> I am curious how electricity is priced. Why are more and more utility providers charge based on ‘infrastructure cost’ or ‘fixed platform fee’ instead of usage fee?

This is also happening in Australia. I wonder if it is a similar story in the US, or not.

In Australia, rooftop solar and batteries have become so widespread, many properties have dramatically reduced their consumption of power from the grid. This poses a problem when electricity usage costs are used, not just to cover the power consumed, but also the grid infrastructure, much of which are fixed costs which are incurred irrespective of actual usage. In response, the regulator is looking at changing the billing structure to increase the fixed part of the bill which you pay irrespective of how much power you use.

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hparadiz 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yea it's the same thing in California and will likely be a growing problem.

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claw-el 3 days ago | parent [-]

What happens (in Australia and in California) if rooftop solar and battery technology really have a huge breakthrough and the capacity of the major power generators were never utilized in the lifetime of those generators? Do consumers just ‘bail out’ the power generation companies?

	▲	Paradigma11 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Those consumers still want to have power for the few weeks that solar and battery dont cut it, dont they?