[shiftpgdn]

What is PG&Es generation cost vs administrative and legal overhead? The 11% margin isn't a good basis number. How is other states like Texas or Colorado are delivering at 10-12c/kwh ?

I do agree with your sentiment that city bureaucrats may be tempted to raid the energy business to pay for pet projects and other things. This can be protected against by segmenting the energy business into its own protected organization.

[Aurornis]

> What is PG&Es generation cost vs administrative and legal overhead? The 11% margin isn't a good basis number.

Administrative and legal costs don’t disappear when the city runs it, so why does it matter? When the city runs a utility, nearly all of the costs associated with running a utility still exist.

If your mental model of a city-owned utility is that they’re going to generate power and sell it at cost with no administrative overhead, you’re really just assuming that administrative overhead will be covered by taxpayers.

Electricity rates down, tax rates up.

> How is other states like Texas or Colorado are delivering at 10-12c/kwh ?

Texas produces the most crude oil, natural gas, and also wind generated electricity. A quarter of the entire country’s wind energy generation happens in Texas.

Comparing electricity prices across regions is meaningless. Everything is too different.

[roenxi]

The basic argument on Texas seems to be: "Texas avoided 75% of the costs in California by doing everything differently. California can't learn anything from them because they do things differently". That seems like a weak argument. California would have to do things quite differently to get a 75% cost reduction.

It is stereotyping, but it sounds like the sort of state that has a strong regulatory regime that would be quite controlling about what people can actually do. I note the irony that when Texas had a power outage everyone wanted much more regulation to force changes to grid maintenance, but when California spends 4x as much and PG&E skips on grid maintenance everyone throws their hands up because they can't call for more regulation and are out of ideas. The regulation doesn't seem to have dodged the maintenance problems but I'd bet it drives the cost up.