In a similar situation, the City of Boulder Colorado just took over the facilities of Excel( which isn't )after the " smart meters " doubled and tripled some customer energy bills. Boulder now buys energy off the open market.
The bad news: TANSTAAFL! The rest of the ratepayers have had to pay for the $52Million failure of the " showcase " of a Smart City. that Excel ( which isn't ) bragged about. Maybe PG&e RATEPAYERS should be asking the same thing...
To REALLY save money, get rid of the " squiggly bulbs ". They were a scam. They DON'T last longer AND still consume 22 Watts of electricity. And still contain mercury, a known toxic metal you have to get rid of properly.
USE LED BULBS THAT REPLACE ALL YOUR REGULAR AND SPECIAL BULBS!
I have done so in my house; ALL the ceiling fans ( another way to save energy )have them in their light fixtures, outdoor floodlights have special LED bulbs and the shop lights T-40 bulbs can now be replaced.
The good news: your energy consumption drops from a 60 Watt incandescent bulb to a 7 watt LED bulb! That is a THREE TIMES SAVING from the dangerous squiggly bulb! The estimated life is 50,000 hours for LED bulbs. Yes, they may even outlast the people that put them in!
Where to get them? Bypass the middlemen and buy them from CHINA who produces them from our " obsolete " wafer fab equipment. No, it didn't get junked, China has a " Silicon Valley " of their own. The latest prices that include free shipping:
Web Link

All kinds of specialty LED replacement bulbs are listed. I have only had two "infant mortality " failures in over a hundred bulbs.

I agree that the CFL bulbs are garbage and LED is the way to go. If you like the warm, slightly yellow glow of incandescent bulbs, then get bulbs with a "color temperature" of 2700K which is a warm white. The higher the number, the more bluish the light. Technically, higher numbers result in a more true white, but you may find you actually prefer the slightly yellowish glow of 2700K which is what we are most accustomed to.
Not sure what LED bulbs have to do with price of natural gas, however. "Hike rates" [sic] suck.

Our heating costs are so high that no one in our condo complex uses their heat. Seriously. Right here in a Mountain View. One new resident was out of town most of the month, and he hated the house conservatively for less than two weeks, to the tune of a $400 bill.

So completely over the ripoff!!!

Heating is not included in my PG&E bill and I was gone several days, yet it still went up noticeably. Something is definitely fishy.

@punnisher:
If you wanted to make yourself understood, please try again. All I got is that you're really mad at someone.