Electricity Price Increases

[ultrarunner]

At one time I had accounts with house hot water and common water but only a few with common water remain.

Electricity is expensive here and if history repeats it will become more expensive.

Garbage is mandatory for owner/manager…

I think I would go out of business if property owners required unlimited gas and electric.

Apartment with a 75 year old senior at $70 month and same apartment with a 25 year old $400…

Several tenants have asked about solar but none of the programs apply to rental property…

 

[scootr]

I got a notice from Southern California Edison today;

What to Expect

Beginning Oct. 1, 2025, residential electric rates will increase by approximately 13% to support investments in the safety, reliability and security of the electric grid. This update will begin on your October bill and the bills that follow. Another notice I got from Social Security said my benefit will go up by 3.1%. Obviously they don't know I use electric power.

 

[Oaktree]

I got a notice from Southern California Edison today;

What to Expect

Beginning Oct. 1, 2025, residential electric rates will increase by approximately 13% to support investments in the safety, reliability and security of the electric grid. This update will begin on your October bill and the bills that follow. Another notice I got from Social Security said my benefit will go up by 3.1%. Obviously they don't know I use electric power.

And Medicare went up by more than that, so net loss year-to-year.

 

[WinterDeere]

I got a notice from Southern California Edison today;

What to Expect

Beginning Oct. 1, 2025, residential electric rates will increase by approximately 13% to support investments in the safety, reliability and security of the electric grid. This update will begin on your October bill and the bills that follow. Another notice I got from Social Security said my benefit will go up by 3.1%. Obviously they don't know I use electric power.

It'd be interesting to know what necessitated those "investments in the reliabiliy and security of the electric grid." Likely expanding data center usage, for which everyone else is footing the bill.

 

[kenmbz]

For us , we got a rate rise as they are redoing most of the poles in the area and doing a lot more aggressive tree trimming so we won't have monthly tree related outages.

However, that only covers part of the rising costs, since actual fuel costs went down, shouldn't our bills?

Even the solar they put in has been around for at least 5 years, which is usually written against profits for 5-7 years, so they should be more into Maintenance mode and not buying an awful lot of panels.

It seems once a rate increase goes in, it is permanent, even if the reason for it goes away.

 

[ponytug]

It'd be interesting to know what necessitated those "investments in the reliabiliy and security of the electric grid." Likely expanding data center usage, for which everyone else is footing the bill.

Some of it ($1.+B) is going to "hardening" power lines, by putting some underground, and some is putting better insulators on the High Tension lines to hopefully avoid the likes of the Altadena (Eaton) fire. There are also plans afoot to add more transmission lines. SCE has a surprisingly small number of transmission lines into their territory. Some goes to battery and distributed generation. Some might even go to de-energizing abandoned power lines.

As the utilities get about a 10% guaranteed return per year on capital investments, they love to do it. (Courtesy of the Public Utilities Commission) Things like maintenance are net costs and not so popular.

All the best, Peter

 

[WinterDeere]

For us , we got a rate rise as they are redoing most of the poles in the area and doing a lot more aggressive tree trimming so we won't have monthly tree related outages.

You'd think the decrease in expensive midnight service calls and lost usage hours would pay for most of that!

 

[scootr]

For us , we got a rate rise as they are redoing most of the poles in the area and doing a lot more aggressive tree trimming so we won't have monthly tree related outages.

However, that only covers part of the rising costs, since actual fuel costs went down, shouldn't our bills?

Even the solar they put in has been around for at least 5 years, which is usually written against profits for 5-7 years, so they should be more into Maintenance mode and not buying an awful lot of panels.

It seems once a rate increase goes in, it is permanent, even if the reason for it goes away.

This has always been the case. Not just with utilities. Retail is guilty also. Watch import items pricing go up due to tariffs and see if they go down when the trade war is resolved... of course there are exceptions. Eggs reached Nearly $10 a dozen a year ago and today they are $4 for 18. Gasoline goes up and down. I see it go from $3 to $5 and come down to $4 and everybody is happy. Then it goes from $4 to $6 and comes down to $5 Recently it's come down to $4 CA which means it's $3 nationally.
The Edison Co has been doing a lot of pole and wire upgrades as well as brush and tree work for fire mitigation as they were charged with the horrific Paradise fire in 2018 which claimed 85 lives

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Whoa... that's terrifying. Are you saying some utilities have taken to punishing high users with inflated rates?!? I use a crap-ton of electric, like more than a village, running my business computers and due to it just being a relatively large house. If our rates ever go from flat to graduated, I'm going to bleed!

With two kids talking about getting EV's, that's only likely to increase.

What ever happened to getting a quantity discount?!?

I think most utilities have an inexpensive base rate and prices go up as your usage increases.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Truth on that. I see so many businesses and commercial properties where they retrofitted or swapped out all their outdoor lighting to obnoxiously bright LED fixtures and seemingly doubled the number of them. I swear you could see some of these places from space. Out in the country-ish where I live, it's not that big of a deal, but there are residences nearby that are all it up because of this.

Then on the flip side of that, the power company changed out all the roadway lighting to LED 3-4yrs back and these lights don't do squat out in the country.

I have three lights in front, two on either side of the garage and one by the front door. I had to go to Batteries and More to get 2w LED bulbs (25w replacement), which give plenty of light to walk around at night. My wife forgets to turn them off, so I backed them down. The lights in the kitchen are 160w of LED can lights on a dimmer, so rather than turn them off we can turn them down to about 40. I turn them off, wife does not.