The People's Republic: PG&E to increase your bill to pay for other people's electric car needs

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- - - - Mark Twain (Roughing It)

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

PG&E to increase your bill to pay for other people's electric car needs

Corruptus in Extremis

PG &E, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gary & Electric pump millions of dollars into the campaigns of political hacks. The hacks in turn grant them a monopoly.
Now the utility monopoly wants to increase your electric bill to fund charging stations for wealthy electric cars owners. (Note that gas stations are paid for by privately raised funds.)

(Greentech Media) - Pacific Gas & Electric filed a proposal yesterday for $654 million in ratepayer dollars to build 25,000 electric vehicle charging stations across its service area in northern and central California.

If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the program will be the largest deployment of electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the country. California, the leading market for plug-in cars in the United States, currently has about 6,000 public charging stations.

Consumer advocates, however, including the Utility Reform Network (TURN), are concerned that the program puts an unfair cost burden on ratepayers for infrastructure that only a small percentage of customers will use. A typical residential customer would pay an additional 70 cents per month to cover the costs of the program from 2018 to 2022.

"We are very skeptical about the value of investing so much ratepayer money and betting it all on electric vehicles," Mark Toney, executive director of TURN, told the San Jose Mercury News.

PG&E estimates it will incur $551 million in capital costs and $103 million in operating expenses over the course of the five-year program. Pending approval, installation would begin in 2017.

The utility says it’s justified in asking ratepayers to finance the program because it supports the state’s larger sustainability agenda, which will benefit all Californians.

The other two big regulated utilities in California -- Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric -- also recently submitted proposals to build EV charging infrastructure in their territories.

Romano said ChargePoint supports SCE’s filing, in which the utility would install the electrical infrastructure, offer a rebate for charging stations, and have control over compatibility requirements that third-party providers must meet, but would not own the chargers or select which companies to work with.

“I think the very appropriate role of the utility is to help get the power to the box,” said John Boesel, president and CEO of CALSTART, a public-private partnership promoting clean transportation. “But I think then, at that point, it should be open to the market to figure out who they want to actually buy their electricity from.”