San Diego electricity bills are high – and rising

Here’s what we can do about it…

San Diegans pay among the highest electric rates in the country. Even worse, the rates are proposed to rise each year for the next three years.

If you think your bills are high now, they will be rising each year into the future.

Public Power San Diego advocates for a community-owned, independently run, no-profit electric utility committed to locally produced and distributed clean and sustainable energy.

A NO-PROFIT ELECTRICITY SOLUTION WILL PROVIDE:

Lower Costs

Unlike SDGE, which exists to maximize profits for its executives and shareholders, a non-profit electricity utility would save each of us hundreds of dollars each year. There are more than 40 non-profit utilities across California. They all have lower rates than SDGE.
A non-profit utility would eliminate SDGE’s 20 percent profit margin. Last year, SDGE profits cost each of us an average of more than $600 per year. From our pockets to their profits.

San Diego’s non-profit utility would cut rates by pursuing the least expensive and cleanest electric service. This efficient strategy would emphasize locally generated solar power with batteries and avoid the high cost of moving electricity long distances over transmission lines.

The existing electricity rates include taxes that SDGE has to pay. The non-profit utility would not have to pay those taxes and they would no longer be included in the rates. The new utility would not have the power to raise taxes. It would have affordable electricity rates as a main goal in its mission.

  • Equitable Pricing: Public utilities can implement more equitable pricing structures, ensuring that low-income residents aren’t disproportionately burdened by high energy costs.
  • Lower Fees: Without the layers of miscellaneous fees that often accompany investor-owned utilities, public power utilities can keep charges lower and more transparent.
  • Rate Stability: Public utilities tend to have more stable rates, as they are not as subject to market pressures or the need to provide returns to investors.

  • Reinvestment in the Community: Revenue generated by a public utility can be reinvested in the local community. This can include energy efficiency programs, infrastructure upgrades, or other community benefits. SDGE exports profits from the local economy.
  • Local Project = Increase Local Jobs: Public utilities create good local jobs and would prioritize hiring from within the community. In addition to the existing jobs in the electricity distribution system that would be acquired, additional jobs would be created through micro-grid project instead of importation of remote power.

By emphasizing local solar electric generation on roofs and over parking lots, our non-profit utility would avoid building expensive and fire-causing transmission lines through our fragile backcountry.
With a priority on installing smaller battery systems for buildings and homes, our non-profit utility will also reduce the risk of fires posed by SDGE’s preference for large, industrial concentrations of batteries. Those heavily concentrated systems have already have caused several difficult and hazardous fires in our county.

Increased Security

San Diego non-profit electricity utility would NOT be regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The CPUC has unfortunately failed in protecting consumers from profit-grabbing utilities like SDGE.

Whether it’s internet access or air-conditioning, reliable electric service has never been more important. But SDGE’s strategy of importing power via long transmission lines makes our system less reliable. The failure of a single power line can blackout huge areas of our city. During heat waves last summer, buildings with solar power did not suffer power outages, while some SDGE customers were blacked out just when they needed power the most.
SDGE’s record is problematic. SDG&E territory has experienced three major blackouts in: April 2010, September 2011, and August 2020.
All three blackouts occurred under conditions that SDG&E should have been able to meet without interrupting power to customers. SDG&E avoided blackouts during the SDG&E-caused 2007 wildfires in part by obtaining emergency power from UC San Diego, which maintains local control of its own generation.

Public utilities are better positioned to focus on resilience projects like microgrids, battery storage, and energy independence, which are crucial in times of disasters or grid failure.
Distributing electric generation and battery storage across our city will provide greater energy resilience and security, all the more important in an unstable world. Distributed solar makes it more difficult to intrude on our power supply.
The U.S. National Defense Strategy emphasizes “deterrence by resilience” as a central approach to protect critical infrastructure.

With public power, decisions about rates, infrastructure investments, and energy policies are made locally.
With a directly-elected governing board, directors of our non-profit utility would be held accountable at public hearings and at the ballot box.
Electricity rates would no longer be set by regulators in San Francisco who reflexively agree to rate hikes that fund SDGE’s profits. The community has more direct control over its energy system.
Public power utilities can prioritize local needs, making decisions based on what’s best for the community rather than shareholders.

Public utilities give residents a say in how the utility is run, including decisions about energy sources, rate structures, and long-term investments.
SDGE customers have no say in the management of SDGE and no local oversight.
The governing board of our non-profit utility would be selected by us, the customers, in contrast to the unaccountable (and highly paid) directors of SDGE.

Cleanest Electricity

San Diego’s non-profit utility would avoid building expensive and hazardous transmission lines through the backcountry. We would not need to destroy more precious open space and desert lands to get electricity. San Diego has all the sunshine it needs to satisfy its electricity needs – and to save us money.

Prioritizing rooftop and parking lot solar, along with smaller, distributed battery systems, will allow our non-profit to more quickly and create a cheaper, cleaner electric utility with faster emissions reductions (decarbonization). That translates to lower costs and a cleaner environment than building hazardous and expensive transmission lines to industrial-size power stations built on precious open backcountry land.

No need to build expensive and risky transmission lines through backcountry.

Public utilities can implement programs that encourage energy efficiency, helping to reduce overall consumption and carbon footprints for households.

What can be done?

Public Power San Diego seeks to lower our bills and bring local control by creating a no-profit public utility. A no-profit utility for San Diego will tap our abundant sunshine by building solar on local rooftops and parking lots along with safe, local battery storage. This approach costs less and is more secure than the utilities emphasis on expensive and fire-prone transmission built through pristine lands to generating stations on precious open lands. Replacing SDGE with a no-profit utility would reduce rates beginning by at least 20% with more savings to come.

We need your help. This is a David & Goliath battle.

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Public Power San Diego is an educational project of San Diego EarthWorks, a 501(3)c California non-profit corporation. Please consider donating or volunteering for our campaign to build a strong movement. We need people with all kinds of skills.