15¢/kWh. Makes driving an EV really economical. I did a day trip last week and had to charge at a DC fast charge and it was 56¢/kWh. At that price it would've been cheaper to drive my wife's Traverse. For reference the break even for me at $3/gal is 40¢/kWh (3.5 mi/kWh). eMPG is a joke. The real measurement is miles/dollar.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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EV driving really shines in local trips, which is the majority of most people's driving. My husband and I have solar panels and a plug in hybrid, so his commute to work every day is essentially free for us (aside from wear and tear). If you're regularly driving long hauls then fully EV doesn't seem to make sense yet, but for every day driving, the trade off of having cheaper daily trips with occasional higher expenses for long hauls probably still nets a lower cost per mile.
My usual commute to work is like eight miles. I've considered purchasing an old leaf just to use to drive to work and back. The fact that they only get 40-100 mi round trip is negligible to the fact that I would save a decent amount of money on gas.
The trade-off turned out to be that my insurance rates and the other maintenance would more than absorb the cost savings from any gas so unless I also got rid of my primary vehicle which I'm not likely to do it would be a bad move for me.
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Well, California has some of the highest electricity rates in the US. IIRC the exceptions are Hawaii and Alaska.
That being said, last I looked, it was more like $0.21/kWh. Hadn't realized that it had gotten that high.
EDIT: Here's a per-state list for average residential prices for 2024:
https://www.usatoday.com/money/homefront/deregulated-energy/electricity-rates-by-state/
That has California at an average of 29.49 cents/kWh, which is quite high as the US goes, but not nearly as high as yours. It does say that prices went up 11% since last year.
California has had a major problem where billing just happened per kWh, so that people who were using solar (or some other form of local generation) were basically dumping the cost of maintaining the grid connections onto people who weren't doing local generation, since the solar users were purchasing few kWhs. This was very politically controversial, especially since the latter group was generally poorer. IIRC, California is just or will be passing policy changes that will limit that, so the kWh cost from the grid should drop, though people getting most of their power from solar will have a higher overall bill than they had; there's a separate bill item for the grid connection and for the electricity provided over it.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article288420595.html
Not sure when that enters or entered into force. However, it should depress per-kWh charges, though there'll be a fixed charge for the grid connection.
Sounds like PG&E also got the go-ahead to do a bunch of underground lines and rate hikes to get customers to pay for them. I understand that buried lines are more-common in Europe -- you don't have to see power lines, but it costs more to stick 'em underground and maintain 'em, and the US typically keeps 'em aboveground, unless it's a major urban area.
Electricity costs will get even higher for many Bay Area residents after California regulators approved the latest in a series of PG&E rate hikes at a voting meeting on Thursday.
The utility seeks to recover $943.9 million in costs related to wildfire mitigation and damages from power outages during severe storms in recent years. It asked state regulators to approve a temporary rate increase of $5.16 per month for its average customer.
It’s the third such “interim rate relief” request from PG&E within a year, according to California Public Utility Commission documents. In July 2023, regulators allowed PG&E to raise rates temporarily by an average of $10.30 and then again by around $5 a month the following March.
These smaller, temporary rate hikes are in addition to regulators’ approval of a much larger general rate adjustment proposal last year to help PG&E cover the cost of burying thousands of miles of lines underground in the most wildfire-prone parts of the state, as well as other investments.
Ratepayers saw an average increase of about $30 a month on their bills beginning this year because of that.
I don't really care about not having lines visible, though I don't think that people not where underground lines are should be paying for those, that it should be people in an area that want them underground to cover the cost.
It would be interesting, I think, to have a journalist go to some states with wildly-different costs and do a breakdown of why electricity in different states costs different amounts. I think that it's pretty legitimate for someone living in a place with high utility costs to ask for and and get an explicit breakdown showing why their utility provider can't be competitive with one in another state.
It should be noted that burying lines in this case is not for aesthetic reasons, but because trees falling on/growing into above-ground lines is one of the most common causes of wildfires. Putting the lines below the ground is much safer in that respect, but it is much harder to do maintenance on the lines should something go wrong.
Most of these lines are likely in regions where almost nobody lives, but a fire started in those forests can threaten a much larger swathe of customers.
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Dynamic pricing contract. Planning when to charge the car, running dishwasher etc is small effort.
Adding 5KW solar panels and a change of contract, from >€500 to something like €75. Family of 4, pretty heavy usage.
Is this exclusive or inclusive of the energy tax? IIRC that's about €0.15/kWh in the Netherlands
Inclusive tax, but exclusive service fee, handling fee, network fee, administrative fee, etc. You get the picture.
We are getting screwed by the energy companies and the infrastructure companies. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.
At least (some of us) are getting money back, when your solar production exceeds your consumption. But that is going to change soon.
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A $400 bill at $0.50 per kwh is 800 kwh. Our electricity usage in the month of August was 787 kwh. I wired an energy meter into my circuit panel a month ago, so I can break that down:
- 210 kwh for EV charging. I don't drive a ton and can also charge at work sometimes. This is 27% of our total
- 130 kwh for AC. We live in SE MI, so it's not hot. We keep our AC set to 75 when it's on. These two combined are now 40% of our bill
- 62 kwh for my work desk (hybrid work) and deep freeze
- 61 kwh for our furnace blower motor. This one surprised me. We were leaving it on the low setting to equalize temperature. On the low speed it pulls 500 watts, or 12 kwh/day. It obviously pulls more power when the AC is on
- 61 kwh for our fridge
- 28 kwh for our washing machine and gas dryer
- now we're in odds and ends territory. 17 kwh for our instant Hot water (tea), 12 kwh for our sump pump and dehumidifier, 11 for our dishwasher, 8 for the TV (old fluorescent)/garage/ps5/modem/route, 7 for the microwave
- another 100 or so that doesn't have a clamp on the breaker
If you don't have an EV and you're really keeping your AC at 84 I strongly suspect you have a failing appliance. Unless you live in Phoenix and have a massive and very poorly insulated house or something.
During covid (I was doing remote work, so basically no EV charging), our old dishwasher finally stopped working with a dryer heater error code. When we replaced it our electric bill fell by a double digit percentage (I want to say 20%+) year over year.
As for things like insulation, going from 3" of 1969 insulation to a massive quantity of blown in helped our winter heating bill (gas) a lot more than our summer AC bill.
Good luck!
Sorry to ask, why're you equalizing temperature?
i feel the AC goes on when it's hot or warm and the blast furnace goes on when it's cold, is there a particular advantage as to why you're doing it this way?
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Average 0.16 USD per kwh if I divide the whole bill by the KWH.
Our bill is pretty high but literally everything runs on electricity in the house, the cooking, water heating, A/C, we have clothes washer & dryer, there is no gas line.
same here. I sorta like it. I mean a gas meter alone with be 20 even if you use no gas for the month and honestly I like having one less bill to keep track of.
I live in Washington state, most of my electricity is from hydro or nuclear. My bill is usually about $80 a month, but it can go over $100 in the summer if I’m running the AC a lot.
I’m also PGE and it’s the same, about $0.50 per kWhr. I don’t even have AC, but I’m typically paying $150-$250 per month.
My AC was set at 84 and I still got a 400+ bill. Its insane. I thought at first my AC was having issues, but the guy came out and its only pulling around 3kw and its definitely working. Found out im using around the same KWH as last year (actually a bit less) but the rate hikes means we see more peaks and much higher bills.
Is it a home you own or rental? Apartment?
If it's a single family home you should seriously consider the pricey upgrades to insulation. It could cut hundreds off your bill.
But it could also be a better investment to get solar panels in that case.
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The rate around here is now down to $0.22/kWh. We were occasionally getting electricity bills around $400/month at worst, but we haven't had an electrical bill since April of this year with our solar panels on the roof now.
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$0.11 Canadian/kWh, my usage is about 150kWh per person per month, but I don't have summer AC. There's a higher rate beyond a threshold of 675kW/h but that's still under 15 cents. With a zero-use daily charge including municipal levies about 30 cents per day, and some fluctuations based on power sold, imported and other costs (my last bill had like $3 in credits). All in all about CA$25/mo ($18US).
Charged by BCHydro, the provincial power regulator. I've been really shocked at how cheap utilities are overall in BC, I budgeted about 3 times the amount I needed when I first moved.
Can't remember the exact price per kwh, but I pay around $120/month in the summer and about $75-100/month in the winter. The winter varies so much based on how many heat lamps I have to provide for my ducks and how many heated water bowls they use. Last winter I had two lamps set up for a while then went back down to one. They used two heated bowls a day, but I have new birds this year, so they may use more.
This is all in Pennsylvania, btw
$0.50 per kWh is absurd. Where we are, the power company charges $0.1065 on peak and $0.1001 off. (As in, about a dime.)
Note that this is still about 33% more than at the start of the pandemic. We were around $0.07 per kWh prior to 2021.
in bc we have two tier pricing, the first X kilowatthours per month is I think 0.08CAD (~0.05USD), the second is 0.15CAD (~0.11USD)
Our power mostly comes from hydroelectric dams, but we wheel and deal it interprovincially so within the course of a day we'll spend some time importing and some time exporting which gives us lower rates, and lets other places run more efficiently (ie Fewer gas turbines)
It varies a lot, can be as low as $110 and as much as $170. And that’s just me, a single dude in a small one bedroom apartment. It was half that just a few years ago. So painful.
In Malaysia they break it down into tariff so the more you use, your bill will spike exponentially. The rate are RM0.218/kwh for the first 200kwh, then RM0.334/kwh for 201-300kwh, then RM0.516/kwh for 301-600kwh, then RM0.546/kwh for 601-900kwh, then RM0.571/kwh for 901kwh onward.
Between 14.7 and 15.4c / kwh. Gexa in Texas. My last bill was $285. We have a gas stove, water heater, furnace, and dryer. Our gas bill is about $50/mo. The lowest our electricity goes is about $90 in the winter.
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My electric bill last month was $14.62. That's with a $64.51 solar credit. But then I pay a $50 lease on the solar panels. I don't understand how my utility charges with tiers so I'll put the details here for people who know better than me:
Tier 1 first 300 kWh at $0.04088 per kWh
Tier 2 next 260 kWh at $0.04643 per kWh
Regulatory Charges 560 kWh at $0.01374 per kWh
Power Supply Adjustment 560 kWh at $0.04598 per kWh
Power Supply Administrative Adjustment 560 kWh at $0.00724 per kWh
Factoring in all the other fees that are tacked on, mine is $0.21/kWh in OK.
I haven't kept close track for a year so I think it's gone up again but my shared bill in Oregon typically was around $250 at I think ~14-15c/kwh. A majority of our power comes from the BPA hydro dams on the Columbia so the cost hasn't quite skyrocketed like other areas, but Pacificorp is still trying to raise rates 20% a year.
(We are rural and also use electricity for pumping water from a domestic well, and irrigate a fairly large lawn as a wildfire break, so that is also our water bill.)
PG&E is just criminal.
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I'm paying $0.12/kwh base rate but then there's a 10% additional fee added on to support solar in my area so 13.2.
From late March to early October my monthly electricity bill is something like $89, from late October until early March my monthly bill is like $129 thanks to heating expenses.
2600 ft home in Washington State.
Any of you who are paying more than 20 cents a kilowatt hour, especially if you live in a warmer area of the country, are doing yourselves a grave disservice by not buying and installing a hybrid water heater.
They are fairly spendy, oftentimes costing $1,600 or more just for the water heater and then another thousand or two to have it installed, but heating your water is one of the largest most inescapable bills that you have and a hybrid water heater does double duty by taking the heat out of your air that you are paying to condition and putting it into your water that you were paying to heat, saving money on both at the same time by being more efficient.
If you encounter a scenario where you have $2,500 to spare on a project that will decrease your monthly bills and pay for itself, that's the one to pick, especially if you are a diy'er and are not afraid of doing a little bit of PEX work.
My electricity cost me 13.2 cents a kilowatt hour and installing an 80 gallon hybrid water heater to replace the 55 gallon that I had took $20 a month off of my power bill.
I did it myself with a little bit of help from a friend and it took me roughly an entire Saturday.
Total cost out the door was about $1,600 because I got a $500 credit from my power company to get it installed, and the water heater cost $1,600, the parts and pieces I needed cost me another $250, and I slipped my friend 250 bucks for helping out.
At an average of $20 a month power saved that water heater will pay for itself in a little under 7 years, which is a good while yes, but if you're paying 50 cents a kilowatt hour it would pay for itself in under 2 years, and if you live in a warmer climate than Washington State the extra air conditioning it provides free of charge will further decrease your energy bills especially in the summer.
I will also note that the water heater I had was 20 years old at the time and well due for a replacement, making some of this 1600 expenditure an actual necessity and not just a thriftiness move.
Take that into consideration when you are taking my advice.
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Close to the same for me here in Seattle, but my husband doesn't turn lights off (seriously--ever), so our bill is always a bit higher than yours.
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Effective rate 14 cents per kWh here in rural Virginia. I divided my total current charges of $121.35 by the 876 kWh I used.
Around $90 on hot summer months and $40-$50 in winter and about $60 spring and fall. Gas goes from $120 in winter to $15-$20 the rest of the year
Summer: $0.118 / kwh first 600kwh, $0.136 600+ Winter: $0.132 / kwh first 600kwh, $0.144 600+
I averaged the last 3 years for these.
Peak price is 0.08 EUR/kWh, off peak 0.04 EUR/kWh. On avaerage around 35 EUR per month.
US, Mojave desert, SCE. Got solar and battery right before NEM3.0 and prices jumped. It’s saved me thousands although it will be a few more years before I break even.
.1673 and .1809 peak here in Michigan.
Peak rate (2PM -7PM) is $0.225/kWh
Off-peak is $0.178/kWh
With my normal usage, it averages about $0.187/kWh
I am in the greater Boston area and just pulled up my most recent bill. Total cost for me (including generation and delivery) came out to $0.33 per kWh. When it comes to the total cost each month, my cost goes down dramatically in the winter when the gas is used for heat instead of the electric for AC.
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