Electricity Costs

Something is severely wrong with our system when a 15kW diesel generator is cheaper to operate than purchasing electricity from SDGE.

To illustrate, a 15kW generator running at full load consumes about 1 gal/hour, and if you get diesel for a generator you don't pay highway taxes on the fuel, so you're at say $3.50/gallon (that number should be a little high, even in California). $3.50/15kW is $0.23 per kWH. If you've looked at your SDGE bill lately, tiers 3 and 4 are well above that price (and who isn't into those tiers when the baselines are so ridiculously small?).

Granted, a house doesn't run at 15kW continuously, so the exercise is not realistic (at less than 1/4 load, the generator is still likely consuming at least 1/4 gal/hr), but in terms of order-of-magnitude comparisons, it serves as context for SDGE's prices. It's also not convenient to continuously fill a diesel generator every few days (depending on the size of the tank and consumption).

But isn't the main selling point of a utility that they can generate and distribute power more efficiently? That obviously isn't happening here.

Adding insult to injury, 18.8% of the electric portion of my most recent bill has nothing to do with the electricity we've used; it's for "public purpose programs" which are defined as "the costs of certain state-mandated programs (such as low-income and energy efficiency programs)." That's right: 18.8% of my bill is to pay for someone else's electricity.

Another ridiculous factoid: the "distribution" and "transmission" portions of the bill are more than the "electricity generation" cost.

The net result is the same question: how did we get to the point where it's even in the same order of magnitude to generate electricity on your own as purchasing it from a utility like SDGE?