You'll see that right now (before solar has really kicked in), The price for the next megawatt hour of generation is $49 -- i.e., under 5c per kWh. That's comparable to the average price in PJM (east coast) at the same time:
The big problem for California is that cheap generation via solar doesn't move the needle as much on consumer bills because of the transmission and distribution costs. In San Francisco, for example the distribution fee is over $0.20/kWh. That's twice what mine is in Pittsburgh. In contrast, the generation pricing is only about $0.04/kWh more than mine:
In terms of consumer bills, California is actually among the states with typical spending on such things. Your actual energy bill in California is not that high. There are 14 American states where residential energy bills are higher than California's.
People are always pointing out the marginal volumetric costs of electricity, which is indeed very high. But that is just reflection of the fact that we use so little energy because of our history of efficiency laws and the mild climate, so the fixed charges and taxes that combine into the volumetric price are much higher than in other states. And our extremely large fleet of behind the meter solar panels also contributes to the higher volumetric price of grid electricity. All together, this doesn't tell us much about whether renewables are a good policy or not.
Agreed. The point I'm trying to make is that the breakdown of California's costs shows that it's not actually the generation cost, i.e., whether or not the generation is solar or fossil is not really the thing that's making the difference.
(When you factor in behind the meter, solar is, in fact, probably reducing the average cost to consumers.)
If the homes heated by gas or oil all switched to grid electricity, that would in all likelihood reduce the marginal volumetric price of electricity by amortizing the fixed costs over a larger volume.
Generation costs are a small part of most consumers' bills, but particularly in CA.
If you look at the location marginal pricing map from CA ISO: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices
You'll see that right now (before solar has really kicked in), The price for the next megawatt hour of generation is $49 -- i.e., under 5c per kWh. That's comparable to the average price in PJM (east coast) at the same time:
https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices
vs https://pjm.com/
The big problem for California is that cheap generation via solar doesn't move the needle as much on consumer bills because of the transmission and distribution costs. In San Francisco, for example the distribution fee is over $0.20/kWh. That's twice what mine is in Pittsburgh. In contrast, the generation pricing is only about $0.04/kWh more than mine:
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...
though this pricing does favor behind the meter generation such as residential solar.