[HN Gopher] Electricity Prices by Country
___________________________________________________________________
Electricity Prices by Country
Author : highfrequency
Score : 152 points
Date : 2023-04-08 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.electricrate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.electricrate.com)
| KomoD wrote:
| This is for Datacenters?
|
| > data-center/electricity-prices-by-country/
| fulafel wrote:
| The section of the web site is just called that.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| My electricity is rather cheap here in the US(Dallas). It's
| averages around 7-8 cents a KwH. The problem I face is delivery
| and b.s surcharges. It can easily double my rate to around 15-16
| cents a KwH.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Isn't that the case everywhere (in the USA)? Wholesale
| electricity is cheap, but you've gotta pay to have it
| delivered. If you're a big enough customer (like a data
| center), you can pay near wholesale rate by building your own
| infrastructure to a large substation, but then you're paying to
| maintain that infrastructure.
| simfree wrote:
| Some areas like Kelso and Longview, WA have 4 cent per kWh
| delivered rates, but your paying a meter base charge of tens
| of dollars a month, which makes low usage households pay more
| to remain grid connected.
|
| The marginal cost of generating electricity is different than
| the fixed price of maintaining the local grid infrastructure
| serving your home
| lh7777 wrote:
| I'm in WA, and my rate per kWh isn't quite that low, but
| the fixed "customer charge" is high enough that it ends up
| being about half of my total bill on average. I get that
| the utility needs income to maintain the infrastructure,
| which is particularly expensive per customer in rural
| areas.
|
| What I don't like about this setup is that there's little
| incentive to conserve energy, invest in solar, etc. On the
| plus side, whenever I get an electric car, my "gas" will be
| practically free.
| arbuge wrote:
| I would hope the total figure is in fact what the article is
| comparing, not a subset of it.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| France seems to be in a sweet spot: low electricity price and low
| CO2 emissions, thanks to nuclear power?
| karussell wrote:
| Sweet spot of a mess I guess: half of the 56 nuclear plants
| were offline (and some still are) due to maintenance or too
| warm cooling water in Summer.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-redu...
| bboygravity wrote:
| Forgot to do maintenance in France so now all nuclear is bad?
| Kuinox wrote:
| Pushed back due to covid.
| gtirloni wrote:
| So even with half of the 56 nuclear plants offline, they're
| still ahead. Impressive.
| not_the_fda wrote:
| Yes, France gets 70% of its electricity form nuclear power.
| pyrale wrote:
| Thanks to that indeed, but the future doesn't look great, as
| little has been done in the last 20 years. So France will have
| to do a lot in the next decade, and that may change our prices.
| eloff wrote:
| There's a important lesson about using nuclear power as an
| energy source in there. Contrast that with Germany which is
| shuttering their nuclear power plants in favor of renewables.
| uecker wrote:
| See my comment to parent. There is an important lesson about
| not being misled by looking at the wrong data.
| pydry wrote:
| There is no such lesson. EDF is going bankrupt, France is
| spending billions trying to replace reactors aging out and
| about 20% or so of the ~70 billion decommissioning costs are
| funded.
|
| The important lesson here should be that retail prices !=
| prices.
| eloff wrote:
| I stand corrected!
| uecker wrote:
| Household prices are meaningless in this context, because they
| are artificially kept low in France and sometimes are affected
| by taxes and fees elsewhere.
|
| Here are spot marked prices:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/france/electricity-price
| https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/electricity-price
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting. In many states in the US, cost per Kw/H is lower
| for businesses, even very small ones, than for residences.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Kw/H -> kWh
|
| It really is quite impressive to write a 3-letter unit with
| 4 errors.
| [deleted]
| mpsprd wrote:
| I'm incredibly lucky to live in Quebec, Canada: 100% green hydro
| power at low rates. Tarif D has the first 40kwh at 6.509 Canadian
| cent/kWh, then 10.041 [0]
|
| It's also state owned.
|
| From what I've seen it's the best combo of green and pricing in
| the world.
|
| 0: https://www.hydroquebec.com/residential/customer-
| space/rates...
| panarky wrote:
| Same in Seattle.
|
| 100% hydro.
|
| Zero emissions.
|
| 0.11 USD per kWh.
|
| Owned and operated by the City of Seattle, not a profit-making
| corporation.
| fulafel wrote:
| Are these end user consumer prices including taxes and
| transmission?
| toyg wrote:
| Seem to be for businesses. Definitely doesn't tally with
| average consumer prices i recently observed in UK (higher than
| what I see here) and Italy (much lower).
| hgsgm wrote:
| This ripped off from
| https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
| wslh wrote:
| They forgot to mention Argentina, also subsidized electricity for
| the rich and the poor.
|
| BTW, now one of the best locations for remote workers
| (economically and living standard). In some lists Buenos Aires is
| first [1].
|
| [1] https://nomadlist.com/
| marcodiego wrote:
| Prices of anything "by country" should be normalized by local
| average income. Ideally, for a fairer comparison, a good metric
| is "how many hours of work of a median citizen for each unity" of
| such a good.
|
| EDIT: article does something similar to that:
| https://www.electricrate.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/coun...
| bagels wrote:
| That speaks to affordability, but not to why some countries
| just don't seem to be able to do it effectively, costing an
| order of magnitude more in some countries than others.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBF price doesn't work well as a proxy for actual cost or
| efficiency either.
|
| Many countries have price caps set by the government,
| subsidies to keep electricity affordable, or weirder/more
| complicated schemes to finance energy production.
| [deleted]
| cjensen wrote:
| $0.14/kWh in the US? My goodness. It's double that in the Bay
| Area. There's a reason I invested in solar for my home.
|
| Also the map of low-carbon countries looks a lot like a map of
| where it rains a lot.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Yeah that makes me question the data gathering methodology. The
| raw electricity cost in the Bay Area is about $0.14/kwh but the
| delivery cost is nearly 1.5x that so you're actually paying
| something closer to $0.39/kwh
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| $0.05 to $0.10 per kWh in many parts of OR/WA.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I pay .08 for first part and then .11 thereafter in seattle
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| > Other fossil fuels are coal, petroleum, natural gas, propane,
| and uranium.
|
| Uranium?
| praxulus wrote:
| I guess you could call Uranium nuclei star fossils?
| thriftwy wrote:
| There are theories that at least some oil is abiogenic, which
| would make oil the same kind of fossil as uranium is.
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| This is overly simplified. A few aspects come to mind that have
| huge effects, in orders of magnitude:
|
| * Price differences during day/week/seasons. Cold day?
| Electricity can be 2-3x higher than the day before. Lots of
| sun/wind? Price plummets. ...
|
| * Price differences in regions. Norway, Sweden, Germany, those
| alone have huge differences in electricity prices depending on
| where you live.
|
| * Pricing relative to economic output, i.e. GDP. Or household
| income.
|
| There are surely more. This really strikes me as a propaganda
| page as the data is too oversimplified to be usefulfor real
| discussions, but enough to point to it to further an agenda.
| ("See, we shouldn't have turned off those nuclear plants, see how
| expensive electricityhas become!")
| j0ba wrote:
| Maybe it strikes you as propaganda because you disagree with
| what it seems to indicate?
|
| Why would it matter if people in Berlin pay more than people in
| Munich, or vice versa? Energy policies are generally national,
| so national data is the correct level of granularity.
|
| Most of your criticisms seem to stem from a lack of
| understanding as to what the word "average" means.
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| It sells values as averages that definitely are not.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes, but these are averages so it shouldn't matter. Assuming
| this is total spent in all households over a year, divided by
| population, it accounts for all fluctuations in time and
| region. And at the end of the day, all that really matters is
| what you paid over the year.
|
| And they already have a chart that adjusts for average wages as
| well.
|
| So nothing whatsoever here strikes me as misleading or
| propaganda. Averages are a totally legitimate comparison tool
| between countries.
|
| I'm actually curious just what you imagine this could even be
| "propaganda" _for_. Because it seems like just an incredibly
| fact-based neutral overview to me. I don 't see any agenda at
| all, unless there's a sentence or paragraph I missed?
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| > Yes, but these are averages so it shouldn't matter.
| Assuming this is total spent in all households over a year,
| divided by population, it accounts for all fluctuations in
| time and region
|
| Except that that's definitely not what's shown here.
|
| > I'm actually curious just what you imagine this could even
| be "propaganda" for
|
| I did end the post with just that.
| secretsatan wrote:
| They do have a graph of proportion of income spent on
| electricity. I see Switzerland is near the top, but as you
| mention, there is quite a lot of variation by kanton here. Oth,
| one of the first i noticed moving here was how much cheaper
| electricity was compared to the uk
| jandrese wrote:
| It's true is pretty much every large country that the rates
| will vary by region. The rates vary by geography and since
| long distance transmission lines are expensive and limited in
| capacity the prices will always be somewhat local. If you
| live in an area with lots of water flowing down mountains or
| shallow magma you probably have cheap power. If you live on
| an island your power is probably from natural gas or even
| diesel shipped in from overseas and costs a relative fortune.
| secretsatan wrote:
| As an aside, not sure of the exact year, sometime around the
| 2000s, uk made it possible to buy your electricity from any
| provider in the uk, despite living in cambridge, i chose
| swalec(wales), and they didn't bill me for 2 years and then i
| changed address, in that case, uk was ridiculously cheap
| tfourb wrote:
| If you are asking yourself why prices in Germany are so high:
| It's mostly the price surge of natural gas after Russia cut off
| deliveries in retaliation to sanctions in the wake of the war
| against Ukraine.
|
| About 50% of the price per kw/h in Germany is set by an auction
| system. Electricity providers are bidding at any given point in
| time to provide energy for the grid. The lowest price per kw/h
| wins. BUT: because no one provider can satisfy the demand on
| their own, all bids that are necessary to satisfy the demand are
| considered and the final price is set by the most expensive bid
| within that range. So even if a wind turbine can provide energy
| at 9 cents per kw/h, if current demand requires electricity from
| a natural gas plant at 20 cents per kw/h, all providers within
| the bracket will get those 20 cents per kw/h from the consumer.
|
| Natural gas has become quite expensive for the past year in
| Germany and for various reasons, natural gas plants are often the
| marginal providers in the German network.
|
| The other half of the final price is split about 50/50 between
| the owners of the network and taxes.
| xienze wrote:
| Germany wasn't exactly known for having reasonably priced
| electricity before Ukraine though.
| voisin wrote:
| > all bids that are necessary to satisfy the demand are
| considered and the final price is set by the most expensive bid
| within that range
|
| What's the logic here? Why not just accept bids in order of
| ascending price until demand is met?
| pyrale wrote:
| Because then, providers would try to guess the highest bid
| and bid $1 lower. As every bidder would miss once in a while,
| that loss would be factored in prices, and raise prices
| overall.
|
| This bidding system ensures that everyone can publish their
| lowest bid with no fear of losing out, and by doing so, it
| maximizes publicly available data so regulators and TSOs have
| a good idea of what is actually available and which
| investments are necessary.
| [deleted]
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Because then everyone with cheap production starts bluffing
| and bidding 19.99 cents and the end result is the same price
| but now the market is deceptive and unstable.
| wcoenen wrote:
| I don't know the answer, but this is known as a "uniform-
| price auction", as opposed to "pay-as-bid auction". There is
| a lot of literature on the subject. For electricity markets,
| things are complicated by the finite capacity of transmission
| links and lack of storage.
| lunatuna wrote:
| I would add that part of the difference is service level
| between the US and Germany. In Germany the outages are far less
| frequent and for a lot less time.
| mpreda wrote:
| To think there were nuclear reactors already built and running
| perfectly fine in Germany. That were closed down presumably for
| ecological reasons. Burning coal and natural gas instead.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Not just any coal, but lignite, the nastiest, dirtiest kind
| of coal. Definitely greener than nuclear. /s
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| Also the only fossil fuel Germany has in abundance in its
| own territory.
| this_user wrote:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/E
| n...
| jenadine wrote:
| Imagine if they had been growing the nuclear instead of
| reducing it, it would have allowed to almost get rid of
| lignite and coal. Instead it is still a portion. (And
| solar and wind being intermittent you can't just have
| that)
| skrause wrote:
| And yet Germany has fewer CO2 emissions per kWh of
| electricity produced than the USA.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Yeah but you're breathing coal dust
| pydry wrote:
| They werent that many to begin with they growing increasingly
| expensive to run, were coming to the end of their lifespan
| and Fukushima was a risk that was hard to ignore.
|
| It's interesting how Poland's electricity mix has been 80%
| coal for decades and this passes without comment, but what
| really enrages some people is a few nuclear power plants in
| Germany being mostly swapped out with solar and wind energy.
|
| Doesnt seem like environmentalism is really the core issue
| driving this.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Poland's coal use is also a huge problem. However, they
| don't receive as much comment because Germany is richer, so
| more able to afford cleaner energy sources, and Poland
| wasn't ignorant and short-sighted about using Russian
| natural gas.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Poland is actually going to build nuclear power plants
| soon.
|
| In ten years, Poland's electricity mix will be much
| cleaner than Germany's.
| robocat wrote:
| EXPORTS In 2021, Poland exported $926M in
| Electricity. The main destination of Electricity exports
| from Poland are: Lithuania ($430M), Slovakia ($388M),
| Czechia ($56.5M), Germany ($28.8M), and Sweden ($23M).
| IMPORTS In 2021, Poland imported $1.45B in
| Electricity. Poland imports Electricity primarily from:
| Germany ($911M), Sweden ($299M), Lithuania ($131M),
| Ukraine ($63.4M), and Czechia ($43.5M).
| cbmuser wrote:
| > They werent that many to begin with they growing
| increasingly expensive to run, were coming to the end of
| their lifespan and Fukushima was a risk that was hard to
| ignore.
|
| That's simply untrue. Nuclear reactors are permanently
| maintained and improved, especially in Germany because of
| SS19a Atomgesetz.
|
| Nuclear power plants can run 60 years and longer. The
| nuclear reactor in Beznau went first online 1969 and it's
| still operational. The reactors Germany is shutting down
| now went online in 1988 and 1989.
|
| See also: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-
| lifespan-nuclear-re...
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's mostly the price surge of natural gas after Russia cut
| off deliveries
|
| I already paid twice as much per kwh as my friends who stayed
| in France, that was the case since 2017
|
| Since the Russian gas episode I pay 3-4x more
| thallium205 wrote:
| [flagged]
| tfourb wrote:
| Even if you are a connoisseur of conspiracy theories, this
| comment is bullshit. The pipelines in question actually did
| not carry any natural gas at the time of the explosion. Both
| pipelines of Nord Stream 1 were destroyed but deliveries by
| Russia had been stopped well before that in retaliation to
| German/EU sanctions. One of the two pipelines of Nord Stream
| 2 was destroyed, but that project was never activated, due to
| a decision by Germany's government to cancel certification
| after Russia's attack on Ukraine.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > conspiracy theories
|
| What? The pipeline didn't blow up by itself, so some party
| had to conspire to blow it up.
| tfourb wrote:
| There is currently no evidence whatsoever that the US was
| involved in the attack on the pipeline in any way. To the
| best of my knowledge, the current best lead is a group of
| allegedly Ukrainian nationals who hired a private boat
| and were in the area where the explosions happened during
| the time in question. Ukraine is denying any involvement
| (of course) and the people in question have not been
| apprehended. The only reasoning that currently points to
| the US is that they would have the technical capabilities
| and a motive, but that applies to dozens of actors,
| including Russia.
| cbmuser wrote:
| No, the main reason is Germany shutting down nuclear power
| plants and replacing them with fossil fuels.
|
| I know that lots of people will argue that wind and solar will
| lower electricity prices, but since these don't provide
| reliable baseload, Germany needs to have lots of fossile power
| plants in standby.
|
| These doubled structures make the whole system inefficient and
| expensive.
| yladiz wrote:
| This isn't the reason prices are higher. Even if Germany was
| using nuclear for most electricity, there's a ton of gas
| being used in the industry and in homes (like for heating).
| Using non-nuclear power surely makes things a little more
| expensive, but it's definitely not the reason prices are
| higher than (supposedly) anywhere else in the world.
| tomp wrote:
| You describe the auction system as a bad thing.
|
| But actually it's a good thing.
|
| The providers who (through investment and/or technological
| superiority) are able to provide cheaper electricity, make more
| money.
|
| Capitalist progress engine at its finest!
| tfourb wrote:
| I don't think I provided any judgement whatsoever, I just
| described how it works and the effects it had in this
| specific situation. Both are correct as I described them, to
| the best of my knowledge.
|
| If you are interested in my opinion, I'm perfectly willing to
| accept that this kind of auction system works efficiently and
| effectively under normal circumstances. But in this specific
| scenario, it led to consumer prices rising by about 130% due
| to a sudden geopolitical shock. I personally find this less
| than ideal and I would have preferred a system that provides
| a bit more stability, because electricity is a fundamental
| need. Price jumps of this nature were unheard of in Germany,
| so no one was prepared for them, either.
| cbmuser wrote:
| The problem aren't the gas plants, the problem is the
| insufficient amount of cheap electricity on the market.
|
| Wind and PV heavily rely on backup power plants. So
| building a lot of wind and PV increases the reliance on gas
| plants instead of reducing it.
|
| Even the government's own energy agency "DENA" makes this
| claim.
|
| See: https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Dokumente/Pdf/9262_
| dena-L... (p. 28f).
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| It is a paradox. The more renewables you will build, the
| more dependent on fossil fuels you will become.
| tfourb wrote:
| Up to a point. Long term the idea is to get rid of fossil
| fuels entirely and there are good indications that this
| is achievable.
| tfourb wrote:
| The German government relied heavily on the theory that
| gas power plants could facilitate the turn to renewable
| energies. In and off itself this was not a bad idea. But
| combined with getting 50% of all natural gas imports from
| a single (hostile) country it was a terrible decision.
|
| Diversifying natural gas imports and having more long-
| term contracts with other producers would have been
| slightly more expensive before the Ukraine war, but it
| would have drastically reduced the price jumps
| thereafter.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Yes, it's not as if wind turbine energy would be sold at 9
| cents per kw/h if the system wasn't like this. The auction
| system makes it so that the best way to make money is to
| share information, which is a good thing.
| g42gregory wrote:
| Interesting site, with a great treasure trove of information. If
| you are looking for energy intensive activities, including
| manufacturing and data-centers, this looks like a great place to
| start.
|
| One thing stood out for me, for the top 2 economies in the world,
| US and China. The energy price for US businesses = 0.150 $/kWh.
| The energy price for Chinese businesses = 0.093 $/kWh. I was kind
| of expecting 20-30% discount on energy in China. Factually, it
| looks like a 30+% discount. This, together with regulatory and
| labor laws, will make it impossible for the US to compete in
| manufacturing, and possibly in long-term large-scale data-center
| sectors.
| dahwolf wrote:
| The article seems to claim a source of data, yet then goes on to
| publish conclusions wildly inconsistent with that source data.
|
| In the Netherlands we currently pay on average ~0.40EUR/kwH which
| is about $44. That should earn it a place at the top of countries
| paying the most. According to the article, it's not even in the
| top 20.
|
| And that's me low balling the 0.40EUR/kwH as for over a year now
| it has fluctuated between that and > 0.60EUR. And it's with
| energy taxes temporarily lowered, it would have been even higher
| otherwise.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Another complication with these numbers are the
| delivery/connection fees.
|
| In Toronto, my marginal rate is probably around US$0.08/kWh, but
| my usage in a double occupancy condo unit with the connection fee
| works out to US$0.22/kWh on average.
|
| One would hope that this just means I'm cross-subsidizing heavier
| users but in reality my metering provider is owned by a
| partnership in Bermuda. In reality, some ??? shareholders are
| raking it in on a poorly planned out government "green" project
| to meter small users.
| simfree wrote:
| Is that the base daily meter rate or monthly meter rate causing
| the extra $0.14/kwh cost? Sounds like your using very little
| power.
|
| Local grids are generally a fixed cost to maintain, if there
| was no base charge your neighbors would be subsidizing the
| maintenance of your connection to the grid. Separating fixed
| cost from marginal cost is the equitable solution in this case.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yes, CAD$17 for the 190kwh itself and CAD$39 in fixed
| charges.
|
| hot water is central and heat is effectively central, so low
| direct usage (so why meter) but not too far off the average
| for my building.
|
| There are about a hundred units each paying a separate fixed
| cost in one building. Anyone that thinks the cost/unit is the
| same to light up 100 detached homes is crazy. But that's how
| the government regulated the billing (guess what kind of
| housing the decision makers live in?), which is why the
| Bermudan partnership jumped in to collect the distribution
| fees instead of letting the local utility collect that easy
| money.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Toronto Hydro+ also has time-of-use rates:
|
| * https://www.torontohydro.com/for-home/rates
|
| + Mostly due to historical reason of early generator stations
| being hydro-electric (water falls), electricity is called
| "hydro" in many parts of Canada.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| But if you're submetered, the entire building has to
| collectively choose between time of day or tiered.
|
| For most condo/apartment dwellers, and often smaller
| homeowners, they'll pay less overall on tiered plans instead
| of time-of-day billing.
| discretion22 wrote:
| In Ontario the published rates also omit the 'delivery' fees
| and additional charges added on top (per kWh) which are
| unavoidable. The real rate actually paid is typically double
| the supposed rate.
|
| Factoring in the actual price people really pay, the rate is
| more like that of Barbados, Greece etc, right towards to most
| expensive end of the table.
|
| Despite the essentially unlimited hydro generation possible
| thanks to the Great Lakes running through Ontario, there has
| been a huge push towards shifting generation to wind and
| solar as part of 'carbon emission reductions'. Prices have
| increased rapidly as a result and the Provincial Government
| now has to subsidize everyone's electricity bill in order to
| try and keep electricity affordable - the subsidies are
| funded by borrowing so build up huge debt burdens with little
| planning on how those will ever be repaid.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ontario is mostly nuclear in installed capacity. "Hydro"
| has been a misnomer for a while.
|
| https://ieso.ca/
|
| While we are definitely overpaying for wind and solar
| capacity, there isn't enough of it to really justify the
| prices we pay (and arguably, solar performs best when
| demand is highest, so its cost-benefit isn't as bad as many
| believe)
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| In Alberta, I'm on a fixed-price contract for 8.69c/kWh. Add in
| the distribution, transmission, and local access fee charges
| and my all-in rate is actually 15.217c/kWh. But that's not all,
| there's also a 20.6c/day administrative charge.
|
| Of course, those are only the charges I've actually dug into.
| On top of this there is a "Transmission Charge Deferral Account
| True-Up Rider", "Transmission True-Up Rider", and "Balancing
| Pool Allocation Rider". Generally these changes are small
| enough that they're not worth the effort to dig into. There is
| also a $75/mo rebate applied to the bill, which is part of the
| government's affordability measures.
|
| Finally, on top of all of that, there is the 5% sales tax which
| is calculated on the total amount before that $75 rebate.
|
| I'm fortunate to be on a fixed-price contract. People who
| weren't had a portion of their power bill deferred and have to
| pay it back between April 2023 and December 2024. The catch is
| that current non-contract customers are stuck paying back their
| utility provider's deferral, which includes the deferral for
| customers who had charges deferred but since switched to a
| contract. This article[0] explains it better than I can.
|
| [0] https://globalnews.ca/news/9586632/alberta-regulated-rate-
| op...
| perardi wrote:
| One little thing that stuck out:
|
| _The USA leads the way in terms of household electric usage in
| the world - an average US household consumes approximately 975
| kilowatt-hours of electricity each month, three times more than
| for example the United Kingdom._
|
| Which got me wondering how _big_ US domiciles are versus those in
| the UK. Turns out: lot of big-ass houses here in the US.
|
| https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/
|
| 2164 sq. ft _vs._ 818 sq. ft
|
| Which sure would explain that difference.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Not only that, I used more heating in LA than in France (900m
| above sea level) because all the places I lived at had single
| pane windows that couldn't even physically close
| tzs wrote:
| I'd guess that a far bigger factor is that the US has a much
| higher percentage of houses the use electricity for room
| heating.
|
| I believe that it is similar for water heating.
|
| In the US there is also a high percentage of houses that use
| electricity for the stoves and oven and for clothes drying. A
| brief didn't turn up how much electricity is used for those
| things in the UK, but if it is like much of the rest of Europe
| I'd not be surprised if it is lower than in the US.
|
| In the US around 26% of houses use electricity as their only
| energy source, compared to around 9% for the UK.
| haupt wrote:
| >In the US around 26% of houses use electricity as their only
| energy source, compared to around 9% for the UK.
|
| Something that was interesting to me when I moved from
| California to central Oregon was that nearly everything was
| powered by electricity. I didn't even know anybody with a gas
| stove in Oregon.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know anyone in Portland metro without a gas line
| to their house. Furnaces, stoves, and water heaters until
| recently use gas.
|
| I am guessing central Oregon may have been too rural for it
| to make sense to install gas utilities everywhere?
| haupt wrote:
| Could be. We were also on the other side of an entire
| range of mountains so that may have also had something to
| do with it.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| Not to mention cooling. How many people in the UK even have
| air conditioning?
| secondcoming wrote:
| I've lived all over the UK, houses and apartments, and
| never had air-con.
|
| You might get a week or so during summer when it's quite
| hot but then a large fan is sufficient.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am curious about quintile statistics, or at least median.
| Domiciles are definitely bigger in the US, but I bet the mean
| average is dragged way up by the top 20% of houses.
|
| Air conditioning also uses the most electricity in a house, and
| the US has a lot more populated hot and humid regions than many
| European countries.
| foobazgt wrote:
| https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/how-
| big-i... claims the median in the US is 2014 sqft.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Nope, electric heating uses much more power than air
| conditioning.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I guess that is true, I just imagined so few domiciles
| actually use electric heating, or use electric heating in
| places that do not get really cold, that it is not a
| significant factor in national statistics of electricity
| usage.
|
| Seems like 40% of US households use electric heating
| though, which is way more than I expected.
|
| https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-
| questio...
|
| Edit: fixed link
| hgsgm wrote:
| Bad link. But I'd like to see it by state. In Florida
| electric heat may exist but never be used, while
| Massachusetts needs heat and uses oil or gas.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sorry, fixed
|
| https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-
| questio...
| hattmall wrote:
| Most of that is going to be heat pumps in moderate
| climates.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Hardly any airconditioned houses in the UK and heating is
| mostly by gas. I expect that accounts for quite a lot of it.
| csunbird wrote:
| I am using 1300 kWh per __year__ in Germany in my three room
| apartment, with an electric oven and cooker. That is a lot of
| electricity for a single home, even with electric heating.
| shric wrote:
| I went on vacation for two weeks last month and unplugged
| everything except the fridge and one HP Microserver N54L and
| the apartment averaged a little over 4 kWh per day (~120 per
| month, ~1440 per year)
|
| However, when we are not on vacation the average is around 10
| kWh per day.
|
| Edit: We don't use electricity for heating or cooling
| (Sydney, Australia) as it's included with the apartment at a
| flat rate of 10 AUD (6.61 USD) per month
| mydogmuppet wrote:
| Where oh where do these figures come from? UK. I pay toda,
| domestic tariff, USD 0.42 per pKWh. Plus 5% Vat. That ignores the
| Standing Charge of USD 0. 56 per day connection charges, plus Vat
| at 5%.
| jpollock wrote:
| Yeah, the table in the article doesn't match the dataset
| they're quoting from.
|
| The dataset they're supposedly using is:
|
| https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
|
| Which has UK: USD 0.413 for households, 0.338 for businesses.
|
| Neither of which have any relationship with 0.27.
| sintezcs wrote:
| It's 0.04-0.08$ per kWh in Russia
| dagurp wrote:
| Iceland can't be right. It should be about $0.06
| wand3r wrote:
| > Venezuela - $0.00?
|
| It doesn't really expand on this either. It only says they have
| tons of natural energy resources. So when they say 0, do they
| just mean average people just dont have to pay?
| gtirloni wrote:
| There are many sources online saying it's not $0.00 so I don't
| know where that number comes from.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Percentage of a daily wage? What is the basis for these numbers?
| I am in an extraordinarily cheap part of North America in terms
| of electricity, but I can say that my costs are well above the
| 1-2% of my daily wage. And that is only the costs I pay in my
| monthly bill. Lord knows how much electricity I also burn at work
| doing my job.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| Is the price in Germany so high because they made the somewhat
| rash decision to shut down their existing nuclear generation and
| move back to fossil fuels? Given their location in the world I'm
| guessing both solar and wind are marginal producers.
| luckylion wrote:
| Wind is strong in Northern Germany.
|
| It's mostly taxes and taxes being taxed additionally by other
| taxes, a good chunk of that was/is for transitioning to green
| energy and subsidizing home solar.
| tfourb wrote:
| The EEG (surcharge on the electricity bill to subsidize the
| installation of both commercial and private wind and solar
| generation) has been phased out as of 1. July 2022.
|
| According to [1], about 75% of the price per kw/h in Germany
| is shared between the producer of the electricity and the
| owner of the network. As the market for electricity is
| completely liberalized, those can be any of hundreds of
| companies.
|
| The rest, about 25% are various taxes and surcharges.
|
| While renewable energies are responsible for some of the
| above average electricity prices in Germany, the recent price
| surge is mostly due to the high price of natural gas. Germany
| electricity prices are fixed by a system of auctions, where
| the demand at any given point in time is fulfilled by the
| producers willing to charge the least amount of money, but
| the actual price is set by the most expensive bid that is
| still required to satisfy demand. Due to the peculiarities of
| the electricity markets, this often ends up being natural gas
| power stations and natural gas has become crazy expensive due
| to Russia cutting off exports to Germany.
|
| [1] https://strom-report.com/strompreise/strompreis-
| zusammensetz...
| uecker wrote:
| Wind and solar are far from marginal: 50% renewables in 2022:
| https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l...
|
| Prices are also _lower_ than in France, but not the residential
| prices which are affected by taxes and fees while capped in
| France.
| jandrese wrote:
| Maybe that was the wrong word. Wind and Solar would be more
| expensive per kWh due to the geography than in countries like
| Sudan.
| calaphos wrote:
| The 39ct/kWh are an artifact of the European gas crisis 2022,
| nowadays were closer to the still high 30ct/kWh as before. For
| a long time renewable energy was subsidized directly from
| (household) electricity prices. Same is true for grid
| investments, which are drastically rising, partly due to
| Windpower being produced in in the north and used in the south.
|
| IMHO part of the problem is definitely due to shutdown of
| nuclear, rapid expansion of renewables while keeping costly
| (due to EU CO2 emissions trade) coal plants going. Most other
| countries used renewables to replace coal plants while keeping
| existing nuclear around. Germany did the opposite.
|
| But the international comparison is not as simple as the power
| price, there's a lot of infrastructure that is subsidized by
| other taxes and not power price directly. Not that those are
| any lower in Germany.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| The actual data comes from here:
|
| https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
|
| It bundles distribution and electricity prices. In NZ the
| wholesale price is the same accross the country (marginal
| pricing), but different distribution companies charge different
| rates.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Weird that the source includes NZ but the article didn't.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Maps Without NZ is spreading.
| martinald wrote:
| Not accurate at all. UK consumers are paying approximately
| 34p/kWh - 43c/kWh. Nearly twice what it says here.
| KomoD wrote:
| Because these are not consumer prices, they're datacenter
| prices.
| martinald wrote:
| Business energy prices are even higher in the UK, because the
| government applies a price cap to retail prices but not
| commercial ones. Before some of the subsidies kicked in I
| heard of PS1/kWh being common for commercial renewals, often
| requiring 5 figure deposits for many industries as the
| suppliers were worried about businesses going under and not
| paying their bills.
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| Not accurate for Sweden either. Pricing in Stockholm region
| last weeks was 1/2 to 1/3 of what's in the list.
| pipo234 wrote:
| What good is $0/kWh in Sudan, Ethiopia, .. if most people don't
| have access?
| andsoitis wrote:
| The article _also_ goes into availability, showing the African
| content with poor coverage.
| themitigating wrote:
| It's not useful but this isn't article arguing about what
| countey has the "best" electricity. It's just data about prices
| ttoinou wrote:
| His remark is useful. If there is no electricity available,
| there is no price. You can also ban selling bread for above 1
| cent and mark on your country stat your bread is 1 cent.. But
| nobody has bread
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Norway (where I'm from) is somewhat complex, because the country
| is divided into five regions, and the northernmost regions have
| poor transfer capability to the southern regions.
|
| The southern regions, however, have quite good transfer capacity
| to export (to European countries), so those regions often have to
| compete with export prices.
|
| What this means, is that the prices can vary significantly
| withing Norway. While we up in northern Norway paid around
| $0.0005 / kWh last summer, my relatives south paid something like
| $0.3-$0.4 / kWh. It's been a pretty big deal for the past years.
|
| Our energy production is almost purely hydro, with wind and solar
| as very distant second and third source. All our LNG is more or
| less sold off to Europe.
| simfree wrote:
| Those hydroelectric dams need better grid infrastructure to
| enable easy export!
| sokoloff wrote:
| > we up in northern Norway paid around $0.0005 / kWh last
| summer
|
| Is that figure accurate? It's so crazy low that it would lead
| me to expect the area to be saturated with aluminum smelting
| and other high electric consuming operations.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Fun fact: We've had negative prices, a couple of times. In
| which case you actually get money for the electricity you
| use.
|
| But those are very rare moments, and only last a couple of
| hours her and there. Not unique to Norway, but basically what
| happens is that there's huge amounts of downpour, coupled
| with little demand / usage - typically something you see in
| periods where people are away, and if the weather conditions
| are there.
| yuuuuyu wrote:
| Transport issues extend to goods too.
| napoleongl wrote:
| Without having studied the Norwegian grid, the Swedish one
| that it is connected to also experience negative prices som
| nights when there's a lot of wind and we generate some 10 GW
| of wind power. Coupled with the nuclear plants in Sweden that
| still are online and we pretty much have an issue with too
| much being generated... Then again things freaked out in the
| opposite direction when two of the plants went a offline, the
| wind was basically zero and we had freezing temps all over
| the country.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Hydroelectric power is pretty stable as a baseline but can
| only scale so much. At some point higher-cost energy would
| have to come online to meet demand, at which point the
| savings would be gone.
| switch007 wrote:
| > $0.0005 / kWh
|
| A typo, surely?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| In July 2022, the average price I paid was 0.0192 NOK / kWh -
| so that's around $0.0018 / kWh. But that was the monthly
| average price, the daily minimum can be much lower.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| Now I know where to build my LLM focussed data-center
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