Between Placer County neighborhoods, residents see ‘night and day’ difference in power bills

For residents serviced by Pacific Gas and Electric, utility costs have gotten particularly pricey — so much so that some Placer County residents and prospectives recommend steering clear of the company.

A unique split exists between Roseville Electric Utilities, which services all of the city, and the area that surrounds Roseville, all covered by PG&E. Neighbors may end up with wildly different electric rates, sometimes unexpectedly.

Real estate agents advertise when a home is serviced by Roseville Electric, and some say they have had buyers who wanted specifically to look in areas with Roseville utilities only.

As PG&E rates go up and its “public safety power shut-offs” become a regular part of summer life in California, the conversation surrounding Roseville Electric vs. PG&E has grown noisier.

“I wouldn’t even consider moving into an area where electricity is provided by PG&E,” longtime Roseville resident Gary Meszaros said. “I just wouldn’t do it.”

PG&E said its average customer’s electric bill for July 2024 was $207, which is about 46% higher than the average Roseville Electric customers currently pay, at $142 a month. Roseville Electric’s rates will increase by 9%, to about $154, starting Jan. 1. With that increase, PG&E’s average electric bill for July would still be about 34% higher.

The difference is “night and day,” Meszaros said.

Despite the contrast between Roseville Electric and PG&E pricing, local real estate broker Johnny Jennings said that if people have not lived in both utility districts, they may not understand how wide the cost gap is, especially moving into the region from places like the Bay Area.

“It’s hard to identify and qualify the value to them if they haven’t experienced the difference,” Jennings said.

Prospective buyers also usually do not expect there to be different utility providers between Roseville and neighboring communities, Jennings said, and sometimes a house on the edge of Roseville requires clarification about which utility company it falls under.

Roseville Electric is specifically limited to the city of Roseville, leaving Rocklin, Lincoln, Granite Bay and Loomis as the Placer County cities and towns with PG&E.

How do Roseville Electric and PG&E compare?

Roseville boasts lower prices, which PG&E customers long for, but just how different are the pricing plans in the two service areas? Why is the cost difference so wide?

PG&E has many pricing options for customers and automatically put customers on its Time of Use Rate plan starting in 2020, which charges different prices per kWh depending on the season and time of day. Other options include tiered pricing and electric home or vehicle plans.

Roseville Electric, which is run by the city of Roseville, has a basic service charge of $30 per month, then other components that are priced per kWh customers use in their homes on two tiers.

Advocates with the Predictable Power Coalition argue that fixed cost models lower the kWh rate and provide a more stable price, and because they were approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees PG&E, in May of this year, the company will switch over to that model soon.

Other pricing differences between the providers can be attributed to the areas they service. Roseville is a more urban area than the wildland that PG&E covers, which has resulted in the latter being found liable for billions of dollars worth of destruction and filing bankruptcy in 2019 over wildfire claims.

Neighbors discuss cost divides

All of the different options and factors make it difficult to directly compare costs, but does not stop many users on Nextdoor and Reddit from trying.

Despite different pricing calculations and the many factors that affect costs — the size of the home, how many people live there, how often they run the air conditioning — it is a conversation with a lot of input.

“I was kind of lucky that I made the move to Roseville from a utilities perspective because we seem to enjoy pretty good rates,” Meszaros said.

Meszaros recalled “reading some of the Nextdoor posts about the PG&E pricing and crazy bills that are almost like a mortgage payment.”

Some Nextdoor posts on the topic have more than 100 comments.

Martha Gray-Heffner is a Roseville resident who replied to one of the many Nextdoor threads about PG&E prices. In an interview with The Sacramento Bee, she said she sees these posts often.

Gray-Heffner said she has seen many comments after neighbors move to Lincoln about their high bills, blindsided by the PG&E prices compared to what they were paying in Roseville.

“A lot of people are surprised,” Gray-Heffner said. “That’s just something that you need to research before you move into an area, is their utilities.”

After nine years in Roseville, Gray-Heffner is accustomed to electricity bills around $100. Her June through July bill was the highest it has ever been, at $120.41. She said it’s typically higher in the summer because she runs air conditioning and because Roseville recently increased its costs.

“That definitely factored in when we bought our house,” Gray-Heffner said.

Meszaros has lived in Roseville for three decades, and despite his affection for the city, he said he would have liked to move to Rocklin or Auburn at some point, if it wasn’t for their high cost of services.

“Knowing what I know now, I would never willingly buy a home in a PG&E serviced area,” one Reddit user advised another who was moving to the area and asked how prices compare.

Jennings said residents are more vocal about the issue during the summer.

“I mostly hear just people complain about it, after they’ve been there for a while and they’ve run the A/C,” Jennings said. “That’s when we refer them out to a solar broker.”

New homes are required to have solar installed, which helps lower electricity bills, and for others the lower bills in Roseville are not a determining factor but rather an unexpected benefit, Jennings said.

What makes Roseville Electric different?

Roseville is doing something right, customers say, and their price differences do not go unnoticed by neighboring cities.

Roseville Electric is a not-for-profit organization owned and operated by the city, under the supervision of the city council, and is able to charge what it costs to provide electric services without profiting, Roseville utilities spokesperson David Bradford wrote in an email.

On the other hand, PG&E is a privately owned company with shareholders.

“We know many of our customers are frustrated with higher costs of living, including energy bills,” Mike Gazda, a spokesperson for PG&E said in an email. “To address these growing concerns, we are committed to stabilizing customer bills. We are taking actions to limit average annual increases to no more than 3% through 2026, without sacrificing safety.”

Both Lincoln and Rocklin evaluated alternatives, including creating a joint utility district, to lower costs. Rocklin cited high costs and public safety power shut-offs conducted by PG&E, which they said threaten the “livelihood of residents and business owners.”

Public safety power shut-offs are an effort by PG&E to prevent sparking flames in extreme weather conditions, a response to PG&E equipment having been blamed for starting some of the state’s worst wildfires in recent years, including the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in California history.

Lincoln and Rocklin are part of a growing list of counties and cities who have tried or are trying to oust PG&E.

These include Yolo County — namely Davis, West Sacramento and Woodland — as well as San Francisco and the South San Joaquin Irrigation District.

Despite an awareness that residents are frustrated with PG&E prices, evaluations conducted in both Lincoln and Rocklin in 2020 concluded that costs of breaking away from PG&E and past failures of other organizations to do so, in part due to PG&E’s proclamation that the company is not for sale, made the cities’ best option to stay with their existing provider.

Instead, they recommended dialogue with PG&E to increase reliability and mitigate the impacts of outages. Doing nothing, Rocklin’s energy options report concluded, “is not a viable strategy for the future…PG&E’s current and past business and operational model for the provision of electric service is not meeting the needs of local communities and their residents.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2024 at 5:00 AM.