Adding a flat fee added to electric bills won’t help Californians

To the editor: The flat price to most California electrical utility clients of $24.15 won’t promote clear power. As a substitute, it’s going to penalize those that use lower than the typical quantity of electrical energy simply because they aren’t low-income clients. (“High electric bills threaten California’s clean future. This plan would help,” editorial, April 15)

These embody single people, frugal {couples}, folks dwelling in energy-efficient houses or folks with photo voltaic panels. It would lay waste to the 1000’s of {dollars} they’ve invested in selling clear power.

The $24.15 price is predicated on the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s flat price. If the California Public Utilities Fee (CPUC) desires to mimic Sacramento’s charges, it must also imitate its power charges, that are a lot decrease than what the investor-owned utilities cost immediately.

The 5%-7% discount in per kilowatt-hour power fees won’t encourage clients to undertake warmth pumps or electrical automobiles. If the state is critical about electrification, it ought to discover a higher solution to decrease charges, not simply have interaction in a shell sport between flat and variable fees.

As for fairness, the state already offers a reduction of 30% to 35% to low-income clients.

Ahmad Faruqui, Danville, Calif.

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To the editor: The CPUC appears to count on a pat on the again for its proposal to stabilize electrical energy prices by together with a set month-to-month cost and considerably decreasing the associated fee per kilowatt-hour.

Let’s look at what its previous actions have accomplished.

For these California households trying to cut back their electrical energy prices and set up photo voltaic panels and backup storage batteries, the CPUC (with excessive stress from the main utility corporations) handed “Web Metering 2.0,” which diminished funds for electrical energy despatched from these houses again into the grid by 75%.

Moreover, the utility corporations have imposed strict insurance policies relating to rebates for putting in batteries. One should dwell in a “hearth zone” or meet low-income thresholds to qualify.

The actions of the CPUC proceed to disincentivize going photo voltaic. But your editorial states that its fastened month-to-month cost “looks as if an affordable trade-off to ensure all Californians have an incentive to go electrical.”

Moreover, not like the federal authorities, California doesn’t present a tax credit score for going photo voltaic. So the place precisely are the incentives for California to really transfer towards a clean-air surroundings? Your guess is nearly as good as mine.

Frank Deni, Lake Forest