what on earth does electricity cost near you?

[3930dave]

I don't think we (the people of Ontario) ever 'owned' Hydro One/Ontario Hydro. I know I never saw any profits from it.

Like B&D said..... it's all about the Right People making money..... California was a good early example of what scams get run with utility restructuring; nobody here paid attention though.

The 3 of us are old enough to remember.... you used to be able to get on with your life and just do what you needed to, w/o having to take out a second mortgage to pay your electric bill....

Rgds, D.

 

[Looking4new]

And when hydro one has an overabundance of power they give it away to the US. Michigan, Ohio and I think New York.

 

[buickanddeere]

And when hydro one has an overabundance of power they give it away to the US. Michigan, Ohio and I think New York.

The electrical customers of Ontario PAY New York, Michigan, Ohio and Quebec to TAKE the surplus off peak power.

 

[3930dave]

Ka-CHING !

Hydro One signs blockbuster deal to buy U.S. utility Avista for $4.4-billion - The Globe and Mail

I esp. loved the CEO's comment re. moving outside of Ontario "The markets that we are entering have expanding economies, positive and growing customer demographics and constructive regulatory environments."

^^^ What my parents generation had here, back when.

Well, at least the M&A parasites will be happy....

Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska - get ready to have your coal-fired plants shut down, and know that the "leadership" that controls this game here considers NatGas to be evil too.

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

Just got the latest PG&E electric bill and when all said and done each kWh costs 25.5 cents... for average daily household use of 12 kWh per day...

 

[Gem99ultra]

Just got the latest PG&E electric bill and when all said and done each kWh costs 25.5 cents... for average daily household use of 12 kWh per day...

Here in mid-Georgia, 14.5/summer rate, 9.5/winter. Summer monthly runs us about $380/month for our 3000 sqft house. Winter runs about $140/month - but then you DO NOT want to use a heat pump around here! Heat pumps are not efficient, most especially at temps 40* and lower.

Propane is reasonable, so off goes our heat pump and on with propane heat, via gas powered fireplace or space heater, when the weather cools down.

 

[ultrarunner]

Here the kWh usage remains constant year round... it is 2400 square feet built in the late 1950's and average is 12 kWh per day... rare to have frost and rate for extreme heat but recently we had days of 100+ setting all time records... still no one around here has A/C...

Natural Gas for last month was $12 which is for hot water...

Have lots of oak on the property... can't burn in the winter due to spare the air days so most storm fall simply rots as there is no market for burn wood...

 

[dmccarty]

Just got the latest PG&E electric bill and when all said and done each kWh costs 25.5 cents... for average daily household use of 12 kWh per day...

WOW. That is over twice what we pay per KWH. For years we have been paying 11 to 12 cents per KWH.

Later,
Dan

 

[ultrarunner]

I've come to expect higher cost of living in the SF Bay Area... part of the reason is they can.

Not to get too far into the weeds but we had record rainfall with reservoirs overflowing... water district keeps increasing rates to make up for reduced usage... plus the record rainfall means hydro is in good shape.

A unit of water here is 748 gallons and quickly costs close to $7... almost a penny per gallon... not much expense for basic needs but much too expensive for irrigation...

The 86 year old widow down the block has a nice lawn area in back... she and her husband spent a lot of time and effort doing their own landscaping... the bill for the last 2 months is $800... granted it is summer but in an area with no A/C

Growing up the water bill was almost an afterthought... everyone had front and back lawns on their 5,000 square foot city lots... boy have things changed.

Also... it is about $2.20 per day for basic service BEFORE a drop of water is used...

Can only imagine the utility cost would be prohibitive for most is we lived in an area with heat or A/C year round...

 

[dmccarty]

...

Can only imagine the utility cost would be prohibitive for most is we lived in an area with heat or A/C year round...

Yea, doubling our power bill would be a good car payment during an average month! :shocked: Last winter, we had to use power to heat the house since I have been too busy to make firewood so we had a couple of VERY high power bills. Doubling them would buy a very expensive vehicle. :shocked:

Later,
Dan

 

[3930dave]

Have lots of oak on the property... can't burn in the winter due to spare the air days so most storm fall simply rots as there is no market for burn wood...

Plenty of (actual) market for wood, very little for 25.5cent kwh rates. Different sides of the Spare Air sword.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Like I've said before, the scams around here start at $1 billion......

"That financing structure will cost an extra $4 billion, both the auditor and the financial accountability officer have concluded, as the OPG Trust will have to borrow at a higher rate than the province itself would have."

Ontario government obscuring true financial impact of cuts to hydro bills: AG | National Post

If I needed more motivation to move off-grid, that ^ would be it.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Some interesting numbers from the TVA.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/27/17052488/electricity-demand-utilities

Can't imagine folks are lining up to compete for that Long Range Planning responsibility.....

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

A friend of the folks was a career Utility Executive and mentioned the shift started in the late 1990's and was a definite circle of the drain albeit slowly.

This is when the bills were separated into transmission, generation, etc...

 

[MossRoad]

Hmmm..... looks like utilities were a pyramid scheme. Keep getting more people to sign up to cover the cost of the old people.... :laughing:

 

[3930dave]

A friend of the folks was a career Utility Executive and mentioned the shift started in the late 1990's and was a definite circle of the drain albeit slowly.

This is when the bills were separated into transmission, generation, etc...

MBAs looking to justify their salaries are part of what drove that diworsefication (credit - Peter Lynch) away from the original structures that served our parents and grandparents here....... a big part of the money (legal and otherwise) was to be made in the breakups....... standard corporate raider stuff.......

In contrast, the TVA link above puts data around the real-world trends in place - increasing efficiency and off-shoring of heavy industry..... those graphs confirm what I've long suspected.

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

I couldn't agree more... it has been my experience in the medical field where those at the top are Lawyers and MBA...

Old school would be the person at the top knew the business inside out... often the founder or someone that had years of experience in innovation, etc...

The SF Bay Area has some high utility cost when you take the total bill and divide by kWh... to get a cost of kWh.

At work it averages currently about 16.6 cents with monthly usage in the tens of thousands of dollars.

At home there has been some changes but the tier system still penalizes for using more...

 

[dmccarty]

The article states that utilities are not for profit. Really, people have been buying utility stocks for decades because they were very dependable and low risk investments but with low returns. Duke Power just go the utility commission to allow a price increase that gives Duke almost a 10% profit.

Later,
Dan

 

[3930dave]

The article states that utilities are not for profit. Really, people have been buying utility stocks for decades because they were very dependable and low risk investments but with low returns. Duke Power just go the utility commission to allow a price increase that gives Duke almost a 10% profit.

Later,
Dan

I don't know the legal status of US utilities well enough to comment. What has happened here with utility structure has been to deliberately create byzantine structures with obfuscation being the primary goal..... I could dig through all this Stygian mess here if I really wanted to, but prefer to frame in my mind what the general trends are.....

Increasing utility costs are typically being targeted to be spread across a declining customer base, consumption wise. You don't need to have an MBA to predict how future on-grid consumer bills will look.... they've just got started with the additional fairy-tale fees.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I couldn't agree more... it has been my experience in the medical field where those at the top are Lawyers and MBA...

Old school would be the person at the top knew the business inside out... often the founder or someone that had years of experience in innovation, etc...

The SF Bay Area has some high utility cost when you take the total bill and divide by kWh... to get a cost of kWh.

At work it averages currently about 16.6 cents with monthly usage in the tens of thousands of dollars.

At home there has been some changes but the tier system still penalizes for using more...

I don't do it often (too hard on my BP meds), but the last time I did the same calculation here it was something like 24 or 25 cents Canadian. It's (very) temporarily lower at the moment - there is a provincial election coming up in June.

Rgds, D.