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Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

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Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#271

Post by lostlogin »

philjohn wrote: post #195
yumraj wrote: post #184

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.

I'm in the UK and with solar and battery, and having an EV there are tariffs out there where the levellised cost you'll pay is approaching 7p per kWh. Intelligent Octopus Go is one example - between 23:30 and 05:30 all of your electricity usage is 7p per kWh, for the entire house. For this, you give up controlling when your EV is charged as Octopus either control it through the car, or through a compatible charger. W…

Is that payback time with a battery?

It’s about 7 years without and 10-12 with here in New Zealand.

I get some installed next month.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#272

Post by lostlogin »

wiether wrote: post #94
hughes wrote: post #79

Earlier 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?

Electricity consumption will vary during the year so it seems fair to give the yearly total to have the actual cost; and you can divide by twelve if your prefer a monthly average. Meanwhile, if they only gave a monthly figure, one could wonder if it's an average or if it's taken in January or July.

> Electricity consumption will vary during the year

We heat with a wood burner and so have very flat usage over a year. Heating requirements are lower here in Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#273

Post by bpodgursky »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #265
bpodgursky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps are so affordable now, that just feels like a poor decision-making rather than an economic hardship. You could finance a heat pump and the savings would pay itself off in a year.

Yeah it's called apartment living. I hit nearly $350 in Oakland a couple years (and many PG&E rate hikes) ago in a 600 sq ft apartment. Even if I wanted to pay for a heat pump installation it's doubtful the landlord would've been on board. Last time I did the math, even with a 60% efficient furnace natural gas was cheaper than an electric heat pump. PG&E's electric rates are simply that much more expensive than their…

Lol what. I'm paying $.10/kWh. https://booneelectric.coop/my-account/rates/

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#274

Post by inferiorhuman »

bpodgursky wrote: post #273
inferiorhuman wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's called apartment living. I hit nearly $350 in Oakland a couple years (and many PG&E rate hikes) ago in a 600 sq ft apartment. Even if I wanted to pay for a heat pump installation it's doubtful the landlord would've been on board. Last time I did the math, even with a 60% efficient furnace natural gas was cheaper than an electric heat pump. PG&E's electric rates are simply that much more expensive than their…

Lol what. I'm paying $.10/kWh. https://booneelectric.coop/my-account/rates/

https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/...

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#275

Post by lostlogin »

bowsamic wrote: post #43
hughes wrote: post #35

Is 906 GBP (~1100 USD) typical for a household? That seems outrageously high.

Yes Type | yearly usage | average annual cost Low (flat or 1-bedroom house / 1-2 people) | 1,800 kWh | £669.95 Medium (3-bedroom house / 2-3 people) | 2,900 kWh | £943.36 High (5-bedroom house / 4-5 people) | 4,300 kWh | £1,291.34 source: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html

I was surprised to see how low electricity usage is.

The fairer measurement is probably gas and electric, and your source says ‘ According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month.’

We don’t have gas at home and use about 10,000kW/h here in New Zealand.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#276

Post by LosEstupidos »

omnibrain wrote: post #155
jillesvangurp wrote: post #89

An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the nationa…

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.

[flagged]

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#278

Post by tehlike »

akira2501 wrote: post #236
tehlike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way it's subsidizing people in the country side.

You've apparently never had power run out to a new property that's not had it before. You pay for that. The poles, the lines, the installation. The power company doesn't just run power to you because you ask. They subsidize themselves. Then PG&E takes the money, leaves 100 year old equipment in place, which inevitably breaks, and burns down an entire forest along with their homes. You genuinely think these people are…

Subsidizing in an insurance sense. It's a high risk area, insurance should have covered it. If it was too high risk, insurance shouldn't have covered it, or charge much more etc.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#279

Post by tehlike »

wil421 wrote: post #133
tehlike wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great rate. My homelab excluding poe stuff I suspect will end up using 300-500W. Not a lot of money but still annoying to be paying. 1. 56G mellanox switch - 35W 2. An old box I made a router - 50W 3. A two node server - 220W each Replacing (2) with something that idles at 10W Will probably do one node for (3) so got more ram to try out. I wish we had cheap energy. I could add much more stuff to this lol.

My UniFi mad PoE setup draws about 100w and my NAS another 100w or so. The i3 in my Supermicro board has been quite the efficient little CPU. My AMD 7950 and a 4070ti had to be taken off one my UPS because it was going over 1000w at times. Not sure what the full draw is while gaming. The thing that kept me away from retired server hardware isn’t so much the power draw as it is the fan noise.

I have a thing in my garage that makes more noise than a plane taking off (from inside the cabin). So I concur.

Switch is not too bad, but the 2u (2x 1u nodes in one 2u package with a title or 2x 1u fans) server is a total madness.

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