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Electricity Prices by Country

electricrate.com

31–40 of 312 posts

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#31

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.

Fun fact: We've had negative prices, a couple of times. In which case you actually get money for the electricity you use.

But those are very rare moments, and only last a couple of hours her and there. Not unique to Norway, but basically what happens is that there's huge amounts of downpour, coupled with little demand / usage - typically something you see in periods where people are away, and if the weather conditions are there.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#32
post #13

Not accurate at all. UK consumers are paying approximately 34p/kWh - 43c/kWh. Nearly twice what it says here.

Because these are not consumer prices, they're datacenter prices.

Business energy prices are even higher in the UK, because the government applies a price cap to retail prices but not commercial ones. Before some of the subsidies kicked in I heard of £1/kWh being common for commercial renewals, often requiring 5 figure deposits for many industries as the suppliers were worried about businesses going under and not paying their bills.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#33

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.

Wind is strong in Northern Germany.

It's mostly taxes and taxes being taxed additionally by other taxes, a good chunk of that was/is for transitioning to green energy and subsidizing home solar.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#35

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?

In July 2022, the average price I paid was 0.0192 NOK / kWh - so that's around $0.0018 / kWh. But that was the monthly average price, the daily minimum can be much lower.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#38

Another complication with these numbers are the delivery/connection fees. In Toronto, my marginal rate is probably around US$0.08/kWh, but my usage in a double occupancy condo unit with the connection fee works out to US$0.22/kWh on average. One would hope that this just means I’m cross-subsidizing heavier users but in reality my metering provider is owned by a partnership in Bermuda. In reality, some ??? shareholder…

In Alberta, I'm on a fixed-price contract for 8.69c/kWh. Add in the distribution, transmission, and local access fee charges and my all-in rate is actually 15.217c/kWh. But that's not all, there's also a 20.6c/day administrative charge.

Of course, those are only the charges I've actually dug into. On top of this there is a "Transmission Charge Deferral Account True-Up Rider", "Transmission True-Up Rider", and "Balancing Pool Allocation Rider". Generally these changes are small enough that they're not worth the effort to dig into. There is also a $75/mo rebate applied to the bill, which is part of the government's affordability measures.

Finally, on top of all of that, there is the 5% sales tax which is calculated on the total amount before that $75 rebate.

I'm fortunate to be on a fixed-price contract. People who weren't had a portion of their power bill deferred and have to pay it back between April 2023 and December 2024. The catch is that current non-contract customers are stuck paying back their utility provider's deferral, which includes the deferral for customers who had charges deferred but since switched to a contract. This article[0] explains it better than I can.

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/9586632/alberta-regulated-rate-op...

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#39

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.

The 39ct/kWh are an artifact of the European gas crisis 2022, nowadays were closer to the still high 30ct/kWh as before. For a long time renewable energy was subsidized directly from (household) electricity prices. Same is true for grid investments, which are drastically rising, partly due to Windpower being produced in in the north and used in the south.

IMHO part of the problem is definitely due to shutdown of nuclear, rapid expansion of renewables while keeping costly (due to EU CO2 emissions trade) coal plants going. Most other countries used renewables to replace coal plants while keeping existing nuclear around. Germany did the opposite.

But the international comparison is not as simple as the power price, there's a lot of infrastructure that is subsidized by other taxes and not power price directly. Not that those are any lower in Germany.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#40
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.

I would hope the total figure is in fact what the article is comparing, not a subset of it.
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