The taken-over Department of Transportation is now adding new rules for setbacks to renewable energy projects. The FAA is being steered towards investigating whether windmills are safe for airplanes?!?! It's all made up fantasy nonsense, top to bottom.
Meanwhile tariffs are going to make it much more expensive to build any kind of energy plant.
Last year, the new Chinese green generation brought online surpassed the total Russian generation, all kinds.
jauntywundrkind · 3h ago
The tearing down what this admin dubs the "green new scam" is hugely responsible for this. De-funding & clawing back great investments towards the future, investments that would both power America and fuel our industrial base, drive huge economic growth.
It's not just bad for energy generetion either! China is also building a huge war chest of IP patents. Its incredibly sad to see this un-forced error, this sabotage of America, this destruction of our leadership. To walk back to a fake Great Again idiocracy obsessed only with doing the opposite of the liberals.
_DeadFred_ · 5h ago
What does that have to do with any of this discussion about power in the USA? Propaganda to hype China? Trying to stir up American nationalism to get American's to pay for billion dollar AI companies' new power plants?
Doesn't seem relevant at all other than to stir nationalism.
appease7727 · 4h ago
Other nations comparable in wealth and power to the US have figured out how to build out green energy at scale.
The US wants to pretend that is completely impossible and we should keep burning fossil fuels instead.
Please learn some critical reading skills.
voidfunc · 4h ago
We know how to build green energy at scale. Were not doing it because its politically undesirable to a chunk of the country and the fossil fuel industry.
Teever · 3h ago
Then you don't know how to do it.
Knowing how to do something doesn't meanings knowing how to get it done. Which means convincing the right people to get it done.
If that isn't happening you don't know what you're doing.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
Fossil fuels are more expensive than new renewables and storage. This has to do with intentional sabotage of domestic energy supply for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry by the current federal administration.
ZeroGravitas · 16m ago
Trump literally justified his actions based on climate change being a Chinese hoax. He recently claimed that China has no wind power turbines when they install 70% of them.
Analemma_ · 5m ago
It’s relevant because every single time the American green energy transition is brought up, people like you make bad-faith attempts to derail the conversation by going “it doesn’t matter what we do because China will still make tons of carbon”, and this information is demonstrating that’s not true. China is actually making considerable progress in decarbonization, and it’s us— and only us— who are the laggards.
thelastgallon · 6h ago
I think the administration's energy density should be extended for all things. Lets take transportation: Can't use federal lands, waterways, airspace or highways unless the airplanes, trains, ships, trucks and cars are powered by the highest energy density (nuclear).
Also, anything that uses airwaves: So, nuclear powered phones, watches, airtags.
This would be the biggest breakthrough for humanity. We have nuclear powered submarines but miniaturization of nuclear stalled since then.
nickff · 5h ago
Nuclear submarines were developed at about the same time as civil nuclear power plants (and you could actually argue they were developed earlier or reached maturity earlier). Nuclear submarine power was a sort of ‘killer app’ for nuclear power, rather than a derivative of civil nuclear power stations.
jijijijij · 3h ago
This. Nobody is free, until everybody got a thermonuclear warhead.
I love the way cars explode in Fallout. I mean, random car crashes have historically been the epitome of excitement, 4k war footage made me pretty indifferent towards bloody windshields and burnt out station wagons. I really think, the intensity of an unexpected fission event projecting its authority through my eyelids could make me feel something again.
mrDmrTmrJ · 3h ago
We control nuclear proliferation by making enriched uranium (U235) very, very hard to acquire.
While I'd love to see more nuclear reactors in our society. The "nuclear everything" argument breaks a core tenant of US national security policy, making U235 very hard to get.
thephyber · 1h ago
Why did you interpret your parent as is they were serious about putting nuclear power in every device?
It was extremely clear to me that it was a comment to show the stupidity of the admin insisting that energy density was the right/only heuristic for evaluating which fuel sources to use/support.
jauntywundrkind · 3h ago
Looking forward to the DoT getting in on this. Cars have to go! Busses trains and bikes only! No other mode of transit can be funded, not dense enough!
gosub100 · 5h ago
Meanwhile California is shutting down dams and nuclear plants.
We need all the non-carbon power we can get, and it's a shame to remove existing power sources but as electric power is eminently fungible, that loss can be mitigated with other sources.
Meanwhile, efforts to modernize the US electric grid have been stalled by Red states that are ideologically opposed to renewable power. There's plenty of potential power to be generated that is hamstrung by that resistance (pun intended).
burnerRhodo · 5h ago
>Mis-using the Department of the Interior
This is only for federal lands, which correctly falls under the interior. They have a specific amount of land to give out, they want the energy projects on that land the have the highest impact. This is very Elon thinking to solve the current crisis. Helps solve the energy problem, while getting the most kwh produces per parcel of land given out. While kicking the can down the road 20 or so years.
>It's a broadscale attack on building efficient clean power
The only word that's true on the above is "clean". Clean power is not "efficient". Coal is incredibly efficient, but not clean. Battery installations are up 22% from last year. From the administratives perspective, we are in cold war III, and we need to scale energy production by an order of magnitude to service industry and AI. Coal is the most efficient way to do that. Burning more coal adds millions of tons of CO₂ quickly, plus SO₂, NOₓ, mercury and PM2.5, but if we can make AI, it will solve all of our problems.
Not saying i agree with any of that, but they aren't a bunch of no-talent political apointees. This cabinet is one of the most impressive on paper cabinet i've ever seen. It's full of tech CEO's and businessmen. But maybe that's why they have such a zero sum view.
tonmoy · 4h ago
> This cabinet is one of the most impressive on paper cabinet i've ever seen
How can I be on you side since said this without any source. I had to spend 15 minutes going through each of the cabinet members profile (and the ones in previous presidencies). While there are a few people with good experience in the present cabinet, majority of the members don't seemed to have any experience for the job they where hired for
tzs · 4h ago
> This is only for federal lands, which correctly falls under the interior. They have a specific amount of land to give out, they want the energy projects on that land the have the highest impact. This is very Elon thinking to solve the current crisis. Helps solve the energy problem, while getting the most kwh produces per parcel of land given out.
That's clearly complete bullshit because for most places where someone wants to build a solar or wind project the alternative if the solar or wind plant is not approved is not a coal, gas, or nuclear plant. The alternative is no plant.
breakyerself · 5h ago
When it comes to energy the efficiency of a generation system is pretty much meaningless metric. Price per kilowatt hour is what rules the roost. Renewables particularly solar have become the cheapest form of electricity in history. This is driving demand for storage which is driving exponential cost reductions in that field as well.
Grid scale renewable + storage installations are now becoming competitive with natural gas. Coal is an obsolete energy source. That people in this administration are trying to weelend at Bernie's this corpse of an industry gives me serious doubts about the praise you lap on them.
actuallyalys · 4h ago
As far as I can tell, coal is middle of the pack in terms of energy efficiency [0] and less than half of the energy is captured as electricity, which doesn’t seem particularly incredible in relative or absolute terms.
Although comparing fossil fuel efficiency to renewable energy efficiency is a bit odd in one sense because while you’re technically wasting energy with renewables, there will always be more tomorrow, at least on human time scales.
Creating and exacerbating a whole host of problems with some idea that an AI-God will then rescue us isn't "impressive" - it's mentally ill. These are the same types of people from the articles about LLM psychosis, except these people are in positions of power so we all get to suffer their delusions. Except for Trump himself who is closer to being the LLM side of the dynamic.
crmd · 5h ago
One of my favorite things here in New York City is how Con Ed gets approval to pass infrastructure upgrade costs directly to consumers, but at the end of the financing period the asset is mysteriously owned by their board of directors, not the public who paid for it.
SoftTalker · 5h ago
If a private company builds infrastructure with their profits, should it be owned by the customers "who paid for it"?
skort · 5h ago
Why are we letting private companies own public infrastructure?
supertrope · 4h ago
Politicians lack the will to push for public utilities. That requires asking voters to go along with the government taking on financing, planning, operations, customer service, and being the bad guys who raise prices. It's easier to point to companies as the bad guys who raised electric rates, likely sparked a wildfire, or are taking so long to fix an outage.
danielmarkbruce · 4h ago
Because public operation of infrastructure has often not gone well. And no matter who owns it, there is a cost of capital.
nine_k · 4h ago
It's either owned by a private company, or public (owned by municipality or similar).
pstuart · 4h ago
Because our political system is rigged to allow the wealthy to make the rules.
bichiliad · 1h ago
They are given a de facto monopoly. It’s weird that a private company is building and owning public utilities, but if they’re going to be granted a monopoly, then it’s not unreasonable for that privilege to come at a price.
kingkawn · 5h ago
Yes
No comments yet
jncfhnb · 4h ago
Most of these things are really liabilities. You have to maintain these things.
s1artibartfast · 10m ago
Funny how the chef passes his costs on to me, but at the end of the day he owns the restaurant. What Injustice!
If people don't like paying a private entity for a goods or service, the solution is to make it yourself, not complain. Tons of cities, counties, and states do just that
sidewndr46 · 4h ago
Isn't it mandated that they do that by the state? The gas companies where I live work this way.
streptomycin · 5h ago
Here in NJ a lot of people are complaining about electricity price increases. Upon looking into it, it seems that the reason is mostly a combination of population growth, shutting down old power plants, and not building enough new power plants.
Most people seem to blame price gouging from the electricity companies, but the electricity companies seem to be extremely tightly regulated and don't have much wiggle room with how they set their prices.
Haven't heard much talk about actually solving the problem and building more power plants, so probably we're going to see more articles like this in the future.
os2warpman · 4h ago
>Most people seem to blame price gouging from the electricity companies,
True or false: PSEG's annual profit every year for the last five years at a rate that greatly exceeds inflation while expenses are practically flat.
Their stock symbol is PEG, bee-tee-dubs.
There are very few theories of business and/or economics where profits increase while costs are steady where prices don't increase.
Are they (hold on a sec while I compose myself so I don't type a long string of obscenities) using that money to improve their service and keep rates steady or are they funneling everyone's money into the pockets of their investors and begging the state for free cash to maintain their infrastructure like they're some broke-ass bitches?
Also their stock underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 5 years.
I'm not really a finance guy so probably I'm looking at it wrong, but that seems like some pretty bad price gouging.
SoftTalker · 5h ago
Yeah public utilities can rarely price gouge. They have to get government approval for their rates.
If "AI Datacenters" are part of the problem the answer is simple, charge them higer rates, high enough to motivate them to build their own generating capacity.
mike_d · 2h ago
> They have to get government approval for their rates.
We need laws that prevent government employees from directly or indirectly investing in utilities.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System for example directly holds over 6.4 million shares of PG&E, and an additional 52 million shares via intermediaries.
42lux · 5h ago
I wonder who could built and operate these plants...
supertrope · 4h ago
The electric company that sends you a bill handles distribution (power lines within your city) not generation (power plants). Sometimes they are vertically integrated owning both generation and distribution. In de-regulated supplier choice states you can switch your generation provider. You cannot switch your distribution provider as each address only has one power line.
gosub100 · 4h ago
Definitely not the government, given how wasteful and inefficient they are.
42lux · 4h ago
I thought about the providers that are closing down power plants right now. But just out of interest who exactly is the "government" in arguments like this? Because no matter which party is controlling the government the sentiment never seems to change... always seemed like an of remark with no meaning besides yelling at clouds.
In an ideal world this should incentivise more people with single family homes and capital to invest in Solar + batteries and even with tariffs I am sure the breakeven time will still be less than 10 years (also after accounting for the fact that utilities will not be paying a lot for your electricity though time of use pricing and batteries may help a bit)
blindriver · 6h ago
I live in the SF Bay Area. My rates have roughly doubled in about 5-6 years. I'm paying almost $0.50/kWh or more depending on what tier I'm in at the time. PG&E does NOT reward conservation or solar power usage. They say "We aren't make enough money! We need to raise your rates! We need to charge solar users to connect to the grid!" The exact same thing happens with water utility companies, when they first preach water conservation, and then complain they aren't making enough money so they have to raise rates.
PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar, and give new users $0 to return energy back to the grid.
The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt.
khuey · 5h ago
> PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar
If you're "fully self-powered through solar" just disconnect from the grid.
If you're using the grid as a battery where you feed power into it at 4PM and draw power from it at 4AM, that costs money.
secabeen · 4h ago
This. 100%. The ability to draw 200Amps from the grid at no notice, 24x7 has real value, and costs real money to provide. If you want that ability, you should pay for it.
We really need to separate the reliability and grid maintenance costs from the usage costs. Bundling them together worked when electricity was a true monopoly, but it isn't that anymore.
skybrian · 6h ago
This is because California has so much solar that it can’t use it all during the day:
From here on out, batteries are where it’s at. Overprovisioning solar helps, but the demand isn’t there and they aren’t going to pay much for it. (More utility-scale batteries would increase demand for solar somewhat, for charging them.)
Meanwhile, California needs to maintain and improve the electrical grid to lower the risk of wildfires, but more solar in the wrong places doesn’t help much with that.
StillBored · 4h ago
Batteries are just an extension of the thinking that PV or Wind are 'cheap'. There is slight U shape in the price where an initial fraction lowers the cost, but then it just additional cost overhead. Cost shifting some of the excess solar into the evening to reduce the peak load there is fine, but then your still paying for a pile of excess backup capacity to sit around idle for those days when the sun doesn't shine, and adding more batteries beyond a certain point is the same. They just sit around idle most of the time adding to the cost. I've posted here napkin math for how much a W of solar or reliable PV actually costs and been down voted but the math is easy when you stop believing that a W from PV/Wind is the same as a W from your local Gas/Coal/Hydro/Nuke plant.
All those gas plants and batteries sitting around idle soon start dominating the cost structure because the price of their produced watts starts to go exponential.
Braxton1980 · 6h ago
You want to connect to a grid then you need to pay a certain percentage for upkeep regardless of the amount of electricity you use.
"The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt."
What an immature over simplification that means nothing. none of the examples you provided are an example of corruption
jmpman · 5h ago
In Arizona, the power company also charges for a solar tie in. If I remember the wording correctly, it’s required if any electricity is generated on premises. So if I have a solar powered Air Conditioning unit with grid backup for the evening, I’d need to pay the tie in. That’s true, even if it has NO grid backup. Solar powered pool pump - pay the solar grid fee. Solar powered Gnome garden light? The way I read it, I’d have to pay the fee. I want to do a ton of solar projects without actually tying into the grid, but am concerned that 10 years from now, some overly enthusiastic intern is going to search Google maps for solar installs and check to see if those owners are paying the tie in fee. That’s when I’d get stuck with a retroactive back charge for the past 10 years and probably some fine. So, when a monopoly utility gets to dictate the terms of how you use your property, it’s not an immature over simplification. In AZ the power company also provides the water for the farmers. The board votes are allocated based upon acreage, which is of course dominated by the farmers. What do the farmers want? Cheap water. So they’re incentivized to ensure there are no disruption to their electricity generating capital investments, otherwise water rates would need to go up to cover those fixed costs. So, is that corrupt? Sure seems rigged in favor of those “poor” farmers who own literal square miles of land at $200k/acre here in metropolitan Phoenix. At what point would you consider it corruption?
Braxton1980 · 4h ago
It's an immature simplification to claim all politicians and the system are corrupt because fees are required.
vmladenov · 5h ago
So separate the interconnect fee from the energy unit price.
clickety_clack · 5h ago
Why would an ideal world have electricity become so expensive that individuals have to construct their own power stations? I have better things to do with my time. I don’t want a society where we are designing incentives such that individuals to have to build and maintain all their own infrastructure.
bevr1337 · 6h ago
An ideal world doesn't look like land owners building moats.
I work in energy/home automation. I'm burnt out.
mindslight · 5h ago
What's the target market of your business? I'm doing a DIY solar setup, plus a bunch of liberty-respecting automation, and often lament that there aren't better ways to make such things serviceable by contractors (when I'm gone, etc). It feels like every commercial offering I've seen is for extremely rich people's "dream houses", deploying expensive niche-commercial solutions in a very top-down manner (lots of homeruns of narrow-purpose cables to multiple racks in a centralized control room, etc).
FirmwareBurner · 6h ago
We don't live in an ideal world though but in a world run by the incentives of the capital/asset owning class.
bevr1337 · 6h ago
> In an ideal world this should incentivise...
> An ideal world...
> We don't live in an ideal world though...
Yes. That was thoroughly established in the original comment and my reply. Have you come to look for an argument? Or to show off how pragmatic you are? What's your point besides "shit sucks?" If that's your point, I'm glad to commiserate. Shit sucks.
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
>Have you come to look for an argument?
Nope I just gave my opinion, but judging from your spiteful reply it's clearly you looking for an argument but I won't bite.
bboygravity · 6h ago
Man that's some environmentalist centralist government planner thinking: mess up your energy policy so badly that prices rise like crazy and it starts making sense for people to switch to way more expensive ways to convert energy.
Is this supposed to be positive?
rasz · 6h ago
Its only more expensive in US, because of the government.
skappapab · 6h ago
An ideal world the same companies who are heavily benefiting from subsidizing the American people would pay the lion share of this and then some.
Instead, they get to offshore jobs or bring in H1Bs to further their bottom line.
hdgvhicv · 6h ago
I looked at that, then the conservatives decided to subsidise electricity consumption to great acclaim, and that threw off the ROI and I bought an oil boiler and decided to not bother with rooftop solar as the time for return more than doubled. Thanks Boris, Yu confirmed that the market would be manipulated.
belorn · 53m ago
How is the consumption fees moving compared to grid fees? In Sweden, grid fees has increased significant, while consumption fees is actually one of the lowest on a 5 year history.
Grid fees is what pays for grid stability and transmission, which has increased in complexity and demand in direct relation to how much variability that wind and solar create in the grid.
nxm · 5h ago
For context:
$0.18/kWh in US vs. $0.32/kWh in France and $0.36/kWh Germany.
The administration is making an attempt to address the issue of every growing demand for more electricity and remove barriers for additional power to come on-line.
"To compete globally, we must expand energy production and reduce energy costs for American families and businesses."
https://www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-wright-acts-unleas...
jijijijij · 3h ago
Some states have vastly higher energy costs, tho, don't they? Bit weird to compare the whole US to selected European countries, which represent completely different energy strategies and subsidy policies, while also being heavily affected by the war in Ukraine.
thehappypm · 2h ago
Yeah, new england for example has high energy costs because of 1) a lack of local energy sources and 2) reluctance to build new gas pipelines.
ChrisArchitect · 4h ago
Related:
Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone
In California our rate in 2019 with PG&E was $0.20/kWh - in 2025 it’s $0.38/kWh. CA keeps giving them the ability to raise prices and under deliver
TkTech · 3h ago
Just as a comparison, here in Montréal I pay $0.051USD/kWh and we're at 99.2% renewables. Large customers pay even less.
thehappypm · 2h ago
ah, Quebec. So much energy but nobody can buy it!
Ontario can’t..
New England wants it but keeps hitting NIMBYism..
NY wants it but needs new infrastructure
thelastgallon · 6h ago
This is great news. If costs climb rapidly, homeowners will switch to solar + battery + ( EV, heat pump water heater, induction stove) and disconnect from grid. Grid disconnects will cause costs to rise even more, a virtuous cycle.
throw0101c · 5h ago
> This is great news. If costs climb rapidly, homeowners will switch to […]
And what about renters (who are, in the US, often the poorer)?
Electricity is an input to industrial and commercial operations, so if companies see their costs rise, they will probably raise prices to maintain margin: this will feed into higher prices everywhere (all goods and services).
ViewTrick1002 · 5h ago
They would be forced to pay even higher energy costs if they had to also compete with all these homes which now relies less on the grid.
thelastgallon · 5h ago
> And what about renters (who are, in the US, often the poorer)?
Then the apartment owners have another revenue stream, build a mini-grid and offer electricity cheaper than the grid. They already do many add-on services for additional revenue: garages, trash pickup, etc.
> Electricity is an input to industrial and commercial operations, so if companies see their costs rise, they will probably raise prices to maintain margin: this will feed into higher prices everywhere (all goods and services).
All production will continue to move to China, which has built and continues to build vast amounts of cheap electricity and infrastructure.
ghaff · 6h ago
You're talking about big capital upgrades that very few people will make in existing homes. I sure won't.
thelastgallon · 5h ago
Capital upgrades don't require capital, only monthly installments. US has the most advance financial packaging infrastructure that can package anything into a monthly payment. It will be a straight up comparison between (electricity bill from grid + gas for 2 ICE cars + natural gas bill) vs (solar + 2 EVs + heat pump water heater + induction stove).
Also, most decisions are not financial but emotional (virtue signaling + status seeking + salesman's ability). Most poor people end up taking incredibly bad financial decisions because a salesman is able to sell. In Texas, if you can talk God/football/beer, and are not a complete idiot, you can sell anything.
The people who bought 100K+ Tesla's before 2024 were not going by finance, nor are the people buying Teslas in 2025. A trillion dollar company is born just out of virtue signaling.
ghaff · 5h ago
And most of the monthly installments for things like solar are basically scams. The more you see the solar salesmen at your door or camped out in the front of Home Depot the scammier they tend to be. But it sounds like you might agree.
I did get induction to replace a propane cooktop recently but that's only because I had to get a new range after a fire and induction probably made more sense than it did a few years back.
nine_k · 4h ago
Get a loan from your friendly credit union on better terms. It requires having a clue though, and being able to organize contractors, and / or do things yourself.
ghaff · 4h ago
Sounds exhausting. My electrical bill is about $100/month. Doesn't sound like it's worth a major project to decrease. Your mileage may differ of course.
nine_k · 2h ago
Mine was north of $500 last month :( It starts looking like a battery + a DIY PV array installation just to power the air conditioning alone would pay for itself in one summer.
dzhiurgis · 1h ago
It will be $200 in few years. Could be 0.
pton_xd · 5h ago
Wouldn't it be more efficient to centralize the generation of electricity and take advantage of economies of scale?
mattnewton · 4h ago
Upgrading transmission infrastructure costs a lot of money (and bureaucracy). Especially in Oregon and northern California where the lines probably should be buried to stop risking wildfires. I’m not sure which path is actually more cost effective for solar+battery.
nine_k · 4h ago
Solar generation has little economies of scale: PV arrays scale linearly, unlike turbines and electromechanical generators. Batteries also scale basically linearly; maybe you can have a better deal if you buy a truly massive amount of batteries, but I'm not certain it's so dramatic.
Transmission costs seem to dominate the price structure; I currently pay a generating company about $0.1 / kWh, and pay Con Ed $0.25 / kWh for transmission of that energy. And this is in dense New York City; in suburbia or countryside the transmission lines have to be much longer.
Centralized generation makes sense when the efficiency scales wildly non-linearly with size, like it does with nuclear reactors.
lostdog · 3h ago
Does solar scale linearly when you have to get onto roofs to install it? And when each roof is available for installation at different times, so only small crews can do it piecemeal?
nine_k · 2h ago
It certainly complicates things a bit, but the roofs are independent, so several small teams can independently work in parallel. So yes, it's sort of linear.
Building a large solar installation may scale a bit sub-linearly, if you can e.g. order things in bulk at better prices, and have some electric assemblies done at a factory, more efficiently.
danaris · 3h ago
That cycle leaves out those who do not have the large amounts of money required to make those capital investments. Indeed, it pushes them farther and farther behind.
That doesn't sound like "great news" to me unless you're a serious classist.
dkiebd · 5h ago
What’s with progressives celebrating impoverishment? Is it because their power depends on the existence of poor people?
blendo · 5h ago
The duck curve tells us prices are lower at noon due to tons of new solar, but what about the rate of price change?
Are electricity prices at noon climbing faster, or less fast, than prices at 6pm?
nullc · 34m ago
My rates off-peak have increased faster than the on-peak rates, presumably because the on-peak rates were already sky high.
In the last couple years peak has gone from ~0.36 to ~0.56, while off-peak went from ~0.12 to ~0.27.
xnx · 6h ago
It's good for the price of things to increase when demand increases. We don't want outages instead of price increases, and we don't want costs to increase independent of demand.
bongodongobob · 6h ago
It's good when you are talking about tulips or ice cream or something. Not necessities like electricity/water/food etc.
istjohn · 5h ago
An effective price signal is all the more essential for necessities. The problem in my state of Ohio is that the corrupt politicians have been bought off by the utilities that enjoy a state-sanctioned monopoly and alow them to raise rates with abandon.
baggy_trough · 6h ago
It's good for all things, except highly regulated monopolies like electricity, trash, and water.
WarOnPrivacy · 5h ago
> It's good for all things, except ...
Humans and absolutes tend to be a pretty bad combo.
It is my experience that no system is good for all things. While some systems trend better than others, they are only good until they are not - and there will always be a 'not'.
Similarly, every 'not' is different. When we get there we're wise to consider it with experience + evidence and a willingness to do what those indicate.
RhysU · 5h ago
You would prefer the price of electricity be held constant until the day the monopoly rage quits? That day, no one can get power for any price.
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
I would prefer an knowledgeable, effective and non-corrupted PSC regulate the utility in a manner that keeps the utility viable, so it can serve customers first and shareholders last.
ghaff · 4h ago
> trash
I have to pay for trash removal in my town and I have a variety of choices. And while I pay the town for water, many people have wells. And I have my own septic system. So, while electricity is mostly regulated, many other utilities are on a house by house basis.
TL;DR - For July 2024 to July 2025, the inflation rate for "all items" was 2.7% while the rate for "electricity" was 5.5%.
exabrial · 6h ago
I'm beyond ok with this! Let backpressure into the market! It's the ultimate incentive for promoting energy efficiency.
WarOnPrivacy · 5h ago
> I'm beyond ok with this! Let backpressure into the market!
The article brought up some downstream effects such as seniors choosing between paying for power or their meds.
When we approve an outcome without addressing the consequences, we are effectively rubberstamping those consequences. I believe this doesn't serve us well.
SoftTalker · 5h ago
They could also move to a place where they don't need 24x7 air conditioning running 10 months a year.
Broken_Hippo · 5h ago
If someone is having to choose between power and medication, how could they get the money to move to this place?? They won't. Most folks aren't really that mobile and being poor makes this more likely.
I'll also note that I live in such a place. Heck, I don't have air conditioning at all. But if I don't have heat in the winter, I'll die. It's cold out. Not many place have the luxury of not needing heating nor cooling - and even when some folks can go without, not all buildings are fit for that purpose. 2 windows on one side of an apartment doesn't make for good ventilation.
SoftTalker · 4h ago
> how could they get the money to move to this place
Maybe we give it to them? They're very likely on subsidized income anyway, it's a one time cost and drop in the bucket to move them to someplace more affordable.
el_benhameen · 4h ago
Have you ever met a senior? For most people, the world shrinks as they age: it’s harder to learn new routines, figure out how to do things, etc. just popping them out of a place where they have family, services, and routines into an entirely new place is a recipe for disaster.
SoftTalker · 4h ago
Well, let them swelter or go without their meds then? If they have so much family and support around, why are they struggling to pay for the AC?
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
> Maybe we give it to them?
Established funding sources tend to have long lines of applicants.
Past that, if it's public funds, the rising political force is fiercely opposed to this - mostly for ideological reasons that are disconnected from actual outcomes.
supertrope · 3h ago
Like San Francisco which is so affordable.
exabrial · 4h ago
If that's the case, lets see a study on that! How often does this happen?
grepfru_it · 6h ago
Our rates went up but now they are offering free nights. Cost of battery tech has dropped, so now I am powering my house with batteries during the day and charge them at night. The downside is vendors come and go, so the battery you buy today may not be the same offered tomorrow.
3eb7988a1663 · 4h ago
Good news! The current administration also wants to put an end to the Energy Star program.
baggy_trough · 6h ago
I thought we were supposed to be replacing natural gas appliances with electric ones, but it's become ruinously expensive to do so. Not only are they more expensive to operate due to high electricity rates, the panel upgrades for higher power draw are outrageous.
danans · 5h ago
> Not only are they more expensive to operate due to high electricity rates,
Most electric appliances are much cheaper to operate, even in places with expensive electricity like MA and CA. This is especially true for appliances like heat pumps due to their >100% "efficiency", and if you are somewhere with cheap clean electricity (Pacific Northwest) they are a no-brainer.
> the panel upgrades for higher power draw are outrageous.
With smart splitters and some planning, panel upgrades can often be avoided:
More people need to realize that utilities are not at all like normal businesses, so to spell it out in more detail for those that don't know:
Normal businesses make more money when they cut costs. Utilities (typically) get to charge a fixed upsell percentage and so they make more money when they increase their costs.
koolba · 6h ago
And that’s exactly what the ACA did to health insurance too with its “profit percentage caps”. Your insurer can only make more money if the price of healthcare goes up. And if they are predominantly passing the cost on to you, they pretty much want that to happen.
supertrope · 4h ago
They got around that rule by buying out pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), hospitals, doctor's offices, and pharmacies. While the health insurance side of UnitedHealthCare is capped at 20% or 15% overhead, they can realize their earnings by marking up the price of drugs through their pharmacy subsidiary OptumRx. They steer customers toward OptumRx by structuring their health insurance to favor that pharmacy.
CVS bought Aetna [health insurance]. CVS also owns CVS Caremark a PBM. If your employer picked Aetna as your health insurance you must fill your meds at a CVS.
lotsofpulp · 6h ago
That must be great for pharmaceutical companies/doctors/hospitals/pharmacists since they can just arbitrarily increase prices and charge whatever they want and the managed care organization will pay it.
And MCO’s are incentivized to approve all claims, so doctors and patients won’t complain about denied coverage.
michaelrpeskin · 6h ago
Obamacare/ACA has this too. The "Medical Loss Ratio" or "80/20" rule says that 80% of premiums have to be paid as claims. There's no downward pressure on claims payments because they raise rates and take 20% of a bigger number.
lotsofpulp · 6h ago
Customers switching between managed care organizations (MCOs) is the downward pressure. Theoretically, there are enough customers for multiple MCOs to choose from, although, the large amounts of people locked up in employer and government subsidized plans prevents this in smaller states.
UNH can’t charge too much more than Elevance/CVS/Cigna/Humama/Centene/Molina/etc.
That cannot happen with a utility like electricity.
throwaway173738 · 5h ago
You can’t change insurers without changing jobs. The “private market” doesn’t exist because there’s no way to access the premium your employer pays for you to take it somewhere else, and even if you could you have to wait for open enrollment. No such window exists for cost increases in health plans.
lotsofpulp · 5h ago
You can go to healthcare.gov and pick the same plans, many millions of people do it and price shop every year.
You can tell your employer you don’t want to pay for the employer subsidized plan, but then you lose access to the employer subsidy and ability to pay premiums with pre tax income.
supertrope · 3h ago
Paying 25K a year in health insurance premiums instead of 2.5K is not a realistic choice for most people. That employer subsidy is a massive difference.
massysett · 6h ago
I think that's the idea with deregulated electricity. Where I live (Maryland USA) I can pick who generates my electricity. I have no choice in who delivers it and that is still regulated.
I found that in practice the non-default options do not wind up being any cheaper so after trying it for a few years I switched back to the default option, where the price is not regulated but is set through a prescribed auction process.
I suppose the deregulation might still put downward pressure on prices in theory.
jpalawaga · 5h ago
I don’t know why people delete rules on fairness (laws) and then expect things to become more fair.
Electricity transmission at the minimum should be owned wholly by the public to remove profit incentive.
There’s your downward pressure—no incentive to jack up costs.
Until then, providing electricity to people will be a profit generating activity.
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
> Electricity transmission at the minimum should be owned wholly by the public to remove profit incentive.
My provider is a coop and my rates are lower than the publicly held providers in this region. So you seem to be correct.
zdragnar · 5h ago
The market for customers who freely move is very small, as most get their insurance through their employer. Many large companies self fund their own health insurance offerings and just have third party companies administer it.
Everyone else gets stuck with the awful mess of their employer choosing their insurer, switching not more than once a year.
1123581321 · 5h ago
The employers switch between providers and administrators and negotiate on behalf of the employees on renewals (tweaking plans, threatening to move.) The employers are incentivized because they pay for some of the premiums and to keep employees happy.
lotsofpulp · 5h ago
The point is the managed care market is not structurally similar to a utility company. It is only tax rules that disincentivize people from shopping for managed care.
Whereas multiple utilities are disincentivized due to the cost of moving earth and labor to get you the utility.
Also, I like how the trope is managed care organizations wield unlimited power and make enormous sums of money and have laws that help them benefit over everyone else, but their profit margins and stock returns are abysmal.
chaostheory · 6h ago
Everyone already knows they’re not normal businesses when the state grants them a monopoly.
justlikereddit · 5h ago
We're living In the Green Energy revolution. Solar power and wind power is literally free energy.
Did these guys not get the memo?
andybak · 5h ago
The trouble with sarcasm is that it's hard to discern the point you actually wanted to make.
Presuming you had one.
anonfordays · 5h ago
>Earlier this year, the utility that serves both Thomas and Salvi, Florida Power & Light, applied for a rate increase that would have boosted bills for a typical South Florida resident by about 13% over the next four years.
That is quite a bit less than inflation over the past four years.
antithesizer · 6h ago
good thing we all got con'd into buying electric stovetops a few years ago :)
An Energy Star certified electric range will consume around 200 kWh per year. Even at California-level rates it’d be less than $10 a month to power it.
And induction, which of course is electric as well, would be cheaper still.
supertrope · 3h ago
The furnace or heat pump is a much larger energy consumer than the stove. Complaining about gas stove bans is just a distraction from the much larger prize of heating fuel demand. People can see and feel their stove. They don't think about their furnace much except when they get their natural gas bill or it stops working. Gas utilities are afraid of a death spiral of people switching to all electric appliances, infrastructure costs being spread over a smaller customer base, which incentivizes more people to switch.
Warping the EPA to cancel green grants, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/climate/epa-cancels-solar... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44799290
Mis-using the Department of the Interior to deny solar & wind, requiring them to nonsensically prove they are more energy dense than gas and coal. https://heatmap.news/sparks/interior-department-wind-solar-l...
The taken-over Department of Transportation is now adding new rules for setbacks to renewable energy projects. The FAA is being steered towards investigating whether windmills are safe for airplanes?!?! It's all made up fantasy nonsense, top to bottom.
Meanwhile tariffs are going to make it much more expensive to build any kind of energy plant.
It's a broadscale attack on building efficient clean power, making it as hard as possible to do good and to tackle this crisis efficiently. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/climate/trump-wind-solar-... https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trum...
There's an latin term term for people who actively obstruct humanity, Hostis Humani Generis. Bad for humanity.
Last year, the new Chinese green generation brought online surpassed the total Russian generation, all kinds.
It's not just bad for energy generetion either! China is also building a huge war chest of IP patents. Its incredibly sad to see this un-forced error, this sabotage of America, this destruction of our leadership. To walk back to a fake Great Again idiocracy obsessed only with doing the opposite of the liberals.
Doesn't seem relevant at all other than to stir nationalism.
The US wants to pretend that is completely impossible and we should keep burning fossil fuels instead.
Please learn some critical reading skills.
Knowing how to do something doesn't meanings knowing how to get it done. Which means convincing the right people to get it done.
If that isn't happening you don't know what you're doing.
Also, anything that uses airwaves: So, nuclear powered phones, watches, airtags.
This would be the biggest breakthrough for humanity. We have nuclear powered submarines but miniaturization of nuclear stalled since then.
I love the way cars explode in Fallout. I mean, random car crashes have historically been the epitome of excitement, 4k war footage made me pretty indifferent towards bloody windshields and burnt out station wagons. I really think, the intensity of an unexpected fission event projecting its authority through my eyelids could make me feel something again.
While I'd love to see more nuclear reactors in our society. The "nuclear everything" argument breaks a core tenant of US national security policy, making U235 very hard to get.
It was extremely clear to me that it was a comment to show the stupidity of the admin insisting that energy density was the right/only heuristic for evaluating which fuel sources to use/support.
Dam removals have multiple factors behind them, from pure economics (cheaper to remove than repair) to environmental -- restoring fisheries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dam_removals_in_Califo...
We need all the non-carbon power we can get, and it's a shame to remove existing power sources but as electric power is eminently fungible, that loss can be mitigated with other sources.
Meanwhile, efforts to modernize the US electric grid have been stalled by Red states that are ideologically opposed to renewable power. There's plenty of potential power to be generated that is hamstrung by that resistance (pun intended).
This is only for federal lands, which correctly falls under the interior. They have a specific amount of land to give out, they want the energy projects on that land the have the highest impact. This is very Elon thinking to solve the current crisis. Helps solve the energy problem, while getting the most kwh produces per parcel of land given out. While kicking the can down the road 20 or so years.
>It's a broadscale attack on building efficient clean power
The only word that's true on the above is "clean". Clean power is not "efficient". Coal is incredibly efficient, but not clean. Battery installations are up 22% from last year. From the administratives perspective, we are in cold war III, and we need to scale energy production by an order of magnitude to service industry and AI. Coal is the most efficient way to do that. Burning more coal adds millions of tons of CO₂ quickly, plus SO₂, NOₓ, mercury and PM2.5, but if we can make AI, it will solve all of our problems.
Not saying i agree with any of that, but they aren't a bunch of no-talent political apointees. This cabinet is one of the most impressive on paper cabinet i've ever seen. It's full of tech CEO's and businessmen. But maybe that's why they have such a zero sum view.
How can I be on you side since said this without any source. I had to spend 15 minutes going through each of the cabinet members profile (and the ones in previous presidencies). While there are a few people with good experience in the present cabinet, majority of the members don't seemed to have any experience for the job they where hired for
That's clearly complete bullshit because for most places where someone wants to build a solar or wind project the alternative if the solar or wind plant is not approved is not a coal, gas, or nuclear plant. The alternative is no plant.
Grid scale renewable + storage installations are now becoming competitive with natural gas. Coal is an obsolete energy source. That people in this administration are trying to weelend at Bernie's this corpse of an industry gives me serious doubts about the praise you lap on them.
Although comparing fossil fuel efficiency to renewable energy efficiency is a bit odd in one sense because while you’re technically wasting energy with renewables, there will always be more tomorrow, at least on human time scales.
[0]: https://www.pcienergysolutions.com/2023/04/17/power-plant-ef...
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If people don't like paying a private entity for a goods or service, the solution is to make it yourself, not complain. Tons of cities, counties, and states do just that
Most people seem to blame price gouging from the electricity companies, but the electricity companies seem to be extremely tightly regulated and don't have much wiggle room with how they set their prices.
Haven't heard much talk about actually solving the problem and building more power plants, so probably we're going to see more articles like this in the future.
True or false: PSEG's annual profit every year for the last five years at a rate that greatly exceeds inflation while expenses are practically flat.
Their stock symbol is PEG, bee-tee-dubs.
There are very few theories of business and/or economics where profits increase while costs are steady where prices don't increase.
Are they (hold on a sec while I compose myself so I don't type a long string of obscenities) using that money to improve their service and keep rates steady or are they funneling everyone's money into the pockets of their investors and begging the state for free cash to maintain their infrastructure like they're some broke-ass bitches?
Also their stock underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 5 years.
I'm not really a finance guy so probably I'm looking at it wrong, but that seems like some pretty bad price gouging.
If "AI Datacenters" are part of the problem the answer is simple, charge them higer rates, high enough to motivate them to build their own generating capacity.
We need laws that prevent government employees from directly or indirectly investing in utilities.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System for example directly holds over 6.4 million shares of PG&E, and an additional 52 million shares via intermediaries.
"AI Data Centers May Consume More Electricity Than [Residents of] Entire Cities" (2024), 80 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42221756
"Meta data center electricity consumption hits 14,975 GWh" (2024), 60 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41421627
PG&E wants to charge solar power users $80+/month just for the privilege of connecting to the grid even if they are fully self-powers through solar, and give new users $0 to return energy back to the grid.
The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt.
If you're "fully self-powered through solar" just disconnect from the grid.
If you're using the grid as a battery where you feed power into it at 4PM and draw power from it at 4AM, that costs money.
We really need to separate the reliability and grid maintenance costs from the usage costs. Bundling them together worked when electricity was a true monopoly, but it isn't that anymore.
https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/curtailment?iso=caiso
From here on out, batteries are where it’s at. Overprovisioning solar helps, but the demand isn’t there and they aren’t going to pay much for it. (More utility-scale batteries would increase demand for solar somewhat, for charging them.)
Meanwhile, California needs to maintain and improve the electrical grid to lower the risk of wildfires, but more solar in the wrong places doesn’t help much with that.
All those gas plants and batteries sitting around idle soon start dominating the cost structure because the price of their produced watts starts to go exponential.
"The entire system is a scam, and every politician involved is a corrupt."
What an immature over simplification that means nothing. none of the examples you provided are an example of corruption
I work in energy/home automation. I'm burnt out.
> An ideal world...
> We don't live in an ideal world though...
Yes. That was thoroughly established in the original comment and my reply. Have you come to look for an argument? Or to show off how pragmatic you are? What's your point besides "shit sucks?" If that's your point, I'm glad to commiserate. Shit sucks.
Nope I just gave my opinion, but judging from your spiteful reply it's clearly you looking for an argument but I won't bite.
Is this supposed to be positive?
Instead, they get to offshore jobs or bring in H1Bs to further their bottom line.
Grid fees is what pays for grid stability and transmission, which has increased in complexity and demand in direct relation to how much variability that wind and solar create in the grid.
Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44905595
The U.S. grid is so weak, the AI race may be over
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910562
Ontario can’t..
New England wants it but keeps hitting NIMBYism..
NY wants it but needs new infrastructure
And what about renters (who are, in the US, often the poorer)?
Electricity is an input to industrial and commercial operations, so if companies see their costs rise, they will probably raise prices to maintain margin: this will feed into higher prices everywhere (all goods and services).
Then the apartment owners have another revenue stream, build a mini-grid and offer electricity cheaper than the grid. They already do many add-on services for additional revenue: garages, trash pickup, etc.
> Electricity is an input to industrial and commercial operations, so if companies see their costs rise, they will probably raise prices to maintain margin: this will feed into higher prices everywhere (all goods and services).
All production will continue to move to China, which has built and continues to build vast amounts of cheap electricity and infrastructure.
Also, most decisions are not financial but emotional (virtue signaling + status seeking + salesman's ability). Most poor people end up taking incredibly bad financial decisions because a salesman is able to sell. In Texas, if you can talk God/football/beer, and are not a complete idiot, you can sell anything.
The people who bought 100K+ Tesla's before 2024 were not going by finance, nor are the people buying Teslas in 2025. A trillion dollar company is born just out of virtue signaling.
I did get induction to replace a propane cooktop recently but that's only because I had to get a new range after a fire and induction probably made more sense than it did a few years back.
Transmission costs seem to dominate the price structure; I currently pay a generating company about $0.1 / kWh, and pay Con Ed $0.25 / kWh for transmission of that energy. And this is in dense New York City; in suburbia or countryside the transmission lines have to be much longer.
Centralized generation makes sense when the efficiency scales wildly non-linearly with size, like it does with nuclear reactors.
Building a large solar installation may scale a bit sub-linearly, if you can e.g. order things in bulk at better prices, and have some electric assemblies done at a factory, more efficiently.
That doesn't sound like "great news" to me unless you're a serious classist.
Are electricity prices at noon climbing faster, or less fast, than prices at 6pm?
In the last couple years peak has gone from ~0.36 to ~0.56, while off-peak went from ~0.12 to ~0.27.
Humans and absolutes tend to be a pretty bad combo.
It is my experience that no system is good for all things. While some systems trend better than others, they are only good until they are not - and there will always be a 'not'.
Similarly, every 'not' is different. When we get there we're wise to consider it with experience + evidence and a willingness to do what those indicate.
I have to pay for trash removal in my town and I have a variety of choices. And while I pay the town for water, many people have wells. And I have my own septic system. So, while electricity is mostly regulated, many other utilities are on a house by house basis.
TL;DR - For July 2024 to July 2025, the inflation rate for "all items" was 2.7% while the rate for "electricity" was 5.5%.
The article brought up some downstream effects such as seniors choosing between paying for power or their meds.
When we approve an outcome without addressing the consequences, we are effectively rubberstamping those consequences. I believe this doesn't serve us well.
I'll also note that I live in such a place. Heck, I don't have air conditioning at all. But if I don't have heat in the winter, I'll die. It's cold out. Not many place have the luxury of not needing heating nor cooling - and even when some folks can go without, not all buildings are fit for that purpose. 2 windows on one side of an apartment doesn't make for good ventilation.
Maybe we give it to them? They're very likely on subsidized income anyway, it's a one time cost and drop in the bucket to move them to someplace more affordable.
Established funding sources tend to have long lines of applicants.
Past that, if it's public funds, the rising political force is fiercely opposed to this - mostly for ideological reasons that are disconnected from actual outcomes.
Most electric appliances are much cheaper to operate, even in places with expensive electricity like MA and CA. This is especially true for appliances like heat pumps due to their >100% "efficiency", and if you are somewhere with cheap clean electricity (Pacific Northwest) they are a no-brainer.
> the panel upgrades for higher power draw are outrageous.
With smart splitters and some planning, panel upgrades can often be avoided:
https://homes.rewiringamerica.org/articles/electrical-panel/...
Panel upgrades are just the most visible, but not individually expensive, part.
I understood that, but my point is that smart panel and smart circuit splitters upgrades can eliminate the need for a service drop upgrade.
Saving a click:
More people need to realize that utilities are not at all like normal businesses, so to spell it out in more detail for those that don't know:
Normal businesses make more money when they cut costs. Utilities (typically) get to charge a fixed upsell percentage and so they make more money when they increase their costs.
CVS bought Aetna [health insurance]. CVS also owns CVS Caremark a PBM. If your employer picked Aetna as your health insurance you must fill your meds at a CVS.
And MCO’s are incentivized to approve all claims, so doctors and patients won’t complain about denied coverage.
UNH can’t charge too much more than Elevance/CVS/Cigna/Humama/Centene/Molina/etc.
That cannot happen with a utility like electricity.
You can tell your employer you don’t want to pay for the employer subsidized plan, but then you lose access to the employer subsidy and ability to pay premiums with pre tax income.
I found that in practice the non-default options do not wind up being any cheaper so after trying it for a few years I switched back to the default option, where the price is not regulated but is set through a prescribed auction process.
I suppose the deregulation might still put downward pressure on prices in theory.
Electricity transmission at the minimum should be owned wholly by the public to remove profit incentive.
There’s your downward pressure—no incentive to jack up costs.
Until then, providing electricity to people will be a profit generating activity.
My provider is a coop and my rates are lower than the publicly held providers in this region. So you seem to be correct.
Everyone else gets stuck with the awful mess of their employer choosing their insurer, switching not more than once a year.
Whereas multiple utilities are disincentivized due to the cost of moving earth and labor to get you the utility.
Also, I like how the trope is managed care organizations wield unlimited power and make enormous sums of money and have laws that help them benefit over everyone else, but their profit margins and stock returns are abysmal.
Did these guys not get the memo?
Presuming you had one.
That is quite a bit less than inflation over the past four years.
And induction, which of course is electric as well, would be cheaper still.