It’s strange that in 2025 we still don’t have even a minimal, per-capita baseline tier for electricity.
If a household uses less than the monthly per-capita average, why not cap that baseline at something like $10?
Yes — that gap would need to be subsidized, probably through taxes.
But that’s already how grid maintenance works: we socialize the fixed costs while pretending rates are purely volumetric.(and I might be overstating this slightly).
Right now we punish low-usage consumers and reward structural inefficiency.
A baseline tier would at least make the incentives coherent.
If a household uses less than the monthly per-capita average, why not cap that baseline at something like $10?
Yes — that gap would need to be subsidized, probably through taxes. But that’s already how grid maintenance works: we socialize the fixed costs while pretending rates are purely volumetric.(and I might be overstating this slightly).
Right now we punish low-usage consumers and reward structural inefficiency. A baseline tier would at least make the incentives coherent.