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Electricity Prices by Country

electricrate.com

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Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#161

Post by robomartin »

For some reason publications about energy, including Tesla's Master Plan 3, insist on using averages to describe the entire sample. I think I can say this is universally understood to be a bad practice in statistics. The reason is simple: Central tendency indicators do not deliver accurate results when used in this fashion.

Here's an example. Current published rates in our area:

https://i.imgur.com/CTiCLtP.png

The article quotes $0.135 average household rate for the US.

This is 100% meaningless. Even worse, I have no clue how (or why) one would take the numbers from our current rate (linked picture), calculate some kind of an average and then apply it to every calculation about power and energy. Again, meaningless and also inaccurate.

Regrettably, it seems lots of decisions are being made based on these averages of averages of averages. Things like "The average American drives miles per day", etc.

I get it. Slicing data into smaller clusters makes computation and conclusions far more complex. This is hard to communicate, particularly to a non-technical public. I guess I can look the other way when it involves certain types of content. However, something like Tesla's Master Plan ought to be required to use more nuanced and technically accurate methodology before being taken seriously.

As I have highlighted in another thread, the Master Plan says nothing whatsoever about only using solar vs. only using wind at grid scale. Yes, both require storage. However, quick analysis easily shows that there might be a serious question to ask about whether solar makes sense at all (at grid scale, it makes sense on rooftops). For example, an area equivalent to 1 Hawaii for wind power would require TWELVE Hawaii's of solar. Again, some of the analysis suffers from grabbing onto averages and universally applying them to every data point, which is wrong.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#162

Post by chongli »

secondcoming wrote: post #144
SaintGhurka wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention cooling. How many people in the UK even have air conditioning?

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.

Yeah whereas in the southern U.S. a lack of air conditioning is a medical emergency. It gets insanely hot down there!

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#163

Post by nly »

Symbiote wrote: post #155
kwhitefoot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly any airconditioned houses in the UK and heating is mostly by gas. I expect that accounts for quite a lot of it.

It will be a combination of the British climate, and the inefficiency of American buildings (large, poor insulation), equipment (little incentive to reduce energy use with better appliances, timers to turn off heating/cooling when no one is home etc) and lifestyle (clothes must be dried in a machine, not on a line, t-shirt-warmth indoors even in winter).

British homes are terribly heat inefficient as well.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#164

Post by [deleted] »

sefrost wrote: post #149
panarky wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

0.96 CAD per kWh just up the road here in BC. I moved to Canada from the UK and it’s still unbelievable to me how much cheaper energy is here. If you’re renting a place you don’t even pay for gas. I have unlimited gas in my apartment all year round! I’ve never been so warm in my life. I would highly recommend any young Brits reading this to seriously look at making the move. It’s amazing out here.

[deleted]

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#165

Post by johannes1234321 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #7

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 w…

With Norway's energy there is some "fun" I learned about recently:

Apparently people in northern Norway got contracts for "normal" electricity. Due to the power grid and energy production the electrons there are however mostly from renewable energies.

Now here in Germany people have contracts with "renewable" electricity. This then works the way that German energy suppliers virtually buy the Norwegian renewables, while the Norwegians virtually buy the non-renewable from Germany.

Thus Germans think they pay for renewables and do something good, while Norwegians think "oh, all plants here are renewable all is fine" but in the end only the companies benefit.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#166

Post by jcadam »

kahirsch wrote: post #157
rippercushions wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, electric heating uses much more power than air conditioning.

By far more energy goes to heating than air conditioning, but a lot of heating in the US is natural gas (or oil in the northeast), especially in the colder places. About 43% of household energy use is heating and only 8% is air conditioning.[1] But for overall household electricity use, air conditioning is 17% and heating is 15% (all houses, not just all-electric houses). [2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/u…

Up here in Alaska, heating your house with electricity would be asinine if you have any other option.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#168

Post by jacquesm »

tzs wrote: post #110
perardi wrote: post #84

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-…

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…

And often that is good old resistive baseboard heating rather than a heatpump.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#169

Post by jacquesm »

chongli wrote: post #162
secondcoming wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah whereas in the southern U.S. a lack of air conditioning is a medical emergency. It gets insanely hot down there!

It's technically uninhabitable. It only works because we have a lot of technology, similar to NL, the arctic and so on. There are a lot of areas in the world that we have essentially only borrowed as long as we can hold on to them but that are in most senses uninhabitable and hostile to unprotected life.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#170

Post by jacquesm »

jcadam wrote: post #166
kahirsch wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far more energy goes to heating than air conditioning, but a lot of heating in the US is natural gas (or oil in the northeast), especially in the colder places. About 43% of household energy use is heating and only 8% is air conditioning.[1] But for overall household electricity use, air conditioning is 17% and heating is 15% (all houses, not just all-electric houses). [2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/u…

Up here in Alaska, heating your house with electricity would be asinine if you have any other option.

In time places like Alaska may well depopulate.
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