America doesn't have an energy plan. It has an exploitation plan.

Twenty thousand dollars in solar panels. After rebate. Still getting crushed on my electric bill. The batteries my utility would approve? Three to four times what global manufacturers sell the same units for.

So I started digging. A few months later I'd gone through rate structures, building codes, deregulation history, battery manufacturing, and the global movement to take utilities back from private companies. I have opinions now.

Here's what I found, organized by the threads I pulled on.

The bills

SDG&E charges over 40 cents per kWh. The national average is about 18 cents. Sacramento, which has a public utility, pays 16 to 17 cents. Same state. Same grid. Different ownership model.

Between 2020 and 2024, SDG&E's rates went from 28.9 cents to 47.6 cents per kWh. That's a 65% increase in four years. In 2023, the company posted $936 million in profit. Sempra, their parent company, cleared nearly $3 billion.

Meanwhile, over 361,000 SDG&E customers (26.7% of the customer base) were at least 30 days past due on their bills. More than $255 million in overdue balances. Record profits on one side, customers who can't pay on the other.

I wanted to understand how this happened.

Exploited: 1.4 million SDG&E ratepayers. By: Sempra shareholders.

How San Diego lost its power plants

In 1996, California passed AB 1890. It was a deregulation law. Utilities were forced to sell their power generation facilities to private, unregulated companies. SDG&E complied. They sold everything.

Then Enron happened. Summer of 2000, trading firms manipulated the new market. San Diego's rates tripled. The city that deregulated first got hit first.

SDG&E never got its generation back. Today they transmit and distribute electricity they buy on the open market. We pay for delivery of power through infrastructure we used to own, at prices set by markets we don't control, to a company that answers to shareholders.

I traced this pattern further back. Reagan. Thatcher. The "New Public Management" idea that government should run like a business. It sounds reasonable until you remember that governments and businesses have fundamentally different motives. When you privatize essential infrastructure, prices go up, accountability goes down, and the people who depend on the service get squeezed.

That's not theory. That's SDG&E's last five years of financial statements.

Exploited: California electricity customers. By: deregulation architects, energy traders, and the utilities that sold public infrastructure for private gain.

The battery problem

I wanted to install batteries. I found manufacturers (like Ruixu) making quality LFP units at a fraction of what a Tesla Powerwall costs. But I couldn't just plug them in.

California building codes require battery systems to be certified to UL 9540. The permitting process in San Diego involves the city, the fire department, the California Building Standards Commission, and SDG&E's own interconnection rules. I spent weeks researching who created these standards, who funded them, and who benefits.

I also looked into sharing a battery system with my neighbor. We share a wall. No HOA. Seemed straightforward. It isn't. California law makes it nearly impossible for two adjacent homeowners to share stored energy without becoming a regulated utility.

I explored whether I even need SDG&E's Permission to Operate before claiming the federal tax credit. The answer is murky. The IRS says "placed in service" but doesn't clearly define whether that means installed or utility-approved.

Every layer of complexity benefits the incumbents. And if the regulations don't stop you, the financing structure might.

Exploited: homeowners trying to store their own solar. By: a permitting system built around incumbent manufacturers and utility interconnection gatekeeping.

The financing trap

People compare solar financing to car loans. The analogy works, just not the way they think.

Most people overpay for financed cars too. We just normalized it. Now we're being asked to normalize the same markup structure for solar.

When you finance through an installer, they add 20 to 30% in dealer fees to the loan amount. That $30,000 system? The panels, inverter, racking, and labor probably cost $18,000 to $20,000. You're financing the salesman's commission on top of the actual hardware.

Then there's the sizing problem. Financed systems get designed around a monthly payment, not your actual usage. The sales pitch is "your payment is less than your current bill." Sounds great until you realize the system only offsets 60 to 70% of your consumption. So now you have a loan and a utility bill.

Here's where the car comparison actually falls apart. Your car payment doesn't change based on what Toyota decides to charge next quarter. Your utility bill absolutely changes when they restructure rates, adjust net metering, or add new fixed charges. That payback timeline the salesperson showed you on their iPad assumed today's rules last forever. They won't. (See: NEM 3.0.)

If you own your home and you're willing to do the homework, cash-purchased equipment comes in at a fraction of the financed price. No dealer fees. No interest. No lien. A system that pays for itself in 3 to 5 years instead of 8 to 12. The difference is you're not spending the first four years paying off someone else's margin.

Financing isn't the enemy. But pretending it doesn't carry all the same markup problems as auto lending is how people end up underwater on a roof.

Exploited: homeowners who trust the sales pitch. By: solar finance companies charging 20 to 30% dealer fees on hardware that costs half the loan amount.

The duck curve absurdity

In 2024, California curtailed 3.4 million megawatt-hours of solar and wind power. That's enough to run more than half a million homes for a year. The retail value exceeds $1 billion annually.

We threw it away. Or worse, we paid Arizona to take it.

Arizona's largest public utility made $69 million last year buying our surplus at rock bottom prices. They passed the savings to their ratepayers as bill credits. California ratepayers funded the solar farms. Arizona ratepayers got the discount.

The state's response to this abundance? Punish the people who created it. NEM 3.0 slashed rooftop solar compensation by 75%. Utilities push super off-peak rates during the exact hours panels produce the most. They blame solar owners for high electricity prices.

The numbers don't support that. Energy economist Dr. Richard McCann found rooftop solar actually saved all ratepayers $1.49 billion in 2024. The "cost shift" argument falls apart when someone bothers to check.

California doesn't have a solar problem. It has an imagination problem.

We have more midday power than we can use. That's not a liability. That's free energy looking for a job. Use it to manufacture the batteries and solar panels we're currently importing from China and Georgia. The policy tools already exist. Wholesale prices go negative during curtailment hours. No new legislation required. Just the willingness to treat surplus clean energy as an asset instead of a waste product.

Exploited: California ratepayers who funded the solar farms. By: utilities that waste the surplus, regulators who punish rooftop solar, and Arizona, which buys our clean energy at wholesale and credits their own customers.

People are fighting back

Globally, communities are taking privatized utilities back into public hands. It's called remunicipalization. Hamburg bought back its electricity grid. Paris remunicipalized its water system. Boulder, Colorado spent a decade fighting to create a municipal utility.

In San Diego, a group called Power San Diego is pushing for public ownership of the utility. They point to Sacramento's SMUD, which charges dramatically less for the same electricity. I got involved. I rebuilt their website and gave it to them. They're the ones doing the actual work.

I also researched SDG&E's relationship with labor unions. The utility appealed to unions to help defeat public power ballot measures. Then they laid off workers during record-profit years. That pattern repeats everywhere privatization takes hold. Promise partnership, extract value, discard the partners.

Exploited: union workers who backed the utility against public power. By: the same utility that laid them off during record-profit years.

Why this matters right now

AI and data center growth is projected to add 120 gigawatts of new electricity demand in the US. The infrastructure for that (substations, transmission lines, generation capacity) will be paid for primarily by residential ratepayers. Not by the tech companies driving the demand.

The 30% solar Investment Tax Credit ended that to the BBB and the main tool regular people have for energy independence disappears with it. We need to get creative and real with how we're all going to move forward.

The pattern stays consistent. Socialize the costs, privatize the profits, complicate the alternatives.

Exploited: residential ratepayers. By: tech companies whose data centers drive demand while the infrastructure costs land on household bills.

The thread through all of it

I didn't set out to become an energy policy person. I just wanted lower bills. But every question led to another question, and every answer pointed at the same underlying problem. Ownership.

Who owns the grid. Who owns the generation. Who controls the standards. Who sets the rates. Who profits.

If you're in San Diego paying 47 cents per kWh while your utility posts record profits, this stuff is worth understanding. Power San Diego is a good place to start.

More soon.