The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents. It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.
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Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
201–210 of 353 posts
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#202The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents. It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.
According to the EIA Monthly, average California residential prices were 30¢ in October. Your statement is closer to being correct if you say "PG&E prices" instead of "California prices". PG&E has ~6 million accounts in a state of 40 million people.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knocking the western 30% of pollution down to zero is still meaningful, even if the remaining 70% isn't affected (which it will be). China, one is the most polluting non-western countries, is going to renewables and electric vehicles at a faster rate than some of the western countries.
* acording to CCP's reported numbers
The CCP is at least heavily motivated to get rid of coal because the wealthy and leadership can't buy their way out of Shanghai's smog problem.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#204The same author wrote the blog post that was on the front page here recently about the plummeting cost of solar [0]. I really like his posts, readable by someone like me who is way below layman on the subject, but I think also pretty interesting to someone with experience in the field. [0] https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/
Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK. We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day. So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless. Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs…
The author is in the UK and covers most of that in the article.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's exactly the same in Germany. In addition the state government of Bavaria in the south east does everything to keep wind power from being built in their state and worked against high voltage power lines to bring cheap and abundant energy from the north to his state.
To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES. Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia. Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than…
You are free to believe what you want, but the Black Forest is not in Bavaria. Some other observations are not wrong per se, but heavily spin-doctored. For example, the average wind speed in Bavaria is 6.9 m/s, which is about 2m/s slower than average wind speed in Schleswig-Holstein but very much in the economical range of wind energy facilities of 3 to 12 m/s, or gas imports from Russia to Europe have fallen by ~70% from end of 2021 to end of 2023 which is still too much, but not exactly sucking a teat, and so on.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#206The rate shown is 29p which comes to 36 cents. It is substantially less than PG&E California prices, which average around 50-55 cents.
According to the EIA Monthly, average California residential prices were 30¢ in October. Your statement is closer to being correct if you say "PG&E prices" instead of "California prices". PG&E has ~6 million accounts in a state of 40 million people.
Updated..
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor
It's a cultural difference I observed between Europeans and Americans: Americans hate it being called unsuccessful/poor, but don't mind being called dumb. Europeans hate being called stupid, but don't mind being called unsuccessful/poor. Obviously, it's not a binary thing, but there's some fundamental difference in attitude.
Stupid is as stupid does. We Americans love Forrest Gump. Success comes more from hard work plus luck than from intelligence.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I thought this was monthly. The article doesn't specify, and all other bills I've seen are monthly. Do Brits pay annually?
Normally pay monthly by Direct Debit, but because usage varies so much between summer and winter we assess and estimate usage annually.
This is how it used to be in Finland, too. More houses than in many other countries are heated electrically. With the cold winters here the variation is extra big.
Still since a couple of years ago bills have to be paid according to monthly (sometimes bimonthly) real consumption. I had the feeling this was even a regulatory requirement to make people aware of the real costs and encourage saving. Cannot find a reference to that now. Either I remember it wrong or the search results are just too polluted by marketing pages.
All meters are read remotely with hourly precision. An increasing share of households has spot price contracts. So the price changes every hour. Sometimes negative, sometimes 60 cents/kWh or more to mention the extremes. Switching to 15 minute pricing is on the way already
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is the sales pitch, the error rate on the overcharging side is infinitely larger than that of mechanical meters. Not a fun lottery to win.
What makes smart meters more likely to read high?
20-30 year old mechanical meters tend to be pretty accurate, but when they aren't, they tend to read low. Especially if your usage is fairly low, the minimum usage to push the wheels forward may be higher than your standby loads.
If you've been on a meter that reads low for a long time, a new meter (mechanical or electronic) will be a big jump.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#210The same author wrote the blog post that was on the front page here recently about the plummeting cost of solar [0]. I really like his posts, readable by someone like me who is way below layman on the subject, but I think also pretty interesting to someone with experience in the field. [0] https://climate.benjames.io/solar-off-grid/
Yeah, but that is pretty much an irrelevance here in the UK. We don't even get that much sun in summer, today sunrise was at 0842, sunset at 1540 - so not even 7 hrs of daylight. Even then it was a very dull day. So in the period (winter) when we most need power, local solar is essentially useless. Local wind may be better, but the economics for it don't really work - requiring 100% gas turbine backup, and high costs…
Sorry, that's not true. I have (non-optimal) solar panels in the UK. I generate 100% of my annual electricity usage from them across the year.
In summer, I can easily get over 20kWh per day - against a daily usage of 10kWh. I release all of my data at https://gitlab.com/edent/solar-data/
Today, in the dead of winter, I got 2.8kWh - https://bsky.app/profile/solar.bots.edent.tel/post/3ldqqrvkw... - a not insignificant amount. My battery charged overnight, so I only drew about 4kWh from the grid during the day.
You can read all about how well solar works in the UK on my blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/