So Pacific Gas and Electric, which pretty much controls power distribution in California (except in a few areas like Los Angeles and Sacramento), has been buying out-of-state power to keep up with demand. Prices are really high, and PG&E wants to raise the electricity rates by x3 of the current amount, and already they're slowly increasing rates until they can get that big rate increase approved by the California power board.

For whatever reason, PG&E has always had high rates, more than anywhere else in the country, I think. Deregulation was supposed to help solve that, but what's ended up happening is that PG&E has used that to sell off it's less profitable power plants and depend on buying from outside sources when needed. Electricity bills haven't gone down. My bill is higher than before, but there is a state-mandated reimbursement, so the bill comes out the same. Once that reimbursement no longer applies, PG&E gets more money and it can raise rates based on the higher "rate" they've been charging.

I've read some arguments (mostly from non-Californians) saying that we deserve what we get for trying to regulate clean power. We've made nuclear energy unpopular and we have clean air regulations and pollution maximum quotas and such. So now that the bad power plants have been shut down and other power plants can't run because of pollution quotas, it's what we deserve. Perhaps they're right, but it's our state, our choice.

Some people said on the news that people shouldn't pay the 9% rate increase that PG&E started in January. Just pay your normal bill to protest against the "unfair" rate increase. Really, it's not their fault, they're just paying up the wazoo for that extra power that we're using. Of course, once the crises is over those increased rates are unlikely to come done. But here's another option: converse energy!

It's amazing how energy conservation has gone out the window in the past decade. It used to be very much in the news and on tv and radio and print. Now it's only used to promote Enery-Star devices. What happened to promoting flourescent lights (sure, the light looks funny), double-paned windows, more insulation, etc? Even though we've been paying higher rates than the rest of the nation, our economy has been good enough that we've ignored trying to conserver 10% here, 10% there.

Another thing. Natural gas. I remember 5-7 years ago when it was really cheap. Power plants were being converted to natural gas, people we're buying NG powered stoves and water heaters as an alternative to straight electric. To me that always seemed to be a rather short term solution. Natural Gas is non-renewable and there wasn't that much of it in the first place (not as much as oil or coal). Sure enough, gas rates have gone up much more than electricity. Probably not as regulated. But my gas rate is up 30% since last year. And I keep leaving the pilot light on even though I never use the heater, so that's a constant 5 therms a month. I finally turned it off last week, just before it got really cold.

The high rates don't bother me much. It'll make people really look at saving energy and being more efficient and stop wasting so much. One of the things this "energy crisis" reminds me of, is that if we ever develop fusion power, that will probably solve all our environmental problems. When you have unlimited energy to work with, doing such impossible (as in would require too much energy to do) things as cleaning up landfills, nuclear waste, pollution in the atmosphere, recycling things, creating things, those are all suddenly possible.