When a California Utility Bill Feels Like a Second Mortgage | Panel

Electricity rates in California jumped significantly this summer. I made a TikTok about my bill, and I started receiving tons of comments from people kind of feeling the exact same pain. So I started a petition that now has almost 40,000 signatures. Today we sit down with Micah Reid, whose LADWP bill was about $3,300 for one billing cycle for a typical home in LA, which triggered this movement to audit LADWP. We also talked to Johnny Graham, who runs a solar company across Southern California. He's going to help us compare the rates among different utility companies. These utilities know that their consumers are stuck. Any company that has a full monopoly or control over their consumers is going to see price increases. Johnny, Micah, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Micah, you've started a movement in LA because your bills were too high, electric bills. Can you tell us What you went through? What happened to your bills? Yeah, so this summer was, you know, very hot in Los Angeles. And I, you know, typically know that that July to September bills is going to hurt pretty bad. But this year, it just absolutely floored me. It was $3,322 for water, power, sanitation, and sewer. And it's never been that high. How much was it last year? Last year, I think it was about $2,600. So it's gone up by 30% in a sense. About that, yeah. And you have started a movement about it in LA. Can you tell us about that? I made a TikTok about my bill, just saying it seems like I'm paying a second mortgage and just basically vented online. And I started receiving tons of comments from people. Kind of feeling the exact same pain. After that I started thinking, you know, maybe we should try to do something about this. So I reached out to the people at Change.org and started a petition that now has almost 40,000 signatures. And Johnny, you have seen this. You're in the solar business, so you're dealing with power bills. You're seeing them across Southern California. Yes. Can you tell us what you have seen in this time frame? He's not wrong. So, you know, Micah's story is one that I've seen with thousands of people. And I see, I get probably eight to ten electric bills sent to me every single day. People begging us to help them with their utility costs because they have gotten out of control. I mean, you know, to what Micah had said earlier, we did have a very hot summer. And that pushed a lot of people into more expensive rates. But some of these people's utility bills are so unmanageable. Our business is limited in what we can do. We have to have the perfect situation for our customer in order to help them. So that means that every day I see people that we have to turn down that we can't help in our business. And they're just stuck with bills that are exceeding people's property tax costs. They're more expensive than car payments for some people. I mean and we're starting to really see this this electricity thing is starting to become something that very few people can afford which it's supposed to be a necessity. You know it's supposed to be something that we all have access to cheap energy. Without cheap energy the entire economy is hurt. And so what I see every single day is something that Mike had brought huge attention to and it's been amazing to see this movement. I hope to see it go even further and we're doing everything we can in our in our power too to help Michael, people have reached out to you, like you have 40,000 people signed this Change.org petition. What are the stories of people in L.A. right now? I'm just hearing from people that are having electricity bills that are even crazier than mine. I mean, I had a friend send me a text message that he had a LADWP bill for $5,000. If you see what happened with Cantor's Deli, which is a staple in Los Angeles, that deli has been around for almost 100 years, I think. They had an LADWP bill that was like $35,000. So what I'm starting to realize is that this is a huge problem throughout Los Angeles. And I'm sure it's an issue, you know, all throughout California. Where people, like Johnny said, are getting squeezed by the utility companies. And to piggyback on what he said, I have, in fact, paid more this year to LADWP in utility bills than I have in property taxes, which to me, it just seems absolutely insane. Wow. And Johnny, this is something that's happening across Southern California. You're dealing with investor-owned utilities and you're dealing with LADWP. Now you're dealing more with their customers. Can you tell us what does it look like? What are the power bills look like outside of LA? So outside of L.A., it's a national problem. So I'm getting my company currently tooled up to help the entire country because every region has different problems with why their power costs are getting out of hand. But all across the center of the United States, with the implementation of data centers that are now competing on these same public utility lines, we're seeing people across the entire nation watching their power costs go up. California has been in a unique place though for a long time where its power costs have been about triple the national average and LADWP is one I've been particularly paying attention to over the last two years because it's really been the last six years their prices have almost doubled right now there's public utilities and there's private utilities and then there is private contractors that work with private citizens so you want to break these up into three different categories. Private utilities like San Diego Gas and Electric, Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric, all have historically been more expensive than LADWP, which is a municipality, right? It's a city utility, right? Like kind of Orange County Power Authority, San Diego. Exactly, or Glendale. Yeah, they're different city-owned. Right, these are city-owned, which means that these are typically public officials that work inside these companies. They're generally cheaper, supposed to be cheaper. They're supposed to be cheaper, right. And that's where some of the issues come into play with this, though, That was because unlike The San Diego Gas and Electric, which is an investor-owned utility, or California Edison, which is an investor utility, those utilities have oversight on them that city utilities don't typically have. They have something like the California Public Utilities Commission, which is supposed to audit them. We're questionable about how well they do there. But since they're also an investor-owned utility, that means they have to open up their books to shareholders, right? So there's a little bit more transparency in why their rates are where they are. Where it is with LADWP, which is the largest in the country as far as city-owned utilities go, they don't have that same level of oversight. They're basically policing themselves, right? And that's a big problem because you have, first off, about $250 million that they do make. It's not profit, right? It's not going to shareholders, but it goes right into the city's coffers. So the city's using this and saying, well, that's our money to fix the streets, handle the homeless, all these other things. But when you look at the state of what LA is in right now, you ask yourself, where's all this money going? And so the problem is, is that in either situation, these utilities have a monopoly and a control over their consumers that can only be solved with the third item that I talked about, which is private contracting of electricity. So I'll make this really easy to understand. If you don't like LADWP, outside of what my business can do with solar, which we don't Don't help everybody, we can't. Where else? Who's your competition? Who's the competing utility, right? If you own a business here in the state, whatever that business might be, it's quite likely you have competitors. Can you go to investor-owned utilities in those areas or is it just for LADWP? They basically draw up the lines of wherever it is you live. So the only way to get out of LADWP is to either have solar and drill a well for your water, which good luck on that, right? You either have to make your own power, make your own water, or you have to move to a different utility. Right. And then if you move to that utility, you're going into a more expensive utility anyway with Edison or these other places. So really what's happening is, is these utilities know that their consumers are stuck. They know that there's no getting out of this. Right. They'll make concessions like, oh, you know, we'll give you some time to catch up on your bill. But they'll never give you a break on your bill because what's your alternative? You become Amish maybe. You stop using all power altogether, but what is your alternative? And so any company, whether it be shareholder-owned, whether it be city-owned, that has a full monopoly or control over their consumer is going to see price increases. If you only had one place to shop for your grocery store, if Whole Foods was the only option, I promise you Whole Foods isn't going to get cheaper. Right? So that's kind of the broader issue. Now, Micah, you've started this movement and I don't know if you were envisioning it will get 40,000 people sign up, which is a lot of people for just LA. And what are you looking to achieve? So what we want in the petition is a full independent forensic audit of LADWP. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we want somebody to look at the tier system. Because the tier system essentially penalizes people that live in warm areas. So I live in the San Fernando Valley. Obviously, this summer, it got really hot. And from July to September, maybe after two weeks, I was pushed into tier three, which is 41 cents a kilowatt hour. So most of my electric bill is in the highest tier. And that's where really, you know, people get hurt the most. So, yeah, we want those two things. I know in the petition we did want some relief. So that is, you know, nice to hear from Karen Bass that she is, you know, giving people time to pay their electric bill maybe towards the end of the year. But, you know, that does cause a problem because it's essentially pushing people into massive amounts of debt just to pay their utility bills. Because on January 1st, they're not giving you forgiveness. You still have to pay for those utilities. So for the tier system, what would you want them to show you? I would like them to perhaps, you know, get rid of tier three or make it so you have to generate even more power to get pushed into three. I don't really know what the solution is. I don't work in the utility business, but I do know that it's extremely unfair to people that live in warm areas because it's like the other day, the board of commissioner president said that when you go to the gas station If you if you drive more you're gonna put more gas into your tanks You're gonna have to pay for more gas but but that isn't necessarily true with the utilities because if you have a bigger tank and You get to the gas station you get to you know fill up to 15 gallons. The gas station doesn't automatically just double the price of gas Just because you have a bigger tank and that's kind of the problem that people are in right now that live in warm areas where they're getting sent into this higher tier and paying just an extreme amount for power. So essentially they're not using, they're not irresponsibly using too much. They're actually, this is just what they need. They're getting penalized with the higher rates. I mean, I don't feel like I'm doing anything out of the ordinary, anything reckless, but just keeping my thermostat at 74 degrees to keep my family, you know, safe. Here's the thing. Even if I put my thermostat at 78, like LADWP recommends, when it's 105 degrees outside, if my thermostat's at 78, inside my house, which is a two-story house, it still says it's 82, 83 degrees in there. So the AC is still playing catch up. And I don't really think it's going to make that big of a difference. And I've got a brand new HVAC system. I've done everything. When I moved into this house, we renovated everything. It's got blackout blinds, brand new energy efficient windows, brand new HVAC system. I have a variable speed pump for my pool. I do have an electric vehicle, but I checked the charging from the same time frame from the bill and I only incurred like $60 worth of charging costs because I don't really drive that much. I work remotely. So Johnny, there is another side of this where utility in California costs a lot more. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, it's bizarre. If people... So you always hear in California how gas prices are really crazy here. And they are, right? We have some taxes on our gas that are expensive. But they're not... Two and a half times the national average, the way electricity is. They're 50%. Gas prices are 50% higher than the national average. Right. And people are hyper aware of this because it's on a billboard every day, right? They see it before they go to fill up. And so they're aware of gas prices in a way that they're not aware of their electric charges. I mean, why Mike's movement is going so far is because he's having people finally pay attention to a bill that they typically just pay and move on with their lives with. It doesn't sit on a billboard where they see the cost per kilowatt hour on the billboard every single day. So he's drawing attention to something that everyone's been in a lot of pain for in the past, but is only just now recently starting to get out of control with these tier prices of electricity. So everything is more expensive in California, but power is peculiarly more expensive here, almost by a 3x rate. Some of that has to do with the fact that our utilities have shut down their local production. Utilities don't typically own where the power comes from. They're usually just the shipping and handling of electricity. So in the rest of the country, in most places, a power plant isn't that far from where the power is being used. So that reduces your shipping cost of getting the power to that location. In California, most of our power plants are hundreds of miles away outside of these cities. That has some upside to it, right? Like, for example, in Salt Lake, that's one of the most polluted valleys in the country. Like, you go and spend time in Salt Lake, and that valley right there is just covered in smog. The air quality is horrible. There's a natural gas plant right there on top of the valley that's putting out huge amounts of pollution right over the top of the city, and it creates a lot of health issues. California has taken some measures in that regard to reduce power plants being right next to their cities. Now, the downside of that is power costs are super high because of it. In Salt Lake, the power costs are how much? They're a lot cheaper. You know, they're like usually anywhere from 16, 18 cents. And then if you're in a town called like St. George in southern Utah, where most of my family's from, there's a power plant there called Dixie that charges almost 6 cents a kilowatt, right? But where Micah makes a really important point is this tier pricing. This tier pricing is really unfair. Just because you use more power doesn't mean you should be charged exorbitantly more. And also tier one pricing for LEDWP, because I look at historical bills all the time. I have a lot of customers that keep a file in their house where they've stored every single utility bill for the last 30 years, you know? And so I was looking at some of these tier one pricings in 2019 alone. It was like 17-ish cents a kilowatt. Now it's almost 30 cents. For tier one. So tier one, just the tier one, just the cheapest power went from 17 cents to almost what, 28, 29, not including the tax. The tax brings it up to 30 cents. So you're seeing a doubling of electricity costs in an eight year period. That's way faster than inflation. So if the utility tries to point and go, oh, inflation, yeah, inflation is a part of that, but it's not double. Right? So that's where the scrutiny needs to happen and it's going to take the public's will, people like Micah getting these signatures to happen, to get the city to be held accountable, to open this up, have a third-party forensic come and look at this and ask themselves, where is this money really going and are we holding our cities accountable for this? So it's going to take the public will of everybody to actually stand up and say, hey, this is getting out of control. Micah, what would you like to see in the audit? I want to make sure that there's not a misappropriation of funds. Like Johnny said, every year approximately LADWP has an overage of about $250 million that they give to the city general fund. And people in Los Angeles pay property taxes. They, If you look at Santa Monica, the sales tax just went up. You start to kind of wonder when you look around Los Angeles, you like, where is this money actually going? When you see that there's almost 50,000 people know in LA that are homeless, it's kind of looks like the city is like falling apart. And then you, you know, you throw on top of what, you. like Johnny said, when you look at the utility bill, there is a 10% tax on the electricity. But from what I understand, and you definitely need to look further into this, but the 10% utility tax, I believe, was something that was like grandfathered in in the 70s. And I don't think the people of Los Angeles have ever actually been able to vote on. It is an essential need in Los Angeles to have power. I don't believe you pay sales tax when you go get groceries at the grocery store. So why are we paying an extra 10% tax? on electricity so that's something that should definitely get looked at and also you guys want to see like where the money is going we want to see where the money is going absolutely and then you know on top of that um you look at some of the salaries in overtime and compensation packages that some of these LAD employees are are making and it's It's quite concerning. I mean, I saw the California Post, I think yesterday, put out an article after we went to the board and said that five LADWP employees make $4 million a year combined. And there are tons of employees that are making $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 a year. So it kind of makes you wonder, like, do they really? Need to be making that much money a year? Like, why aren't they hiring more people to, you know, cut overtime? And there was a man yesterday that does work for LADWP, and one of his concerns at the board was the exact same thing. He said that, you know, he's working in this area, and he doesn't have enough staff to help him out. That's why some people are getting crazy amounts of overtime. Interesting. What about the investor-owned utilities? So there's a discrepancy. People are getting paid a lot in this space, right? If you look at the investor-owned. Oh, yeah. Do you think they're comparing the pays between investor-owned and the city-owned utility companies, and that's how they're probably paying? Do I think that's how they're doing it? No, they're just different, right? So investor-owned utilities, I mean, just look up, I just, I would encourage all of your audience right now, look at the salaries of the CEO of San Diego Gas and Electric, the CFO, and just like their top three executives. I want you to look into that, okay? Now, these investor-owned utilities, they have investors that they give money back to, that they have performances that they have to hit, just like any other corporation. The difference is, is they still have monopolistic control, right? It's interesting. San Diego Gas and Electric doesn't have a direct competitor outside of, like, the solar industry like us, right? We're their only true competitors. And we're basically a bunch of tribes of small companies that are fighting up against a massive utility. And that utility also has a lot of say on our projects. So it's a monopoly that typically has a lot of control. But the CEOs of those companies are making, I mean, they make LEDWP look like nothing in comparison. So the top executives of an investor-owned utility, they're in a completely different ballpark. LADWP is a little bit different, though, and it should be looked at differently. Because if you are a public official, right, let's give an example. What does the president make every year, right, outside of all of his... his other side ventures what does he actually make salary wise as a president what do they make 400, 400,000 a year right the governor makes uh 200 something makes 200 right which is a very not an easy job not either one of them right so how come there's so many people that work with an LADWP that are exceeding those salaries right a lot of it's overtime pay sure but i mean like come on that's that's a lot of pay for people that are supposed to be public officials where 250 million is going back into the city coffers If LEDWP really wants to truly be a public service, then why is it pulling in so much extra money? Where is that money going? How is there a 10% tax on your electricity? Like if Mayor Bass wanted to really help people right now, getting rid of that 10% tax on the power would be a great first start. Right? That would be a good first start. If these are people that are going to be claimed to be public officials, they need to make salaries that reflect them being in service of the public. Right? If you're going to work as a private utility and you're going to play that game, by all means, whatever you make is totally up to, is a completely different conversation. But that's where like the city utilities, where people in the San Fernando Valley are getting squeezed because of this, this new heat wave that's happening. That's a whole new set of questions as to why they're making those types of salaries that deserve scrutiny. Now, Micah, do you look at LADWP like a city? Like, do you look at them as a public entity to you? Yeah, I look at them as a public entity. So in a sense, you look at them as people serving the public and you expect them to kind of do a level of sacrifice for public service. Is that how you're looking at them? I guess to an extent. But, you know, like Johnny says, I mean, I think there is like a fine line at some point when you look at how much they're making versus like, I don't know, the the average income of somebody in Los Angeles. It does seem a little a little off. As far as you know what they're making versus just like the average person. And Johnny in terms of when you go out there to put up solar, how do you work with LADWP versus other? Well I need to get you need to give LEDWP some credit in this one area. On the solar front they have been a lot better than the investor-owned utilities. And this is why. They have a 100% green target that they're after, that they're trying to accomplish. Meaning that right now, if you got solar for your home, and again, this is a narrow person, right? This is probably one out of three people in L.A. that can do this, right? Because you have to own your house, roof has to be in good condition, you also can't be behind on your LEDWP bill, right? You actually have to be up to speed on it. And we can install solar at no cost to you, and the utility will buy back your power at a one-for-one kilowatt rate. Which is awesome. So LEDWP is basically making the case that, hey, we want you using less electricity, which they do with their tier structure and they do with their solar policy. Their solar policy right now is very, very consumer friendly. So they'll buy back all your extra power. So during the day... And do you contract with them? Do they do a long-term? Is that a long-term thing? Yeah, they have a long-term thing. They don't have any... They haven't put any sites out there that they're going to get rid of that net metering policy. But that's to their credit on that front, right? They've been very friendly on allowing consumers to go to solar. But again, you have to own your house. You have to have an up-to-date utility bill. Your roof has to be in good shape. That is a narrow number of my customers. I have a lot of customers who roof is beat up, they're living on a fixed income, they're behind with LEDWP, and they're stuck with this problem until they can solve those issues, which is why really what my solution is and what Micah's solution is, are there two different solutions to the same problem? But LADWP has been friendly on that regard. Now, where they haven't been friendly is their price per kilowatt has gotten out of control. It's gotten out of control. There needs to be some understanding here. But it's less than the investor-owned utility companies. That's what they told us. Yeah, right. It's less than the investor-owned utilities, but it's still two and a half times, almost three times the national average, right? So we're basically comparing it to the worst of the worst, which San Diego Gas and Electric is insanely expensive. It's one of the most expensive in the country. I mean, they are more expensive than LADWP, that's true. But the difference is that San Diego, too, also is a little bit more of a mild climate, right? You have a lot of people there, they're using less electricity, which is also to Micah's point, too. What about all the people that live in LADWP near the coast? Right. Those people aren't paying nearly as much in their electricity because they're near the coast. But what about all the vast majority of the working class people that live, you know, away from the coast or they're in the valley area? There's a lot of people there that are making, you know, average money or, you know, slightly above average. Just depends. Some of them not making very much that are getting killed by this heat wave right now. And they're the ones subsidizing most of the electricity costs for people that live near the coast. The people that live near the coast, their bills aren't very big, right? But the people living further away, they're getting hit with it. And that's where a lot of the majority of the revenue for LADWP is coming from right now. It's coming from those hotter regions. Do you think they should make exception for... People that are living in these areas where they know the demand. Because this year they told us that last year they had five days that were extremely hot, but this year it was 15 days. I do think that, I don't know if I'd necessarily say an exception, but I think there needs to be a real, you know, they need to look a lot more closely at the rate system for people that live in those warm areas. Yesterday when I was at the board meeting, the president... He said that my bill of $3,322 represents less than 2% of LADWP customers. He said that the average LADWP customer pays approximately $250 per billing cycle. But I think that's kind of a little unfair to say because... When you compare my bill to somebody that lives in Santa Monica adjacent who has a 600 square foot studio apartment and doesn't even use AC, yeah, it's going to be way different. But I would just challenge him to look at my bill versus people that live in the same zip code as me or live in the San Fernando Valley. And I would go ahead and be willing to guess that it was very comparable to people that are running their AC all day because it's so hot outside. Maybe my sample size is very different, but it is incredibly rare for me to run into a home where their billing cycle is $200 every month. I've been seeing way more, $1,500, $3,000. What you said earlier, I have two homes right now that I'm looking at both over $5,000. So I don't know what he's necessarily saying there, but from my sample sizes, what I've seen, that hasn't been the They might be looking at a lot of the rentals, small house apartments, and they're counting them each individually. Did he really say less than 2%? He said my bill represents less than 2% of L.A. But I think he's doing gymnastics there with the math a little bit. Yeah, my sample size would say something very different. I would say you're very common, actually. And the comments on all my videos say a lot different as well. People are posting pictures of their bills in the thousands. And there was... There were some people yesterday that spoke at the board meeting that, you know, live in apartments or they're veterans and their bills went up. A woman said that her bill was normally $150 and now it's almost $1,000 and they're on fixed incomes or they don't work or they have disabilities and it's just, it's unfair to those people. In this process, did you reach out to LADWP And what was the responses from them? So I, I did not reach out to LADWP. Um, I've reached out to them in the past and it's very difficult to get ahold of somebody. And also when you do get ahold of somebody, you don't really get an explanation other than like, that's what you owe, like essentially deal with it. And I think that's one of the most frustrating things about LEDWP is it just seems there's like a lack of transparency. When you look at page three of the bill and you look at the definitions, there's all these acronyms that come into play when they calculate your energy and you don't really know what they mean. They're not itemized on your actual bill. And I think that plays into why people are so frustrated. LADWP actually did reach out to me. They called me after I posted the video and it kind of seemed like their damage control customer care department was trying to, you know, put out the fire. Essentially what they offered me was to send somebody to my house to do a home energy assessment. I replied to them. I sent them an email essentially just saying, Asking them if that's going to be something that they're going to offer to all their LADWP customers or at least all the 25,000 people in Los Angeles that signed the petition and they never responded to me. Johnny, you mentioned that the rates in California are two and a half times the national average. Part of it is the fires, right? the utility companies are paying for the fires. We're hearing 15 to 20% of the rate. It goes to fire-related issues, the wildfires we have. What about the LADWP? Do you know if they're on the hook on this? I mean, I'm not sure if they've even started any of the wildfires. Edison started the one in Altadena, right? And there's billboards all around that area saying, like, did Edison burn down your house? You may be entitled, right? So there's law firms going after them. But as far as fire mitigation goes, they may be able to make some charges happen there. So whenever you have above-the-ground utility lines that are running through, like, tree lines, for example, They have to trim all those tree lines back to make sure that if the power line becomes stressed, it doesn't pop and basically start a fire, right? And that's where one of the challenges comes in with really hot summer months and this is why the utilities will make the case that like hey we're going to charge you more for using power during these hot months because you stress our power lines out, right? That requires wildfire mitigation. Sometimes it also means burying power lines and it's another great way to help mitigate against a wildfire is to bury the power line versus leaving it exposed running through tree lines for example. So they can always make that case as to why they're going to be raising their their rates would be to reduce the likelihood of wildfires. Whether or not LEDWP themselves have started them, I'm not sure. They've had some big floods recently, but that's a little different. I don't know if you saw what happened. Yeah. The big floods that went through like the Hollywood area. But I haven't seen them run into that. And I'm not even sure if LADWP is liable for wildfires the same way an investor-owned utility is. Because, again, they're positioning themselves as basically a government entity. Right. And typically they probably buy the transmission from others, right? They do. Yeah. Because the grid doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? LADWP relies on investor-owned utilities, their lines as well, to get power through transformers to the end destination. So LADWP doesn't sit in a vacuum. It's inextricably tied to all the other surrounding utilities. And that's kind of how utilities work in general. They all rely on each other's networks to relay electricity over long distances. I think another thing that... One thing that plays into this is just my limited research about LA100, which is a green energy initiative that was implemented by the city of Los Angeles to essentially bring more green energy to LA. And I believe the original deadline was 2045, but a few years ago I believe they bumped up the deadline to 2035. And some experts I've read online say that's expected to cost ratepayers an extra $80 to $100 billion. So, yeah, I'm all for green energy and clean water. But at the same time, when, you know, you've got people paying massive amounts for electricity bill, you know, at what cost, you know, does that come? Is it essentially going to bankrupt people that live in L.A. as a result of that? Now you're in solar business, what are the numbers look like? Green versus non-green? Right. So there's a big difference between self-made power and power that you're relying on to be contracted by a public utility or a private utility even, whatever that utility might be. Whenever you have to ship power to its end destination, it gets more expensive. So for example, LEDWP, their power profile is 15% of it comes from solar, 14% wind, nuclear is in in Palo Verde at 15%. Geothermal is nine, natural gas is 30 percent, okay? So when I make electricity with a solar farm, for example, which is where this can be expensive, to Micah's point, if we're making power from a solar farm that's hundreds of miles away from the city that's producing or using that power, it's going to be more expensive. Which is usually in Kern County or different areas. Right, it's going to be more expensive because making a kilowatt of natural gas versus a kilowatt of solar energy is a little bit cheaper to make it with the natural gas. Where solar beats that out is when solar gets made on rooftops or on public parking garages where you'll see them on parking garages or you'll see them a lot of the school districts you'll see in the middle of the city where you don't have to spend a lot of money to ship. Or in the case of a homeowner that buys their power from their roof, like when I do solar for a house, I'm cutting their bill down by almost 50%. There's no arguing it, right? I mean, it is a fact that I can pay to put panels up on a roof that we own and maintain the same way LEDWP owns and maintains their power lines. And if their roof is in good condition, if their electric box is in good condition, and they own the house, and LEDWP's bill is paid, in that situation, I can cut someone's electric bill down by half. Right, if the situation is their roof is beat up and I have to sell that power from a power... In a sense, that solar power in that case justifies financially because you don't have to do the transmission. Right, and where LEDWP wins is the customer is financing that piece of infrastructure, right? So when LADWP needs to put up new power lines, how do they charge for that? They raise everyone's rates, right? That's how they do it. Or if they have to bury power lines, they have to raise everyone's rates. If they put up a solar farm, That's outside the city. How do they pay for that? They raise everyone's rates. That's where it can be $80 to $100 billion more expensive. But when somebody says, hey, I'm going to buy power from power lines up on my roof, that's the consumer taking on that cost. And they're bringing more power to the grid, which is what LEDWP and all these utilities are going to argue is why the power is so expensive. They're going to say, we don't have enough power supply. All of our power supply is miles and miles away from here. That's why we'll charge more during demand hours, which is what you've seen. If you're not on the tier usage, what do you want? Time of use. Right? Where they charge you more between 4 and 9 p.m. for using power. And what's their justification? Well. Everyone's getting home from work. The demand is really high. Our supply is limited. We're going to charge you more or in your tier case, what they're going to argue your tier rate for your reason why your tier bill is so expensive is because you're raising demand when the supply is limited. So whenever we add solar and individual rooftop solar cases, we're adding to the supply. Which is helps reduces the overall cost for everybody. But when you are relying on the utility to hit those green energy targets, and they're building their own solar farms super far away, it's not going to make it any less expensive for anyone. It's going to be more expensive for sure. So what are you better off doing as a utility? Building a natural gas plant or a solar farm? What's going to be less expensive on the consumer? The natural gas plant, right? But in our case with what we're doing, we're doing private rooftop solar where our consumers have control over those pricing. But if you're living in an apartment complex, you are renting your home, your roof isn't in perfect shape, you're behind on your LADWP bill, well, you're getting in trouble now. You're in a bad place. So in a sense, if they want to do the green movement, they can actually have more solars on the rooftops. That's what they should look at for apartment buildings, and they should generate the power right there. It would be great, yeah. If they were doing it for apartment buildings, like we're a part of those charges, we're like, hey, we're putting it on an apartment building, or there's a parking lot in a school district that there's no shading or no coverage, let's put the panels there and give it to the neighborhood right nearby. In those cases, they should be lowering the cost. But when you're doing it through solar farms or wind farms that are all hundreds of miles away, you're not helping the cost of power at all. You're making it more expensive on consumers. And that's the key difference. Power farms or individual nearby power plants that are in the areas they're being used. That's what it comes down to. So one of the things that we probably need in California is to look at the rates and what goes into the rates and how can we bring everybody's rates lower. And also from LADWP, we need them to give you guys more transparency. Hopefully you get the results you guys want and you come and share it with us in the near future. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Micah and Johnny, for coming on. Thank you. Thank you, Micah, for all you're doing, man. Yeah. Amazing. We also reached out to LADWP to get their comments on higher rates this year. Here's what they told us. LADWP bills cover two months at a time, and some customers are now receiving bills that include charges from August and September, typically among the highest-used months of the year. While LADWP rates remained competitive and lower than those of many major utilities, Los Angeles experienced its hottest summer on record, which led to increased electricity demand for many households and businesses. Of the 1.7 million combined utility and city services bills sent in August and September, over 60% were under $500. Increases customers are seeing are not just tied to LADWP rates. They instead reflect a combination of higher summer electricity use, LADWP rate components, and significant increases in separately established city waste and refuse charges. This year, the city experienced 15 heat advisory days. compared to five in 2025, and median residential electricity usage was up roughly 20% from last year. LADWP has not identified any systematic billing or meter problems related to recent customer concerns. Tell us what you think about the electricity bills in California. Tell us what your bills look like and have they gone up significantly in the last few years. Make sure to email us at siamak at CaliforniaInsider.com or comment. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Khurrami. This is California Insider. We'll see you next time.