Do wholesale prices directly translate to consumer prices?
Depends on your contract but a lot the time no. Interesting article:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Tex...
Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
21–30 of 347 posts
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#22I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
This is 90c/KWh. Arguably very expensive rate for electricity. Not sure if related to the Texas/ERCOT grid situation, as the DC tie-ins are not that substantial.
In California it’s about 30 to 40 cents kWh during normal times.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#23I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
At the start of the month it was around $30. It held there for a week and a half, and has escalated rapidly.
You can visualize at http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=22&...
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#24I track my electricity in Chicago pretty regularly and we’ve been seeing between 5x and 100x ‘normal’ pricing all week.
For scale, at this time of night I’d expect my power to be priced at ~ 0.8 c/Kwh. Right now we are sitting at 15 c/Kwh.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#25I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
This is a lot. $1000/MWh is $1/kWh. A kWh is leaving 10 old school incandescent lightbulbs on for an hour. Usually this costs a few cents.
I live in a state that doesn't exactly prioritize low consumer energy costs to put it mildly and my first thought was "$1/kwh is high but sounds reasonable if there's a massive supply restriction and demand spike at the same time". Goes to show you the power of anchoring.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#26it's bitcoin miners turning on server farms.
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#27I need more context. Is that a lot? Is that low? Is it a big change from before? In what direction?
The national US average is ~$104.50/MWh (1000 kWh = 1 MWh). So, it's about ~9 times more expensive right than than normal.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#28Excuse my ignorance, but am I, as a California residential user, going to pay these prices for the electricity I'm using in my home right now?
Should I shut everything down?
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#29Likely corresponds to the nationwide spike in natural gas prices. Even in California, natural gas prices are an order of magnitude higher than usual. Prices appear to have hit ~$90 per quadrillion BTU, versus a typical price of ~$2 per 10^15 BTU https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/CALR...
Michigan is about 3x for natural gas.
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/data-snapshot/daily-gpi/MCWM...
(I was curious and it provides a Midwest data point)
Re: Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
#30Does this extend beyond California?
I clicked a dot by my house which is not in california and it shows $929