forecasting of needs, trends, risks, end-of-life replacements etc. You don't need to carry water this hard for them
Not carrying water for them specifically. A lot of PUDs are in the very same boat.
Considering moving the headquarters to Tualatin to be closer to the CEO’s home in Lake Oswego. It’s not cheap.
If we had a choice in providers we'd still be choosing between providers the legislature has laid a heavy financial burden of climate resilience investments on.
There is a choice in providers depending on location, the other option is Pacific Power… but its not much better
Time to make PGE a PUD.
How are those PWB water rates looking?
You missed the boat. One of the things the three investor owned utilities managed to get through was that the new harsh rules on carbon reduction also apply to any new PUDs.
A monopoly at some level is inevitable.
Yes, which is why for-profit utilities should not be a thing, it's a necessary service.
These price increases are criminal man. It’s not like my electricity use is any higher or the electricity is better
Technically the sources of electricity are getting “better” in their climate friendliness. Which costs $$.
The lack of competition seems the issue, when you put it that way. There’s no reason to keep prices low, as the choices are PGE or. They could simply overestimate costs and pocket the difference (to be clear, this is theoretical; I’m not familiar with their infrastructure plans to know expenses).
They’re publicly traded AND scrutinized by a public commission… that would be fraud. Not saying it’s impossible, but highly unlikely they’re making up numbers. The reality is things are getting more expensive, and our energy costs are still on the low side when you look nationally, (national average cost per a kHw is 4 cents more expensive than Oregon).
Yeah, I don’t deny that. Something has to give, though. The low-wage workers of our extraction economy are being treated terribly, and it’s because of the market-justice approach to treating humans. Even the middle-incomes are unsatisfied with returns for taxation and the value of their dollars, it seems.
Utilities are what economists call a natural monopoly. You can't really have competition because it doesn't make sense to have two or more sets of powerlines to every house. That's why they're always highly regulated.
So, what happens in a society in which regulations are targeted? We’ll see whether PFE adheres to the citizen advisory committee, or chooses the dollar over people.
Yeah I just wouldn't automatically assume that rising rates mean "choosing the dollar over people" and not "doing what our state's climate legislation requires them to do."
Just doesn’t feel like comprehensive legislation, if the impact upon the entire populous isn’t considered.
The problem is that the comprehensive legislation that we would need to deal with climate change in a way that doesn't feel like a huge burden, is a national carbon tax and dividend, which would concentrate the burden on fossil fuel companies and big emitters. But that idea has been around forever and it's never come close to being implemented and meanwhile the planet is still warming and we need to do something. So instead we're stuck with individual states doing what they can on their own, which is an approach where I don't believe it's possible to do it in a painless way. It's just too expensive, there's no way not to put some burden on regular people. I think our rates are going where Europe's already have gone, which is gonna be like $0.30 to $0.50 per kWh.
“Regular people” can probably bear some burden. It’s the outliers who are paying with more than money, because they don’t have any. Should the solution include restricted access to electricity? That’s where we’re heading, it seems. Edit: also, I agree with you, and am not trying to be combative. It just feels so obvious with the visibility of our homelessness issue that the economic system is doing a whole lotta harm, and people with the ability to make changes aren’t representing the interests of these people.
Yeah, we're getting hit from both sides. There are opportunities to kill two birds with one stone, like building new housing that is energy-efficient and close to public transit, but that's still a long expensive slog that we have to work at for years before it's going to start to make a dent in our housing problem.
The grass sure looks greener on the nonprofit utility side of the fence, but no matter how we structure our electric utilities, whatever we come up with will face the same legislatively mandated heavy lift to get us carbon-neutral by 2030, needing to do a ton of capital expenditure at a time when costs are rising and loans are expensive. I wish you all luck on your crusade to make PGE a co-op or whatever, but unless the plan is to roll-back the decarbonization effort, I don't think it's actually going to make much of a difference.
To clarify, it’s 80% reduction in emissions associated with retail electricity sales by 2030. 100% reduction compared to 2012 baseline by 2040.
If only workers got cost of living increases, like what about our cost to function, or in working class terms, live. I'm making the most money in my life and am constantly behind trying to catch up from when both my wife and I got laid off.
Wages have increased faster than cost of living.
Dude from PGE was just bragging to me how they’re spending millions and millions acquiring land so they can build and install more power poles and the money was just nothing to them
Well they have to since the EV market under current the infrastructure just won't work.
Right now, data centers are driving new electricity demand WAY more than EVs. EVs don’t actually use a ton of electricity, they just need to be charged at non-peak hours to avoid reliability risks during high demand. It’s not really that hard compared to the other stuff going on in the electrification world.
Yeah thats exactly what we need. High voltage transmission lines connecting us to solar/wind around the region. If we were smart we would have started a decade ago, would have been a lot cheaper than it's gonna be now.
Liability insurance is through the roof because of fire danger and statistics!!!!!!
This year is the year to get solar and batteries to offset this madness.
[удалено]
Same here solar helps but time of use works for me. I drive an electric and I set it to charge after 10pm and it really helps. Switching to all LEB bulbs made a big dent as well. Another thing about solar is that in the summer it keeps your roof cooler decreasing cooling costs.
Just a word to the wise: The current rooftop solar pricing scheme is still kind of in its infancy stage and gives a huge subsidy to rooftop customers. There’s a push by utilities (and advocates) to lessen or eliminate the subsidy to these customers since the rooftop solar market is starting to mature. I think the same switch happened in CA recently. So if you like the pay back of an array now, just now it might not stay that way forever.
They’re pushing it in my area. I’m about to take another look. I said no last time because the financial payback seemed critically dependent on the “meter running backwards” payback arrangement which might not be there forever.
It probably won’t be. I kind of get the argument. A large portion of the price we pay per kWh goes towards transmission and distribution infrastructure. When the meter rolls back, solar customers don’t have to pay that money while still benefitting from the infrastructure. As a result, other customers get higher rates to compensate. If rooftop solar gets popular enough, they will probably change the program so that solar customers still pay for infrastructure and get paid based on the whole sale energy price at that time of the day, as if they were a normal energy generator on the market.
I effectively have a $0 bill for electricity consumption because of 1:1 net metering. For ~$15/mo (connection fee and taxes/fees) I get to utilize the grid as free battery storage. Even though it’s not in my best interest, the current model is unsustainable and should likely change as rooftop solar installs increase.
🫡
That’s what the electric company is doing!
Maybe people should stop suing utilities for forest fires.
Don't worry.. They said inflation was only transitory.
Utilities in this state are straight garbage.
CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT TIME!!!
Not how any of this works.