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Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

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Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#341

Post by rcxdude »

Nextgrid wrote: post #171
KaiserPro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I have a house battery. over the last three months, I've been paying on average 16p a unit. Thats with a car as well. On the days in the winter when solar isn't doing shit, we top up at the lowest price that day. This kinda goes to the articles point which is to you can avoid, or limit the peak with local storage. The issue with the battery is that its costs a shit tonne. a basic battery is going to cost…

The unsaid, "quiet part" about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. No matter how "safe" they are branded as, the failure mode is disastrous and life-threatening when they do fail. It's insane that those things are being sold and installed in homes at all. But then again this is in a country where installing solar power inverters in the attic of wooden houses was also a thing (no surprises as to what the outcome…

As fire risks go, house batteries are pretty low on the list. You're much more likely to have a catasrophic fire from charging one of the many battery-powered gadgets that people have nowawdays (especially cheap low-quality ones!).

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#342

Post by philjohn »

lostlogin wrote: post #271
philjohn wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With a battery. Costs have halved per kWh over the last year or so here.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#343

Post by piva00 »

akira2501 wrote: post #234
piva00 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median income and take home pay should be brought into account though. California has one of the highest even by US standards so a $1000 bill for the median Californian family feels much less expensive than for the median Manchester family.

There are no median families. There are a lot of very high wage earners in CA. You should really be looking for the mode here.

I agree, the mode is probably better. Anyway from the median you can also get a good guess of how much income the band sitting between 25%-75% has since it's a normal distribution. Either comparison should be ok for a guesstimate of the impact of electricity bills for a family in California vs different parts of the UK.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#344

Post by archsurface »

nahnotreal4 wrote: post #311
archsurface wrote: post #259

A couple of years ago I found Assassin's Creed 2 for £2.50 - bargain! I'd never played it. At the end of the quarter my electricity bill was £600 higher than usual. Not a bargain!

It seems exaggerated for comedic effect, but it is technically possible under certain extreme conditions. For a £600 increase in an electricity bill, the player would have to use a device with high power consumption for an extended period. Here's a breakdown: Gaming PC Power Consumption: High-end gaming PCs can consume around 300–600 watts while gaming. Let's assume a power usage of 500 watts for simplicity. Usage Ti…

Thank you for the payment... January 2023 ... of £115 Thank you for the payment... April 2023 ... of £631 I don't watch TV, no cooling systems. It was the second half of winter but I considered the heating usage at the time. No exaggeration intended. £516.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#345

Post by archsurface »

archsurface wrote: post #344
nahnotreal4 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems exaggerated for comedic effect, but it is technically possible under certain extreme conditions. For a £600 increase in an electricity bill, the player would have to use a device with high power consumption for an extended period. Here's a breakdown: Gaming PC Power Consumption: High-end gaming PCs can consume around 300–600 watts while gaming. Let's assume a power usage of 500 watts for simplicity. Usage Ti…

Thank you for the payment... January 2023 ... of £115 Thank you for the payment... April 2023 ... of £631 I don't watch TV, no cooling systems. It was the second half of winter but I considered the heating usage at the time. No exaggeration intended. £516.

Rate info:

                                  | Current prices   | New prices (1 January 2023)
Standing charge (pence per day) | 48.61 | 48.61

Unit rate DY (pence per kWh) | 53.38 | 60.24

Unit rate NT (pence per kWh) | 9.21 | 8.10

edit: attempted formatting.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#346

Post by smeeger »

bfmalky wrote: post #81
smeeger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to admit english people have a weird tick when it comes to poverty. you worship poor people. and yes, you guys willingly live like you are poor when you guys are definitely not poor

This is such a weird take. I have no idea where you are getting your ideas from, but I don't know if you've heard of this thing we have in the UK called 'the class system'. Poor people are definitely not worshipped in the UK. And the wealthy do generally like to demonstrate their wealth in the usual ways (cars, homes, holidays, schooling, etc), so I'm wondering where you've got this idea that people in the UK somehow…

they are though, similar to the way black people are “worshipped” in america. to be seen as callous to poverty is a weird black hole in england.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#347

Post by 6510 »

toast0 wrote: post #209
sgerenser wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes smart meters more likely to read high?

20-30 year old mechanical meters tend to be pretty accurate, but when they aren't, they tend to read low. Especially if your usage is fairly low, the minimum usage to push the wheels forward may be higher than your standby loads. If you've been on a meter that reads low for a long time, a new meter (mechanical or electronic) will be a big jump.

Mechanical meters either accurately measure use, run to slow or don't work at all. The worse thing that can happen is that other people indirectly have to pay for the missing killowatts. In contrast there are plenty of stories where people get bills 10-20 times what they are used to.

Any half decent programmer on HN knows what to do when something has almost no chance of happening.

Some of these things display only billable KWH while it isn't so expensive to display current consumption too.

You can also measure it twice so that one can (remotely) see two entirely different readings and replace the meter with one that works properly. It could also display the amount of money owed. (estimate) It would make it slightly more expensive for everyone rather than accidentally billing some people truly crazy amounts.

Just like a bank account can have a configurable limit for withdrawals the smart thing to do is to set a limit per day, week, month and have an alarm go off and/or shut everything down.

Say my monthly bill is 200, I don't want the previous 7 days to exceed 500.

Just a flashing led and a 5000 euro bill isn't smart. Imagine diagnosing a server by how fast the led flashes. Imagine replacing the speedometer in your car with a flashing light. You will know how fast you drove when the fines come in.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#348

Post by intended »

moooo99 wrote: post #335
intended wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this on a Reddit discussion on American healthcare. One of the responses about American politics, brought up German decision making, and their denuclearization. Which was new, I’ve seen all sorts of misinfo, talking points, traps etc. etc. But German energy policy????? Thanks for the info.

> But German energy policy????? Yeah that already was a mess before 2022 and only turned worse since then. And remember, what I outlined is only the surface of the electricity generation debate. It gets even worse when you turn towards mobility and heating. Oh you will hear some wild takes there!

I’m so surprised that the debate is spilling over to US focused conversations.

So weird. And I’m definitely not in the market for wild takes.

Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?

#350

Post by thedrbrian »

louthy wrote: post #21

> The UK has achieved the fastest rate of grid decarbonisation among advanced economies. A lot of this progress occurred when renewables were still expensive, so we are stuck with a cost hangover. Luckily, renewables are getting much cheaper, so the tradeoffs in future policy are very different. A silver lining at least. I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure, but it’s still nice to know we’ve made some…

>I’m old, so won’t see the benefits of this I’m sure

you won't see it because you'll be enjoying one of those lovely blackouts we'll get when we turn off all the AGRs and didn't build more nuclear

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