6 ms·

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wire

The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). [1] PG&E simply owns the wires, and overcharges for their use. [1]: https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-power-system https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...

jeffbee 3mo ago
The other angle that people may not realize is that SF has voted in nine separate elections to not establish a municipal utility. The people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E, given numerous opportunities. SMUD has cheap power because 100 years ago the people of Sacramento invested a lot of money to establish that utility. What the vocal minority of SF public power people want is magical: cheaper rates without all that bothersome investment.
- m463 3mo ago
  > people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
  - Veliladon 3mo ago
    >Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. This. Lived in Santa Clara. SVP is the best utility in California.
    - hunterpayne 3mo ago
      100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.
      - JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
        > 100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance Sounds like we have a solution! Get PG&E out of distribution. They can keep running power plants, where there is at least competition.
        hunterpayne 3mo ago
        Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.
        JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
        > remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too Crazy thought—dedicate the resources to maintaining them. From what I can tell, this tolerance of power-sparked wildfires is uniquely American (and concentrated, fairly and unfairly, in California). Also, you don’t have to put it straight on the municipal balance sheet. Stick it in a distribution subsidiary with a little outside capital. (Hell, make it a member-owned co-operative.) Alternative: sell off that transmission to someone else. Just handle last-mile distribution. Not transmission.
        hunterpayne 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - m463 3mo ago
        I thought PG&E bought their generation wholesale (~ 3-4c/kwh) https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices
        hunterpayne 3mo ago
  - joeblubaugh 3mo ago
    I have some doubts about San Francisco’s ability to run a provider well, given the long history of corruption in city service providers and permitting agencies.
    - marnett 3mo ago
      Airport is run well.
  - jjav 3mo ago
    > But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Way more than that! In prime time it's now in the ~80c/kWh these days. I've been posting this for years and continues to be true: given the price increase trend of PG&E, within 10 years the electricity bill will be larger than the mortgage. But, those PG&E VPs need their bonuses!
    - ninkendo 3mo ago
      Yikes… that means a Tesla Model S with a 95kWH battery would cost $76 to charge. Most people around the country pay way less than that to fill a combustion SUV at the pump.
      - m463 3mo ago
        I don't know - gas is close to $7/gal in california (if it isn't that in some places)
simoncion 3mo ago
> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims Hetch Hetchy Power System provides something like 395 MW of power generation capacity. I'm going to assume that that's a misprint and they meant to write MWh because that's the only thing that makes sense to me for a measure of power generation. While the last page of this PDF [3] indicates that the hydro generation component is capable of powering a bit more than twice the city's municipal demand, it seems like it's not enough to satisfy even 1/1000th of the demand of the entire city. Perhaps I've totally fucked up my unit conversions (or relied on garbage data), but it looks like only the tiniest fraction of the city's power demands can be satisfied by the Hetch Hetchy dam. (Though, we could easily electrify way more of the Muni lines with the surplus capacity.) [0] <https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/california-energy-consumption-dashboards-0 https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...> [1] SF City and County are -AFAICT- the same thing. It's a little weird. [2] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-power-system https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...> [3] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/about-us/WeDeliver_06.03.25.pdf https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/about-us/WeDeliver...> (found via [4] [4] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/storage-and-delivery-updates https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/storage-and-deliv...>
- spullara 3mo ago
  It generates ~1 TWh per year or about 20% of SFs power. Power generation capacity is always in watts but it also doesn't run at 100% all the time.
  - simoncion 3mo ago
    Ah. So I should have done something like 395MW * 8760hr = 3,640,200 MWh to figure out roughly the maximum possible annual demand that could be served by the system? (For the purposes of this question, I'm just doing the -er- dimensional/unit/whatever analysis and ignoring production-capacity-reducing factors that you'd definitely have to factor in to get the real number.) If so, what a boneheaded, rookie mistake by me. Thanks for the reply.
throwaway2037 3mo ago
About that dam, Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Shaughnessy_Dam_(California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Shaughnessy_Dam_(Californi... ... that it produces about 976 GWh per year. A few different sources say that SF uses about 5-6 TWh per year. So that is slightly less than 20% of total power needs. Still, it is a good start.
- stouset 3mo ago
  SF has other power generation besides Hetch Hetchy.
matsur 3mo ago
Plot here is quite thick. SF selling power to PG&E to distribute was found illegal/in violation of the Raker Act by the US Supreme Court in 1940 in United States v. City and County of San Francisco. SF shifted to "wheeling" instead of selling power to PG&E and is tenuously in compliance now, but the current set up was never intended when the federal government ceded water and power rights from Yosemite to SF.
chrisss395 3mo ago
Is this at all similar to what happened with telecoms? For some reason that is what popped in to my head.

jeffbee 3mo ago

The other angle that people may not realize is that SF has voted in nine separate elections to not establish a municipal utility. The people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E, given numerous opportunities. SMUD has cheap power because 100 years ago the people of Sacramento invested a lot of money to establish that utility. What the vocal minority of SF public power people want is magical: cheaper rates without all that bothersome investment.

m463 3mo ago
> people of SF demonstrably do not want to take over PG&E But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
- Veliladon 3mo ago
  >Compare to Santa Clara, which has their own well run utility, and charges less than half PG&E rates. This. Lived in Santa Clara. SVP is the best utility in California.
  - hunterpayne 3mo ago
    100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance. Also, in a low generation scenario, you are the first to be cut off to save the rest of the grid.
    - JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
      > 100% of its generation and grid stability is provided by PG&E. All it provides is the local distro and local maintenance Sounds like we have a solution! Get PG&E out of distribution. They can keep running power plants, where there is at least competition.
      - hunterpayne 3mo ago
        Please remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too. And a single fire's cost is about 3x the yearly budget of SF.
        JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
        > remember that the lines from HH to SF are the same ones that caused wildfires in CA over the last 10 years. So if SF owns the line, they own that liability too Crazy thought—dedicate the resources to maintaining them. From what I can tell, this tolerance of power-sparked wildfires is uniquely American (and concentrated, fairly and unfairly, in California). Also, you don’t have to put it straight on the municipal balance sheet. Stick it in a distribution subsidiary with a little outside capital. (Hell, make it a member-owned co-operative.) Alternative: sell off that transmission to someone else. Just handle last-mile distribution. Not transmission.
        hunterpayne 3mo ago
        [dead]
    - m463 3mo ago
      I thought PG&E bought their generation wholesale (~ 3-4c/kwh) https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices
      - hunterpayne 3mo ago
- joeblubaugh 3mo ago
  I have some doubts about San Francisco’s ability to run a provider well, given the long history of corruption in city service providers and permitting agencies.
  - marnett 3mo ago
    Airport is run well.
- jjav 3mo ago
  > But PG&E has charged significantly more for power the last few years. Most people easily hit 50c/kwh on their bills. Way more than that! In prime time it's now in the ~80c/kWh these days. I've been posting this for years and continues to be true: given the price increase trend of PG&E, within 10 years the electricity bill will be larger than the mortgage. But, those PG&E VPs need their bonuses!
  - ninkendo 3mo ago
    Yikes… that means a Tesla Model S with a 95kWH battery would cost $76 to charge. Most people around the country pay way less than that to fill a combustion SUV at the pump.
    - m463 3mo ago
      I don't know - gas is close to $7/gal in california (if it isn't that in some places)

simoncion 3mo ago

> The angle of this that people may not realize is that San Francisco already owns the power generation (ie, the Hetch Hetchy dam). My conclusion might be totally wrong because I'm converting from units that aren't meant to be converted, but... If you filter down to only San Francisco County on this official-looking thingie [0], you see that it claims the city [1] has 5.126 TWh of consumption. Your link [2] claims Hetch Hetchy Power System provides something like 395 MW of power generation capacity. I'm going to assume that that's a misprint and they meant to write MWh because that's the only thing that makes sense to me for a measure of power generation. While the last page of this PDF [3] indicates that the hydro generation component is capable of powering a bit more than twice the city's municipal demand, it seems like it's not enough to satisfy even 1/1000th of the demand of the entire city. Perhaps I've totally fucked up my unit conversions (or relied on garbage data), but it looks like only the tiniest fraction of the city's power demands can be satisfied by the Hetch Hetchy dam. (Though, we could easily electrify way more of the Muni lines with the surplus capacity.) [0] <https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/california-energy-consumption-dashboards-0 https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...> [1] SF City and County are -AFAICT- the same thing. It's a little weird. [2] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-power-system https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/hetch-hetchy-powe...> [3] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/about-us/WeDeliver_06.03.25.pdf https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/about-us/WeDeliver...> (found via [4] [4] <https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/storage-and-delivery-updates https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/our-systems/storage-and-deliv...>

spullara 3mo ago
It generates ~1 TWh per year or about 20% of SFs power. Power generation capacity is always in watts but it also doesn't run at 100% all the time.
- simoncion 3mo ago
  Ah. So I should have done something like 395MW * 8760hr = 3,640,200 MWh to figure out roughly the maximum possible annual demand that could be served by the system? (For the purposes of this question, I'm just doing the -er- dimensional/unit/whatever analysis and ignoring production-capacity-reducing factors that you'd definitely have to factor in to get the real number.) If so, what a boneheaded, rookie mistake by me. Thanks for the reply.

throwaway2037 3mo ago

About that dam, Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Shaughnessy_Dam_(California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Shaughnessy_Dam_(Californi... ... that it produces about 976 GWh per year. A few different sources say that SF uses about 5-6 TWh per year. So that is slightly less than 20% of total power needs. Still, it is a good start.

stouset 3mo ago
SF has other power generation besides Hetch Hetchy.

matsur 3mo ago

Plot here is quite thick. SF selling power to PG&E to distribute was found illegal/in violation of the Raker Act by the US Supreme Court in 1940 in United States v. City and County of San Francisco. SF shifted to "wheeling" instead of selling power to PG&E and is tenuously in compliance now, but the current set up was never intended when the federal government ceded water and power rights from Yosemite to SF.

chrisss395 3mo ago

Is this at all similar to what happened with telecoms? For some reason that is what popped in to my head.