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Electricity Prices by Country

electricrate.com

291–300 of 312 posts

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#291
post #195

I wouldn’t take the figures quoted in this article seriously. I pay the equivalent of 13c/KWh in Australia, and that’s after recent price rises (thanks Vlad).

> I pay the equivalent of 13c/KWh in Australia How??

I live in Victoria.

Fed my usage data to the Victorian government’s comparison site. [1]

Switched to the cheapest offer, which was GloBird Energy. Went to their website, discovered a small further discount on my gas was available so switched that over as well. Took maybe 5 minutes, total.

Took my free $250 from the VIC Government for using their site (yes this is a stupid election bribe but you’d have to be crazy not to take it - you don’t have to switch suppliers if you don’t want to, just run the comparison).

[1] https://compare.energy.vic.gov.au/

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#292
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-…

Is that an average? I had no idea it was that small in the Uk. I mean, what is the point of a house at that size? It just seems like it might as well be an apartment unit .

You get a garden and no upstairs neighbors to stomp (or downstairs to care about your stomping).

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.96 $CAD doesn't seem all that cheap.

I think they made an error converting cents to dollars, I just checked BC Hydro's rate and it's actually $0.0959 CAD (9.59 cents ) for the first 1,350 kWh in a month (Step 1) then raises to $0.1422 after that (Step 2).[1] [1] https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

Yes my mistake, thanks!

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#294
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They werent that many to begin with they growing increasingly expensive to run, were coming to the end of their lifespan and Fukushima was a risk that was hard to ignore. It's interesting how Poland's electricity mix has been 80% coal for decades and this passes without comment, but what really enrages some people is a few nuclear power plants in Germany being mostly swapped out with solar and wind energy. Doesnt see…

> They werent that many to begin with they growing increasingly expensive to run, were coming to the end of their lifespan and Fukushima was a risk that was hard to ignore. Not for Japan[1]. The truth is that after Fukushima, the pro-nuclear parties lost a few state elections, which caused them to panic and give up on nuclear. Today, even Japan is over it, but in germany no one wants to admit that mistake. [1]: https…

[deleted]

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#295

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…

Dont forget to mention people living in the north dont love the idea of investing in transmission infrastructure as it will only make them pay more for electricity.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#296

This feels like a bit of a BS comparison. Consumers pay many other fees beyond wholesale electricity to actually get power. It would be much more useful to compare what actual households pay (for US by state probably rather than a meaningless average). For example, Edison in SoCal publishes these rates: https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Time-Of-Use-Residentia... ($0.36 off peak and up to $0.57 peak usage) PG&E: h…

In a word, deregulation. If you live in one of the 35 states that separated generation, transmission and retail distribution, your bill is about $40 a month more.

The idea was to create competition for power generation to lower prices. What actually happened was surge pricing and higher prices.

"Average retail electricity costs in the 35 states that have partly or entirely broken apart the generation, transmission and retail distribution of energy into separate businesses have risen faster than rates in the 15 states that have not deregulated..."

source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/business/energy-environme...

One of the many reasons I decided to move out of California was because of these thinly veiled cash grabs in the guise of benefit to the consumer.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#297
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fukushima was a risk that was hard to ignore. Politically hard to ignore? Yes. Practicaly hard to ignore? No. Germany doesn't get any tsunamis and even if it did, the consequences of a fukushima level accident every few decades are less bad than the direct pollution effects of coal, even ignoring the CO2.

Practically too. The $800 billion clean up bill also comes on top of the already gargantuan cost of building and maintaining nuclear power stations. It's a roll of the dice. The next nuclear catastrophe probably won't look like Fukushima or Chernobyl but I imagine it will happen partly as a result of skimped/badly done maintenance on a plant whose operating life has been extended a bit too far.

Uh... We've seen that the cost of building, maintaining and decomissioning a 70s plant is around $6 billion ($4B + $1B + $1B approx) because this is something we've actually done.

Separately, that $800B cleanup cost is something some dude pulled out of his arse. The actual latest government estimate was $200B.

Which is almost entirely due to the radiation panic. For example the permanent evacuation (and subsequent need to compensate everyone driven out of their homes) was almost entirely of people in areas were they had aless that 1% extra risk of cancer. And the managers of the decontamination do things like spend years dithering over whether to just release a bunch of contaminated water which would increase locals yearly radiation exposure by under 0.04%.

But lets take those costs as a given. The developed world has around a hundred commercial nuclear reactors and has done so for more around 50 years. The vast majority of disaster cleanup is Fukushima. An extra $2B factored into the cost of each plant to deal with accident chance chance isn't going to break the bank given these things produce around 500B kWh during their life time, which sells on the electricity market for around $50B.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#298
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why standard of living didn't increase once women entered the workforce en mass.

Are you saying we have the same standard you living as 80 years ago?

The rise didn't take place I 1940, it was a gradual thing topping off around 1990.

And yes, standard of living (in terms of how much house, doctor time, education time and plane you can afford and how much free time you have) has gone somewhat down since 1960.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#299
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capacity of those batteries is like a fart in a hurricane.

Little thought experiment: - Offshore wind costs about 3 Million USD/MW to install - Germany currently has 218,000 MW installed capacity, about 130,000 MW of this is already renewable energy, but let's ignore that for the moment - So to add 218,000 MW installed renewable energy capacity you'll need 654 Billion USD - Germany currently has an annual federal budget of 476 Billion USD So to add 100% to the currently inst…

Or you could just write that for exorbitant sum of money you get meaningless amount of storage. Additionally you need cash out that sum periodically because batteries has limited amount of cycles.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#300
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically too. The $800 billion clean up bill also comes on top of the already gargantuan cost of building and maintaining nuclear power stations. It's a roll of the dice. The next nuclear catastrophe probably won't look like Fukushima or Chernobyl but I imagine it will happen partly as a result of skimped/badly done maintenance on a plant whose operating life has been extended a bit too far.

Uh... We've seen that the cost of building, maintaining and decomissioning a 70s plant is around $6 billion ($4B + $1B + $1B approx) because this is something we've actually done. Separately, that $800B cleanup cost is something some dude pulled out of his arse. The actual latest government estimate was $200B. Which is almost entirely due to the radiation panic. For example the permanent evacuation (and subsequent ne…

>isn't going to break the bank

It really does. If you remove the free insurance and let the plants shoulder the full cost it renders an already extremely expensive enterprise completely financially unviable. Thats why governments gave liability indemnification to plants in the first place.

The $800 billion is about more than cleanup costs, fwiw. It also includes stuff like turning on coal power plants to replace the power produced by the dead reactor. It wasnt Japan "overreacting".

All of this has happened before and it will happen again and because appropriately priced insurance WOULD break the bank taxpayers will be on the hook next time. Again.

The latest nuclear bill in America focused entirely on extending the legal lifetime of existing nuclear power plants. Good thing Fukushima's demise wasn't about its age, eh?

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