Some big ticket items that are almost always ignored by media (because they aren’t politically-charged):
– distribution asset renewal (many local grid components are due for replacement)
– distribution asset hardening (namely for wildfire and extreme weather risk)
– distribution grid expansion (namely for heat and transportation electrification)
– distribution grid modernization (enhancing operational visibility and control to enable better system performance even with bidirectional power flow and higher load factors)
– AMI 2.0, often a $1B+ investment that utilities are increasingly undertaking as AMI 1.0 nears end of useful life (early scale was back in the late 2000s to early 2010s)
GregsFiction on
This is a false proposition: the consumer (directly or indirectly) will always pay the bill.
nomad2284 on
There is no sustainable system where the customer doesn’t pay. The question is how to do that most efficiently? All approaches to energy impose externalities that must be reflected in regulation. The idea is that consumers get better environmental quality and health outcomes in exchange for the costs.
If you wish, you can directly invest in solar at your house and mitigate the costs of rising electric rates. You can even do that and break even in a short (5-10 years) time.
Commercial_Drag7488 on
Why does one pay green premium instead of receiving green dividend?
TrashCapable on
Better question, should we allow idiots to suppress clean energy to appease big oil and coal when it would clearly save the consumers money?
5 Comments
For anyone interested in learning about which factors have contributed the most to higher electricity bills, this is a very solid analysis from LBL:
https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2025-10/presentation_retail_price_trends_drivers.pdf
Some big ticket items that are almost always ignored by media (because they aren’t politically-charged):
– distribution asset renewal (many local grid components are due for replacement)
– distribution asset hardening (namely for wildfire and extreme weather risk)
– distribution grid expansion (namely for heat and transportation electrification)
– distribution grid modernization (enhancing operational visibility and control to enable better system performance even with bidirectional power flow and higher load factors)
– AMI 2.0, often a $1B+ investment that utilities are increasingly undertaking as AMI 1.0 nears end of useful life (early scale was back in the late 2000s to early 2010s)
This is a false proposition: the consumer (directly or indirectly) will always pay the bill.
There is no sustainable system where the customer doesn’t pay. The question is how to do that most efficiently? All approaches to energy impose externalities that must be reflected in regulation. The idea is that consumers get better environmental quality and health outcomes in exchange for the costs.
If you wish, you can directly invest in solar at your house and mitigate the costs of rising electric rates. You can even do that and break even in a short (5-10 years) time.
Why does one pay green premium instead of receiving green dividend?
Better question, should we allow idiots to suppress clean energy to appease big oil and coal when it would clearly save the consumers money?