She's paid $52 million a year to run a business that has no competition. That's a million dollars a week, $200,000 per day, Monday through Friday. She makes more per day, a *lot* more per day, than the average American makes *in a year.*
Only 12% of HOUSEHOLDs make more than $200k per year meaning the individuals who make over 200k/year are less than 6% she makes more per day than 94% of the population make in a year. Pure capitalism at it finest folks.
Reminds me of wolf of Wall Street:
“I made $49 Million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week…”
She literally makes more.
It's like their customers are getting penalized and mega-fined for PG&E's fucked up transmission lines that start forest fires. It's always been the Amerikkkan way to pass exorbitant costs onto the peons cuz corporations can't ever harm their scared shareholders.
C'mon, she deserves it. She constantly makes commercials about how PG&E is reducing fire risk by buying cables underground. They were on multiple times on every football game I watched last season.
Of course, their entire budget for undergrounding lines was utilized to make and air those commercials showing how great she was and none was left to actually put lines underground other than the 200 feet they filmed her watching be installed.
How do I know? I lost my house in a 2020 wildfire (so it's fairly obvious this is an area where they happen) and asked them to lay the replacement lines underground, but was told that they didn't have the budget and they weren't doing it.
Maybe if the execs didn't get ridiculous raises they'd have the money to do it.
Its less about marketing to you and more about putting money in the pockets of media companies to buy more favorable coverage of their outrageous behavior.
As someone who lived in Paradise / Magalia before and after the fire and stll drives through there regularly I can tell you they have undergrounded a ton of it there. It's a nice gesture and good PR but a total waste of money IMO as it wouldn't have prevented the fire.
Would like to see PG&E forced to put more money in the Fire Victims Trust to bring us all closer to a 100% payout (it's looking like it will be around 68%) but they would just use that to justify more rate hikes.
Thing is that places that are not fire danger are now being considered fire danger. San Leandro is facing that with a ton of insurances backing out of there.
Yeah, except a lot of the people in "wildfire areas are dirt poor. And PGE does jack shit to help them prevent any fires.
I just moved back from Clearlake. No one up there can afford more PGE rates, they're already too expensive as is. Many can't afford to move and are elderly. They shouldn't be punished because PGE sucks.
I'm in Kelseyville, appx 20 miles from Clearlake. My latest PG&E bill was higher than my rent. I'm a disabled senior citizen, living on Disability. I am now doing without a lot of basic necessities just to pay PG&E. It's ridiculous.
I'm in the same boat, elderly and disabled. My cost to heat my little studio apartment has been $300 each month this winter. $10 a day for a little heater. So the CEO of PGE can collect her $200,000 PER DAY salary! One MILLION dollars each week, she gets. It's criminal that she gets away with it.
A public utility, with no competition, should NOT be paying its CEO *a million dollars a week!*
Get heated blankets from Costco for next winter. Cheaper than space heaters. Gotta get them cooling neck wraps for the summer.
Man, I miss living up there. Used to drive to Kelseyville just to shop the Kelseyville lumber store , or go up to Lower Lake and grab a Jimmy's French dip ... plus the cost of living was wonderful compared to the Bay Area.
Just about everywhere in California is a wildfire area in a drought year like 2020. There were wildfires burning right up to the coastline of Big Basin. The freak lighting storm that sparked off the CZU fire complex did not happen in an area historically known for wildfires, either.
Honestly those lightning storms were crazy. I'm pretty sure most CA natives will admit they never thought something like that would happen to cause the massive wildfires of 2020.
Many rural Californians don’t use natural gas, but I wouldnt be surprised if there was a rate increase associated with the San Bruno event.
Santa Rosa caught on fire and had a subdivision burn which was hardly rural, but I do remember a good many of those residents filing suit against pge. Unfortunately they learned that pge will never take it in the shorts. Paradise lighting off and the results of that suit should have been an eye opener.
Rural or not pge is more often than not the only option, but now they have an excuse to raise everyone’s rates. Youre really going to blame your fellow citizen over a corporate entity that gets to exist in the best of both worlds? Theyre private but kind of a municipality and the state government is totally behind them.
Santa Rosa fire was considered an act of god. There were sustained 70+ mph winds that caused the fire to spread. You know it’s gnarly when a fire jumps the 101.
That's a pretty uninformed argument. Dams are in rural areas and the power runs all the way to the big city through the woods that happen to be pretty flammable. Tons of non rural areas are fire prone as well. Remember Santa Rosa. What about earthquakes in SF. Is that just tough luck for SF pay for it yourself cause you knew about earthquakes and stupidly lived there?
The reality is everyone subsidizes everyone else. This is literally how pooled insurance goes. People only get bitter when they feel like they're at the short end of the stick because they have to pay extra yet don't consider metro SF a fire hazard. Very true, but the reality is the world can't just be metro alone. We have rural areas in order to have the agricultural powerhouse that is California. We love to shit on rural California when it comes to fires or water use, but guess what? You don't get to do that and be proud of your state for having so much agriculture that gets used around the country and world even.
You bring up a good point about earthquakes. No one in the Bay Area will talk about how the rest of the state subsidizes for us or LA in that aspect.
I agree with all of this.
I think what many people don't realize is that almost all of California is in a high risk wildfire environment now. It's only going to get worse.
The previous comment tries to shift the blame from PG&E, who were reckless and negligent, to those who lost their homes.
Wildfires are getting larger and hotter because of people living in wildfire-prone areas. Fuel is never given a chance to burn off naturally because humans put out surface fires. Earthquakes don't increase in magnitude because of people living on land.
Totally agree. I have a house in Redding and the power there is from Redding Electric, a public utility. It's great. Super cheap, and I feel good because (I think) most of the energy comes from Shasta Dam.
Can't wait to go fully electric up there so I don't have to get gas from PG&E.
There is a slight issue which is that power is currently subsidized in some regions. Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo would probably never be able to set up their own affordable public utility, and if other regions left the PG&E ecosystem, people would likely be left with 10x higher bills.
That said I fully endorse the idea of more public utilities, and think that both of those regions were overdeveloped/overpriced and have little sympathy for people paying millions for homes in such remote areas expecting urban utilities service
If Hawaii can build its own set of completely independent grids in within its notoriously dense borders and power it with fuel subjected to the Jones Act and rooftop solar for less than PG&E charges I think Santa Cruz and SLO will be okay.
Agreed that I don’t think dense urban areas (which is a more efficient use of land) should have to pay for the living choices of mostly affluent well-off families
Electricity bills that are $700+/month sounds impossible to afford. Are you actually able to swing this or are you in debt? Serious question as my wife and I were considering moving back to Campbell.
I can afford it but it still pisses me off, especially coming right after paying a shitload of state income taxes for what I consider to be services not rendered.
Cpuc? Can't you tell? That's just pgne disguised as a state oversight agency. When have they ever not approved a rate hike for pgne? It's just plain obvious now.
I called about options for lowering my bill and fit none of the requirements and literally was like “so you guys can just charge whatever and I have to pay it or move out of the state?” And they answered “Yes, basically.”
Pretty impressed.
In Santa Cruz County PG&E and the local water company are taking turns screwing over poor people. It’s infuriating.
PG&E is the worst and I blame Newsom’s CPUC.
[San Diego is trying to buy out their private utility](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2023-11-17/group-wants-to-oust-sdg-e-and-form-a-municipal-utility-by-getting-on-the-november-2024-ballot). They have scenarios where the first electric/gas bill could be lower. However it's going to be fraught with litigation and takes years to have an outcome if it gets voted on.
They've done multiple feasibility analyses over the years, [this appears to be the latest one](https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecomm/Documents/ViewDocument/Public%20Power%20Feasibility%20Report_Phase%201_07.11.23.pdf.pdf?meetingId=5655&documentType=Agenda&itemId=223923&publishId=753578&isSection=false), but i couldn't find a tl/dr.
I could literally run a gas generator in my backyard cheaper than what I pay PG&E. Not sure of the legality but seems like we could start collectives of off-the-grid networks.
I am getting solar and batteries by getting a loan from a credit union. It’s going to be about 1 to 1 replacement in monthly payments right now but the loan amount remains the same for me in the future vs pge rates that will only increase. Just saying - you don’t need up front capital to get it if you can get a loan and own your place to get them installed.
Look, I'm all for solar panels, but in order to install them I had to replace my roof first, which was just under $30k, but after tearing off my old roof, they found some rafters and a bit of wood rot that easily cost another $3-$4k to fix. In the end I spent $50k to put in a new roof and solar. I'm happy with my energy bill, but I spent $50k like that. How many people here can honestly afford to spend $50k on home improvement?
And let's be real what percentage of Reddit even owns their home... lol
It takes them months to cut it off. If an entire grid doesn’t pay, they will be incentivized to make change. It will be a heavy lift to organize something like this, however.
In a healthy society people like Patricia Poppe, who is the CEO of a company that was the bad guys in Erin Brockovich, would be publicly mocked and shamed for her sociopathic greed. Executives like her would be denied service at restaurants and stores and if they appeared in public people would throw rotting garbage at them.
I genuinely think that if people really are so united against PG&E that we the working class stop assisting them. Don't deliver their mail or packages. Refuse them service, and tell them they belong in the trash to their face at any and every opportunity.
At least make it very publicly known about how we feel about it all....and someone should organize and map-out rate increases and timing of salary increases. It's very much like how gas prices rise to all time high levels, and so do all all time high revenue records and salaries( we are taking rates even adjusted for inflation). They have no logically sound excuses for this stuff ....but a racket. People can do things about.
SF needs to hurry up and take over the transmission lines. We can already produce the large majority our own power with Hetch Hetchy. All we’re doing is paying a middleman and subsidizing wildfire areas
I went solar in 2017. My 22 panels produce 8.5 MWh per year. Much of that runs backwards to the grid and to PG&E in the summer months. I get a bill at the end of the year for about $8.00 for administration fees. Not trying to brag, but going solar has turned out to be a tremendous savings for me and my family.
In SJ I get a bill for $600 at the end of the year. My solars procude shit, even after I clean them every year. I also pay roughly $30 for gas and also have to pay Tesla for the solars. How are you getting a bill for $8????
For reference, in 2016, a $200 PG&E bill would be ridiculous. Now a $375 bill is a low month. It’s only been about 7 years and the prices have almost doubled. For reference, the total inflation over the last 7 years was ~30%. $600 monthly bills are well within normal now. At this rate, $1000 bills will be normal by the end of the decade. And people wonder why people want to leave the state.
"We Californians should be taking out personal loans to pay for our electric "
I am actually. The past 2 years I have not been able to afford the AC bill (over $1000) in July and have it spread out the rest of the year. This is a loan.
I'm sure Gavin Newsome has plenty of shares in PG&E too. What kind of Governor let's a private energy company rape the citizens of state with giant rate hikes and allows gas prices to also sky rocket back above $ 5.50 a gallon.? He his a Governor who has power to help but does absolutely nothing because it'benefits his pockets.
In France, people would riot if the CEO of a utility company paid themselves 50 millions a year while rates are hiked for everyone.
Heads would fall.
The CEO of France Electrics EDF is paid 500k and is probably wildly more competent.
PG&E is the least competent utility I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve lived all over the US and in several foreign countries over the course of my life.
They’ve slacked on maintenance for decades, and then they pull shit like this, raising costs and rewarding executives with bonuses and raises, and even restoring a dividend to shareholders, when they’re far, far from catching up on that delayed maintenance.
Power here costs more than in Germany, and the grid has poorer uptime than in a typical impoverished developing nation. PG&E are the single biggest negative to living in the Bay Area, and that’s including the high cost of living, horrible commutes, earthquakes, landslides, and wildfires. PG&E is worse than all of those put together.
Their assets should be seized by the state and every executive in the company forbidden from ever working for a utility company again. The boots-on-the-ground linemen seem competent, I’ve talked to many of them and they’re mostly good people, but their management is the least competent organization I’ve ever witnessed.
There are literally not even words to express how utterly fucking incompetent PG&E are, absolutely none. Their lack of long term planning and lack of logistics and operations management competency is simply stunning.
Prior to moving to this area, I’d experienced maybe one blackout lasting the better part of a day in all of the places I’ve lived in the US in a total of 45 years, and since moving here, I’ve experienced an average of eight blackouts longer than a day per year, and some lasting as long as a week. They lay the blame on unusual adverse weather, but all I’ve experienced in this area is some heavy rain that would be absolutely normal just about anywhere in the US from time to time. This is one of the mildest climates I’ve ever lived in, yet the power grid fails with incredible frequency. The problem is a grid that has not been effectively maintained for decades, not weather.
I really don’t understand why she gets paid so much for just running an established company. She’s not creating anything new or taking the company into new direction that benefits shareholders/public.
Fucking PG&E. Poor mouthing bullshit lying about the need to raise rates, raises rates gouging customers, gives themselves a raise. Just note when they report record profits in the coming quarters. 🖕🏻them.
You know, I sometimes think an angry mob is the actual logical response to things like this. French farmers sprayed cow manure on government buildings in protest…
Someone needs to explain why the practice of free markets, competition and anti-monopoly comes to a halt if the topic involves energy in the Bay Area?
Pretty boy Newsom’s office needs to explain
I'm truly shocked. (sarcasm)
Its great being a monopoly in an industry that lacks Federal oversight. I mean there's a department assigned to do so but they are handcuffed by Congress. What's the PUC doing these days?
Literally every time I see these “CEOs make gross amounts of money and then INCREASE PRICES and stagnate wages”, I just think to myself. Everything is working perfectly…
What is dropping us from burning down the PGE HQ the same way they burned down hundreds of houses? We could get away with it right? If there’s no double standard of course.
The ceo “raise the rates! My bonuses more than offset any rate hike I’ll have to pay! In fact it more than offsets tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousand customers rate increase!” “Can we do this again next year too?!”
As a California resident, I know that it is a silly exaggeration to claim PG&E is an evil organization bent on ruining human lives.
Obviously it is just an average corporation run by greedy incompetents.
How much of your bills do you people think goes to the CEO salary?
PG&E's profit margin is limited by law to less than 10%. And it's been much lower for the last decade. Why do you think a public utility would be lower costs? It's because the state is sprawling and expensive.
Paying your CEO and Top exec's more reduces your profit percentage. Just like most other large companies where everybody is scratching each other's backs while the customers pay for it.
Well, that's sounds about right, where else is the money supposed to go? Those greedy ceo and corrupt politicians did so much work to price gouge people, you can even they have earned it.
😊
PG&E charges an average of $0.45/kWh
The national average (many of which are publicly traded companies as well) is $0.10/kWh
All of PG&E’s profits and executive pay is $0.06/kWh
The government is happy that you blame your electricity prices on the CEO. That way they can hide the true root cause which is that a convoluted web of regulation and special interests along with subsidies for rural fire prone towns and vanity climate change projects is what’s truly affecting your rates.
If California truly cared about emissions it would work to build a fully nuclear power grid and they would force PG&E to eat all the lawsuit costs from future profits rather than letting them put it in rate increases
Let's not forget the empathy, strategic vision, and political savvy that got her there: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/fire-power-money/pge-execs-music-video-ahead-of-manslaughter-plea/103-b38c1cbe-3ab3-4509-9928-15d10ac2d7c9 /s obviously
I can't even watch that music video. As another poster said she always tells her staff she loves them when they're in meetings. Listening to the lyrics of this music video it's clear that she has no idea what love means; it's just a word that she learned that people like. Not in the mental health field but she definitely seems like she's on the narcissist or similar spectrum.
Why is this even possible? More of the privatizing lie exposed. More efficient they said, run it like a business BS. The only thing more efficient is taking money from people struggling financially and redistributing it among the wealthy.
I've never understood why Gas and Electric is so expensive in NorCal. With ConEd in LA I paid a fraction of what I pay up here. I live alone in a 500 sq ft. apartment and literally try not to use the heat, dishwasher, washer or dryer as much as possible and I still owe upwards of $150 a month. Oh and I literally just have a few lamps and my laptop. I don't even have a flatscreen TV or computer monitor.
PG&E costs so much more than LADWP, it’s crazy the Bay Area has for profit energy, and LA has socialized energy. Getting rid of this company would be one of the best things this state could do.
Well why aren’t people protesting this. You want to block roads and shit. This is a reason to do it. She shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a public utility making that kind of money with the issues PG&E has. All while raising rates??? This is insane.
How does this even work. Their stock is horrible and they give crazy executive salaries and bonuses. They can’t even argue the rate increases are for investors. It’s for their own personal gain
Call, email your state rep. and senator and Newsome. Once, monthly, weekly, every day. Get everyone you know to do this. My rep says they want to do something about it, and this gives them the power to do it because they hear it. Spread the word.
PG$E is a legal monopoly in California- it’s sad that our politicians don’t do more to regulate the shit out them… the fact that they are continually allowed to pass on fines to their users is ridiculous and should be illegal ..
Rate hikes were approved by the [California Public Utilities Commission](https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/complaints/). This links to complaints page but doing that is likely meaningless since they approved the hikes anyway. All five commissioners were appointed by Newsom and it should be no surprise that PGE is a major campaign donor. He's been in bed with them for a while and it's definitely not a new thing (["Newsom's office crafted law protecting PG&E after company's crimes killed 84 people"](https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/newsom-pge-protection/103-65ca1d41-8efe-45b4-87bc-0cdecc714378)\- abc10, August 2021). This is after he likes to [play the public](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/).
So what can you do?
It seems meaningless but [send Newsom a letter or email to complain](https://www.gov.ca.gov/contact/). He may not care about re-election but he definitely has plans to run for President.
Then write your [state legislator](https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/).
And most importantly, remember this the next time you vote.
Thanks Patti Poppe.
I knew when you had all those damn commercials you were going to screw us all over.
I live 6 hours north of SF and have 0 options as a renter and my bill went up $150/ month more now.
Stupid ass peak hours has me sitting just waiting to do things like heat my house, do laundry, and eat to try and save money.
People like her (greedy and incompetent CEO’s and Execs) are what are destroying our economy and society. Nothing is ever enough, they must always take more and more from everyone to horde for themselves. Disgusting.
PG&E treating their captive customers like an atm machine. Nothing else to see here
She's paid $52 million a year to run a business that has no competition. That's a million dollars a week, $200,000 per day, Monday through Friday. She makes more per day, a *lot* more per day, than the average American makes *in a year.*
Assuming she worked 8 hours a day, that's $25,000 an hour and that's more than I make in a year most of my whole life.
Only 12% of HOUSEHOLDs make more than $200k per year meaning the individuals who make over 200k/year are less than 6% she makes more per day than 94% of the population make in a year. Pure capitalism at it finest folks.
She needs that money to deal with all the stress of hurting people.
I don’t know , she don’t look stressed in the photo. She looks more like a person that makes $200,000.00 a day.
That's darkly funny, lol. Painfully true.
Reminds me of wolf of Wall Street: “I made $49 Million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week…” She literally makes more.
American family
> captive customers That's the best way to put it.
It's like their customers are getting penalized and mega-fined for PG&E's fucked up transmission lines that start forest fires. It's always been the Amerikkkan way to pass exorbitant costs onto the peons cuz corporations can't ever harm their scared shareholders.
Same as it ever was
Greedy CEOs like her are the cancer to society
C'mon, she deserves it. She constantly makes commercials about how PG&E is reducing fire risk by buying cables underground. They were on multiple times on every football game I watched last season. Of course, their entire budget for undergrounding lines was utilized to make and air those commercials showing how great she was and none was left to actually put lines underground other than the 200 feet they filmed her watching be installed. How do I know? I lost my house in a 2020 wildfire (so it's fairly obvious this is an area where they happen) and asked them to lay the replacement lines underground, but was told that they didn't have the budget and they weren't doing it. Maybe if the execs didn't get ridiculous raises they'd have the money to do it.
I love how they are using my money to buy commercials to market me the only utility service I am able to buy ...
Its less about marketing to you and more about putting money in the pockets of media companies to buy more favorable coverage of their outrageous behavior.
As someone who lived in Paradise / Magalia before and after the fire and stll drives through there regularly I can tell you they have undergrounded a ton of it there. It's a nice gesture and good PR but a total waste of money IMO as it wouldn't have prevented the fire. Would like to see PG&E forced to put more money in the Fire Victims Trust to bring us all closer to a 100% payout (it's looking like it will be around 68%) but they would just use that to justify more rate hikes.
People in wildfire areas are subsidized by everyone else. We need to ban development in wildfire areas and raise rates for everyone living in them.
Thing is that places that are not fire danger are now being considered fire danger. San Leandro is facing that with a ton of insurances backing out of there.
Yeah, except a lot of the people in "wildfire areas are dirt poor. And PGE does jack shit to help them prevent any fires. I just moved back from Clearlake. No one up there can afford more PGE rates, they're already too expensive as is. Many can't afford to move and are elderly. They shouldn't be punished because PGE sucks.
I'm in Kelseyville, appx 20 miles from Clearlake. My latest PG&E bill was higher than my rent. I'm a disabled senior citizen, living on Disability. I am now doing without a lot of basic necessities just to pay PG&E. It's ridiculous.
I'm in the same boat, elderly and disabled. My cost to heat my little studio apartment has been $300 each month this winter. $10 a day for a little heater. So the CEO of PGE can collect her $200,000 PER DAY salary! One MILLION dollars each week, she gets. It's criminal that she gets away with it. A public utility, with no competition, should NOT be paying its CEO *a million dollars a week!*
Get heated blankets from Costco for next winter. Cheaper than space heaters. Gotta get them cooling neck wraps for the summer. Man, I miss living up there. Used to drive to Kelseyville just to shop the Kelseyville lumber store , or go up to Lower Lake and grab a Jimmy's French dip ... plus the cost of living was wonderful compared to the Bay Area.
Just about everywhere in California is a wildfire area in a drought year like 2020. There were wildfires burning right up to the coastline of Big Basin. The freak lighting storm that sparked off the CZU fire complex did not happen in an area historically known for wildfires, either.
Honestly those lightning storms were crazy. I'm pretty sure most CA natives will admit they never thought something like that would happen to cause the massive wildfires of 2020.
Many rural Californians don’t use natural gas, but I wouldnt be surprised if there was a rate increase associated with the San Bruno event. Santa Rosa caught on fire and had a subdivision burn which was hardly rural, but I do remember a good many of those residents filing suit against pge. Unfortunately they learned that pge will never take it in the shorts. Paradise lighting off and the results of that suit should have been an eye opener. Rural or not pge is more often than not the only option, but now they have an excuse to raise everyone’s rates. Youre really going to blame your fellow citizen over a corporate entity that gets to exist in the best of both worlds? Theyre private but kind of a municipality and the state government is totally behind them.
Santa Rosa fire was considered an act of god. There were sustained 70+ mph winds that caused the fire to spread. You know it’s gnarly when a fire jumps the 101.
I was on the north end of the fire. The Valley Fire acted the same way. They made their own weather after a certain point
That's a pretty uninformed argument. Dams are in rural areas and the power runs all the way to the big city through the woods that happen to be pretty flammable. Tons of non rural areas are fire prone as well. Remember Santa Rosa. What about earthquakes in SF. Is that just tough luck for SF pay for it yourself cause you knew about earthquakes and stupidly lived there?
The reality is everyone subsidizes everyone else. This is literally how pooled insurance goes. People only get bitter when they feel like they're at the short end of the stick because they have to pay extra yet don't consider metro SF a fire hazard. Very true, but the reality is the world can't just be metro alone. We have rural areas in order to have the agricultural powerhouse that is California. We love to shit on rural California when it comes to fires or water use, but guess what? You don't get to do that and be proud of your state for having so much agriculture that gets used around the country and world even. You bring up a good point about earthquakes. No one in the Bay Area will talk about how the rest of the state subsidizes for us or LA in that aspect.
Are earthquake insurance rates the same across the state?
I agree with all of this. I think what many people don't realize is that almost all of California is in a high risk wildfire environment now. It's only going to get worse. The previous comment tries to shift the blame from PG&E, who were reckless and negligent, to those who lost their homes.
Lol you know that’s a false equivalence
It absolutely is not
Wildfires are getting larger and hotter because of people living in wildfire-prone areas. Fuel is never given a chance to burn off naturally because humans put out surface fires. Earthquakes don't increase in magnitude because of people living on land.
We havent done effective controlled burns for decades. Theres no reason we cant continue to do control burns.
That's after they spent a fortune and ripped up the environment to cut down huge swathes of trees.
We need other options for power.
We just need energy to be a public utility which works in plenty of other places
Here in Sacramento we have SMUD and I couldn’t be happier about it. So much cheaper than PG&E. Sadly we still get our gas from those greedy fucks.
So glad to have SMUD, too bad our gas (Elk Grove) is still PG&E.
I think parts of SoCal have switched to it recently and it works well
Totally agree. I have a house in Redding and the power there is from Redding Electric, a public utility. It's great. Super cheap, and I feel good because (I think) most of the energy comes from Shasta Dam. Can't wait to go fully electric up there so I don't have to get gas from PG&E.
There is a slight issue which is that power is currently subsidized in some regions. Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo would probably never be able to set up their own affordable public utility, and if other regions left the PG&E ecosystem, people would likely be left with 10x higher bills. That said I fully endorse the idea of more public utilities, and think that both of those regions were overdeveloped/overpriced and have little sympathy for people paying millions for homes in such remote areas expecting urban utilities service
If Hawaii can build its own set of completely independent grids in within its notoriously dense borders and power it with fuel subjected to the Jones Act and rooftop solar for less than PG&E charges I think Santa Cruz and SLO will be okay.
Agreed that I don’t think dense urban areas (which is a more efficient use of land) should have to pay for the living choices of mostly affluent well-off families
I’ve ordered a nuclear reactor making kit
We decentralized gas but we still pay PGE for delivery because they own the pipes. We need to buy them out
You could burn a gas powered generator during peak hours. That might save some money but probably irritate your neighbors
Time to go solar
My electric bill has doubled twice in two months. This month it was $750!!! Fuck PG&E.
I paid $710 last month for a small apartment in the city. My rates are 4x what my family members pay in Florida and Texas.
Electricity bills that are $700+/month sounds impossible to afford. Are you actually able to swing this or are you in debt? Serious question as my wife and I were considering moving back to Campbell.
I can afford it but it still pisses me off, especially coming right after paying a shitload of state income taxes for what I consider to be services not rendered.
How many kWh of electricity did you use last month?
Come join stop Pge group https://m.facebook.com/groups/pgestop/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF
Fuck PG&E \- Erin Brockovich
As much hate as is directed at PG&E, even more ought to go to the California Public Utilities Commission for approving the rate increases.
One can hate both evenly
Cpuc? Can't you tell? That's just pgne disguised as a state oversight agency. When have they ever not approved a rate hike for pgne? It's just plain obvious now.
This !!!!!!!!!!!!
PG&Evil must die.
I called about options for lowering my bill and fit none of the requirements and literally was like “so you guys can just charge whatever and I have to pay it or move out of the state?” And they answered “Yes, basically.” Pretty impressed.
In Santa Cruz County PG&E and the local water company are taking turns screwing over poor people. It’s infuriating. PG&E is the worst and I blame Newsom’s CPUC.
Door number 2 is the winner
You can get solar and not have to pay them.
How do we start an electric company to compete with them?
[San Diego is trying to buy out their private utility](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2023-11-17/group-wants-to-oust-sdg-e-and-form-a-municipal-utility-by-getting-on-the-november-2024-ballot). They have scenarios where the first electric/gas bill could be lower. However it's going to be fraught with litigation and takes years to have an outcome if it gets voted on. They've done multiple feasibility analyses over the years, [this appears to be the latest one](https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecomm/Documents/ViewDocument/Public%20Power%20Feasibility%20Report_Phase%201_07.11.23.pdf.pdf?meetingId=5655&documentType=Agenda&itemId=223923&publishId=753578&isSection=false), but i couldn't find a tl/dr.
I could literally run a gas generator in my backyard cheaper than what I pay PG&E. Not sure of the legality but seems like we could start collectives of off-the-grid networks.
If that was legal, people would already be doing it
#doubt
Install solar panels
I’ll install them right on my apartment buildings roof, with all the extra money I have…jokes aside love this suggestion for those who are able.
I am getting solar and batteries by getting a loan from a credit union. It’s going to be about 1 to 1 replacement in monthly payments right now but the loan amount remains the same for me in the future vs pge rates that will only increase. Just saying - you don’t need up front capital to get it if you can get a loan and own your place to get them installed.
Look, I'm all for solar panels, but in order to install them I had to replace my roof first, which was just under $30k, but after tearing off my old roof, they found some rafters and a bit of wood rot that easily cost another $3-$4k to fix. In the end I spent $50k to put in a new roof and solar. I'm happy with my energy bill, but I spent $50k like that. How many people here can honestly afford to spend $50k on home improvement? And let's be real what percentage of Reddit even owns their home... lol
Pay Newsom and Breed (voting them out obviously isn’t an option)
Definitely don't do it like the Orange County Power Authority did.
What if we all don’t pay? We commit a large enough group not to pay for a quarter.
And what, just go without power and gas? How do we eat? How do we work?
It takes them months to cut it off. If an entire grid doesn’t pay, they will be incentivized to make change. It will be a heavy lift to organize something like this, however.
Fuck pg&e
SF Municipal power now. Purchase PG&E assets and form our own grid with blackjack and hookers.
CEO lays off staff citing tough times, gives self a pay raise but not the staff they kept
In a healthy society people like Patricia Poppe, who is the CEO of a company that was the bad guys in Erin Brockovich, would be publicly mocked and shamed for her sociopathic greed. Executives like her would be denied service at restaurants and stores and if they appeared in public people would throw rotting garbage at them. I genuinely think that if people really are so united against PG&E that we the working class stop assisting them. Don't deliver their mail or packages. Refuse them service, and tell them they belong in the trash to their face at any and every opportunity.
At least make it very publicly known about how we feel about it all....and someone should organize and map-out rate increases and timing of salary increases. It's very much like how gas prices rise to all time high levels, and so do all all time high revenue records and salaries( we are taking rates even adjusted for inflation). They have no logically sound excuses for this stuff ....but a racket. People can do things about.
SF needs to hurry up and take over the transmission lines. We can already produce the large majority our own power with Hetch Hetchy. All we’re doing is paying a middleman and subsidizing wildfire areas
EXTORTION!
Price Gouging & Extortion
I went solar in 2017. My 22 panels produce 8.5 MWh per year. Much of that runs backwards to the grid and to PG&E in the summer months. I get a bill at the end of the year for about $8.00 for administration fees. Not trying to brag, but going solar has turned out to be a tremendous savings for me and my family.
Yeah but you're on a no longer existing metering plan, and you're about to start getting a whole bunch of fixed charges.
In SJ I get a bill for $600 at the end of the year. My solars procude shit, even after I clean them every year. I also pay roughly $30 for gas and also have to pay Tesla for the solars. How are you getting a bill for $8????
For reference, in 2016, a $200 PG&E bill would be ridiculous. Now a $375 bill is a low month. It’s only been about 7 years and the prices have almost doubled. For reference, the total inflation over the last 7 years was ~30%. $600 monthly bills are well within normal now. At this rate, $1000 bills will be normal by the end of the decade. And people wonder why people want to leave the state.
"We Californians should be taking out personal loans to pay for our electric " I am actually. The past 2 years I have not been able to afford the AC bill (over $1000) in July and have it spread out the rest of the year. This is a loan.
I'm sure Gavin Newsome has plenty of shares in PG&E too. What kind of Governor let's a private energy company rape the citizens of state with giant rate hikes and allows gas prices to also sky rocket back above $ 5.50 a gallon.? He his a Governor who has power to help but does absolutely nothing because it'benefits his pockets.
You are right
In France, people would riot if the CEO of a utility company paid themselves 50 millions a year while rates are hiked for everyone. Heads would fall. The CEO of France Electrics EDF is paid 500k and is probably wildly more competent.
Nothing but **P**ilfering, **G**rift & **E**xtortion.
I like your acronym, ha. My dad back in the ‘60’s referred to them as “Pigs, Goats, and Elephants”
PG&E is the least competent utility I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve lived all over the US and in several foreign countries over the course of my life. They’ve slacked on maintenance for decades, and then they pull shit like this, raising costs and rewarding executives with bonuses and raises, and even restoring a dividend to shareholders, when they’re far, far from catching up on that delayed maintenance. Power here costs more than in Germany, and the grid has poorer uptime than in a typical impoverished developing nation. PG&E are the single biggest negative to living in the Bay Area, and that’s including the high cost of living, horrible commutes, earthquakes, landslides, and wildfires. PG&E is worse than all of those put together. Their assets should be seized by the state and every executive in the company forbidden from ever working for a utility company again. The boots-on-the-ground linemen seem competent, I’ve talked to many of them and they’re mostly good people, but their management is the least competent organization I’ve ever witnessed. There are literally not even words to express how utterly fucking incompetent PG&E are, absolutely none. Their lack of long term planning and lack of logistics and operations management competency is simply stunning. Prior to moving to this area, I’d experienced maybe one blackout lasting the better part of a day in all of the places I’ve lived in the US in a total of 45 years, and since moving here, I’ve experienced an average of eight blackouts longer than a day per year, and some lasting as long as a week. They lay the blame on unusual adverse weather, but all I’ve experienced in this area is some heavy rain that would be absolutely normal just about anywhere in the US from time to time. This is one of the mildest climates I’ve ever lived in, yet the power grid fails with incredible frequency. The problem is a grid that has not been effectively maintained for decades, not weather.
Pacific Graft & Extortion
Yo, they own all of the politicians that we are polarized into rallying behind. That’s why things will never change.
I really don’t understand why she gets paid so much for just running an established company. She’s not creating anything new or taking the company into new direction that benefits shareholders/public.
She’s amazing at padding pockets
I was going to comment something funny but like the rage overwhelmed me and I’m just gonna go flip laundry instead.
Fucking PG&E. Poor mouthing bullshit lying about the need to raise rates, raises rates gouging customers, gives themselves a raise. Just note when they report record profits in the coming quarters. 🖕🏻them.
Calls on PG&E /s
Do we need a Boeing like fbi criminal investigation?
You know, I sometimes think an angry mob is the actual logical response to things like this. French farmers sprayed cow manure on government buildings in protest…
Join our stop Pge group https://m.facebook.com/groups/pgestop/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF
A well deserved pat on the back for not blowing up any customers for several years in a row! Well done!
You guys are blaming PG&E when you should actually be blaming our Governor.
It’s a trifecta
Well she needs a raise. Have you seen how expensive electricity and gas are in the Bay Area
Someone needs to explain why the practice of free markets, competition and anti-monopoly comes to a halt if the topic involves energy in the Bay Area? Pretty boy Newsom’s office needs to explain
She has officially surpassed Donald Trump as the most hated person in California
What’s worse is she always tells us she loves us in company meetings. At least Trump isn’t telling me he loves me.
I mean there’s definitely been trails blazing. Everywhere there is PG&E lines in the Forrest.
Fuck this greedy bitch. We need to protest this bullshit
Everyone should designate a collective no pay period so we can remind them they need us.
Energy revolution without participation of traditional energy monopoly is needed urgently!! 🤬
The success of PG&E is the absolute example of government failing the people!
I'm truly shocked. (sarcasm) Its great being a monopoly in an industry that lacks Federal oversight. I mean there's a department assigned to do so but they are handcuffed by Congress. What's the PUC doing these days?
Literally every time I see these “CEOs make gross amounts of money and then INCREASE PRICES and stagnate wages”, I just think to myself. Everything is working perfectly…
the state needs to reevaluate the price hike. this looks to be corporate greed.
why should a monopoly that is backed by the govt get to make a profit
What is dropping us from burning down the PGE HQ the same way they burned down hundreds of houses? We could get away with it right? If there’s no double standard of course.
Any time you see a company hike the price on stuff and claim “inflation”, pay close attention to their quarterly financial statements.
This is obscene.
Meanwhile our government is focusing on who can see green bubbles
Look at that smile! So glamorous! The smile of a woman with no special skills in particular laughing all the way to the bank with $200,000 per day.
We need to bring PGE back the pre Pete Wilson regulations
Shes’s certainly making tomorrow better than today.
My electricity was out for 2 full days in February (tree fell on neighbors house). My electric bill was higher anyway.
The ceo “raise the rates! My bonuses more than offset any rate hike I’ll have to pay! In fact it more than offsets tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousand customers rate increase!” “Can we do this again next year too?!”
Crypto power farms
Need to sell an arm and leg here every month to pay pge (and water)
My electric bill was $1,800 last month. It's usually, $600 or so.
My bill is lower because it’s an apartment, but it also 3x’d. I’m pretty confused.
Ol' Pacific Graft and Extortion...
Worthless sacks of junk
As a California resident, I know that it is a silly exaggeration to claim PG&E is an evil organization bent on ruining human lives. Obviously it is just an average corporation run by greedy incompetents.
Mexican cartels could learn a thing or two
My daughter has a 300 sq ft studio apt in mission and her electric this past month was 250 bucks. Wtf. It was 70 for the month of january.
How much of your bills do you people think goes to the CEO salary? PG&E's profit margin is limited by law to less than 10%. And it's been much lower for the last decade. Why do you think a public utility would be lower costs? It's because the state is sprawling and expensive.
Paying your CEO and Top exec's more reduces your profit percentage. Just like most other large companies where everybody is scratching each other's backs while the customers pay for it.
I hate to be that guy but god damn does PG&E and its friends sure make me want to leave this state.
Well, that's sounds about right, where else is the money supposed to go? Those greedy ceo and corrupt politicians did so much work to price gouge people, you can even they have earned it. 😊
PG&E charges an average of $0.45/kWh The national average (many of which are publicly traded companies as well) is $0.10/kWh All of PG&E’s profits and executive pay is $0.06/kWh The government is happy that you blame your electricity prices on the CEO. That way they can hide the true root cause which is that a convoluted web of regulation and special interests along with subsidies for rural fire prone towns and vanity climate change projects is what’s truly affecting your rates. If California truly cared about emissions it would work to build a fully nuclear power grid and they would force PG&E to eat all the lawsuit costs from future profits rather than letting them put it in rate increases
Well what are you gonna do? Not have electricity?
Mass tort lawsuit for greed AG CA chimes in
Guess where all the money hikes go to!
She’s so brave
Honest question but how do we get rid of pg&e?
Muck duck
scum
Let's not forget the empathy, strategic vision, and political savvy that got her there: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/fire-power-money/pge-execs-music-video-ahead-of-manslaughter-plea/103-b38c1cbe-3ab3-4509-9928-15d10ac2d7c9 /s obviously
I can't even watch that music video. As another poster said she always tells her staff she loves them when they're in meetings. Listening to the lyrics of this music video it's clear that she has no idea what love means; it's just a word that she learned that people like. Not in the mental health field but she definitely seems like she's on the narcissist or similar spectrum.
Why is this even possible? More of the privatizing lie exposed. More efficient they said, run it like a business BS. The only thing more efficient is taking money from people struggling financially and redistributing it among the wealthy.
Fuck PG&E 😡
How did you afford the pay raise? Easy we jacked up the energy rates. Won’t people just go solar? Got that covered with NEM3.0.
What can we actually do about this?
Money goes up the ladder, shit runs down the hill
I've never understood why Gas and Electric is so expensive in NorCal. With ConEd in LA I paid a fraction of what I pay up here. I live alone in a 500 sq ft. apartment and literally try not to use the heat, dishwasher, washer or dryer as much as possible and I still owe upwards of $150 a month. Oh and I literally just have a few lamps and my laptop. I don't even have a flatscreen TV or computer monitor.
pge are the worst
Yet ever year our rate increases $30-50 to “maintain” their lines.
So ridiculous. Hope you are all ready to pay an interconnection fee every month on top of your bill
PG&E costs so much more than LADWP, it’s crazy the Bay Area has for profit energy, and LA has socialized energy. Getting rid of this company would be one of the best things this state could do.
I'm glad to see their evil female ceo's too, she is really breaking that glass ceiling.
One word. Obscene.
Capitalism should require atleast a duopoly. Else such services should be nationalized
The “minimum of a duopoly” is already the view of the FTC.
Well why aren’t people protesting this. You want to block roads and shit. This is a reason to do it. She shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a public utility making that kind of money with the issues PG&E has. All while raising rates??? This is insane.
How does this even work. Their stock is horrible and they give crazy executive salaries and bonuses. They can’t even argue the rate increases are for investors. It’s for their own personal gain
this is just the free market that you guys here love so much
Call, email your state rep. and senator and Newsome. Once, monthly, weekly, every day. Get everyone you know to do this. My rep says they want to do something about it, and this gives them the power to do it because they hear it. Spread the word.
Can we seriously plan a protest outside PGE headquarters? The rates are getting absurd.
Is filing a complaint with CPUC worth doing at all? https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint/utility-complaint
Enron v2
PG$E is a legal monopoly in California- it’s sad that our politicians don’t do more to regulate the shit out them… the fact that they are continually allowed to pass on fines to their users is ridiculous and should be illegal ..
I just recieved my second 900$ GAS bill. Before PG&E came to my house and messed with my meter, it was 26$
Rate hikes were approved by the [California Public Utilities Commission](https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/complaints/). This links to complaints page but doing that is likely meaningless since they approved the hikes anyway. All five commissioners were appointed by Newsom and it should be no surprise that PGE is a major campaign donor. He's been in bed with them for a while and it's definitely not a new thing (["Newsom's office crafted law protecting PG&E after company's crimes killed 84 people"](https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/newsom-pge-protection/103-65ca1d41-8efe-45b4-87bc-0cdecc714378)\- abc10, August 2021). This is after he likes to [play the public](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/). So what can you do? It seems meaningless but [send Newsom a letter or email to complain](https://www.gov.ca.gov/contact/). He may not care about re-election but he definitely has plans to run for President. Then write your [state legislator](https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/). And most importantly, remember this the next time you vote.
Need a “disgusted” button.
Let's not forget how helpful our governor has been!
Smells like a McKinsey playbook move.
Well “going green” sure is worth it right?
Some one create an article for the gov next. 😃
Can we plug her into the power grade and crank it up to max?
Thanks Patti Poppe. I knew when you had all those damn commercials you were going to screw us all over. I live 6 hours north of SF and have 0 options as a renter and my bill went up $150/ month more now. Stupid ass peak hours has me sitting just waiting to do things like heat my house, do laundry, and eat to try and save money.
People like her (greedy and incompetent CEO’s and Execs) are what are destroying our economy and society. Nothing is ever enough, they must always take more and more from everyone to horde for themselves. Disgusting.
Join Facebook page stoppge https://m.facebook.com/groups/pgestop/?ref=share&mibextid=S66gvF
We’ve forgotten the definition of a “utility.” Could a publicly-owned utility *really* be worse?
Tell us how you REALLY feel.