The pain, people, is not just from your gas bill. Have you looked at your electric bill lately?
Turns out that, after it gets dark and solar panels quit pumping out power, natural gas plants fire up to generate the electricity that keeps lights on through the witching hours.
For a bunch of complicated reasons that are under investigation by the California Public Utilities Commission, gas bills have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled here in California, even as natural gas prices sank to record lows elsewhere in the nation.
And since your electric company buys power generated from natural gas at night, our electric bills have climbed, too — though not as sharply as our gas bills.
“Since late November 2022, wholesale natural gas prices throughout the West have risen to alarming levels that greatly exceed prices in the rest of the country,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a letter to the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking for a federal investigation.
“Electricity prices … have similarly escalated because electricity prices are directly affected by wholesale natural gas costs. California’s residential customers are, consequentially, suffering the economic burden of extreme and unexpectedly high gas and electric utility bills. Our industrial, agricultural, water and wastewater utilities, and commercial sectors are also impacted by these significant utility bill increases. All of this is on top of general inflationary pressures affecting all Californians.”
Ugh. Here, then, is a tale of consumer woe, and some resources to help us shoulder these crazy winter bills (which have the nerve to arrive just as those holiday credit card splurges are coming due).
Electric
Most folks in these parts get electricity from Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric or Pacific Gas & Electric. These bills may look familiar to you:
November electric bill: $107.46.
December electric bill: $215.54.
January electric bill: $246.62 (thanks, absurd…
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