Electricity Prices by Country • Hacker News Board

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#21

Post by simfree » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #9

ChumpGPT wrote: post #3

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.

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.

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

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#22

Post by switch007 » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

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…

> $0.0005 / kWh

A typo, surely?

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#23

Post by secretsatan » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

yuuuuyu wrote: post #14

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…

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

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#24

Post by andsoitis » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:47 PM UTC

pipo234 wrote: post #2

What good is $0/kWh in Sudan, Ethiopia, .. if most people don't have access?

The article also goes into availability, showing the African content with poor coverage.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#25

Post by lh7777 » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

simfree wrote: post #21

Johnny555 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#26

Post by anonymouskimmer » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #11

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#27

Post by dagurp » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

Iceland can't be right. It should be about $0.06

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#28

Post by jandrese » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

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.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#29

Post by teruakohatu » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

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.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#30

Post by jandrese » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

secretsatan wrote: post #23

yuuuuyu wrote: post #14

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…

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

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.