Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
michael k
Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭
Curious how much the rest of the world pays for grid electric . . live South of Atlanta where solar is not too common
and current bill says (before $3.52 tax):
383 KWH Used @ $49.87 == .13cents/KWH ? ? And Georgia Power will pay me .17C . . .
and current bill says (before $3.52 tax):
383 KWH Used @ $49.87 == .13cents/KWH ? ? And Georgia Power will pay me .17C . . .
Comments
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Re: Grid grows more vulnerable to attack. MIT report.Curious how much the rest of the world pays for grid electric . . live South of Atlanta where solar is not too common
and current bill says (before $3.52 tax):
383 KWH Used @ $49.87 == .13cents/KWH ? ? And Georgia Power will pay me .17C . . .
In Nova Scotia we pay a "base rate" of $10.83 a month whether we use any power or not, then almost 13 cents/kwh. And of course there are taxes on whatever the total bill turns out to be. The rates will be going up 10% in the new year, but at this time I don't know how that will be divided between base and KWH.
Oh, and people are screaming like heck because they think their bills are way too high already, before the 10% increase even kicks in. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
I've moved this to its own thread because I believe it warrants further discussion and inevitably will wander far away from the SmartMeter issue.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1). Not everyone pays a "flat rate" per kWh. Many are on variable Time Of Use rates and/or have stepped rates according to the amount used (above 'X' kWh and the rate goes up).
2). More and more we are seeing the 'fees' become a significant portion of the electric bill in relation to the per kWh charges. You may pay only $0.13/kWh but if the 'connection fees' (or whatever) are included the cost per for a small amount of electricity becomes much higher than it is for a large amount of electricity.
So let's see if we can't average this out and do some comparison from place to place. Dividing a year's worth of electric bills by the kWh for the same time period you'd get a relatively accurate rate per for the year (including fees and taxes). I think this would be a more accurate number for comparing energy costs.
I'm going to pull the relative info on our BC Hydro account and see what numbers I get. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
And this is what I got for one year's worth at the Langley house (all electric):
16022 kW hours
$ worth of electric $1263 works out to $0.078 per kW hour
Total billing $1395.78 works out to $0.087 per kW hour
Yes, we do have cheap electricity here.
We have no grid-tie incentives (although it is allowed). Payback would be around never. Especially as solar equipment is extra expensive up here.
And for those who think the SmartMeter can "spy" on you by energy usage, just looking at the bills for the past year I can tell when I was there and what the weather was like.
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Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Here is my Time of Use (E-7) plan for Northern California:
Total Energy Rates ($ per kWh) PEAK / OFF-PEAK
Summer
Baseline Usage $0.29821 ((N) $0.07544 (N)
101% - 130% of Baseline $0.31550 ( ) $0.09273 ( )
131% - 200% of Baseline $0.46919 (R) $0.24642 (R)
201% - 300% of Baseline $0.50919 (R) $0.28642 (R)
Over 300% of Baseline $0.50919 (R) $0.28642 (R)
Winter
Baseline Usage $0.10565 (N) $0.07869 (N)
101% - 130% of Baseline $0.12294 ( ) $0.09598 ( )
131% - 200% of Baseline $0.27663 (R) $0.24967 (R)
201% - 300% of Baseline $0.31663 (R) $0.28967 (R)
Over 300% of Baseline $0.31663 (R) $0.28967 (R)
Weired, my off-beak base rates have gone down from ~$0.09 to $0.078 per kWH... Even the peak rates are down a penny or two.
Note that Baseline, for me, is around 300 kWH per month. I use around 200-300 kWH per month, but all of it is made up by my Grid Tied System, so I pay around $6.00 per month minimum charge (which does include 30-60 kWH per month too).
In summer, for folks with A/C, they can pay upwards of $0.51 per kWH for anything over ~900 kWH per month.
GT just spins the meter "backwards"--So I only pay the positive amounts (peak/off peak) at the end of the month. Any negative kWH are converted into phony money in my account. I settle up at the end of one year. If I owe, I pay. If they own, the account is reset to zero (there is a new plan that pays for excess kWH produced--probably something like $0.05 per kWH. But there is a "gray zone" where I have "money in the bank" but no kWH generated because I use very little power during peak and do most of my electrical loads off peak (weekends, and 6pm to noon the next weekday).
So far, all of my power billing has been simple Baseline amounts.
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
In Spain we pay about 0.15 Euro /kWh flat rate, which works out to 20 US cents per kWh. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Last bill:
$ 7.50 service charge
$ .17 KWH
This year so far( 11 months):
1331 KWHs
$ 296.39 -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
My bill is a flat rate, 0.13 $/KWH summer and .12 $/KWH winter delivered. Or at least that's what it is appearing to be
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Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Flat rate.+/- $0.15/KWhr. Plus 10% service fee. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
$11 meter charge ( just to have a meter in place ), then about $0.09/kwhr residential rate. ( they fuel adjust up/down once a quarter )
They pay us $0.12/kwhr over retail ( floats with retail as they fuel adjust during the year ) for solar production. Separate meter for solar infeed. ( No charge for it ) -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Sample of the Billing - February 1, 2011:
Charges for electricity services
Cost of net electricity
Basic service charge $6.90
Delivery service charge $0.00
Environmental benefits surcharge $0.00
Federal environmental improvement surcharge $0.00
System benefits charge $0.00
Power supply adjustment* $0.00
Metering* $5.39
Meter reading* $1.80
Billing* $2.03
Generation of electricity on-peak* $0.00
Generation of electricity off-peak* $6.81
Transmission and ancillary services* $0.00
Transmission cost adjustment* $0.00
Cost of electricity you used $22.93
Taxes and fees
Regulatory assessment $0.07
State sales tax $1.55
County sales tax $0.16
City sales tax $0.52
Franchise fee $0.46
Cost of electricity with taxes and fees $25.69
Net electricity credit
From your renewable system -$214.77 <-- Me likes, carry over from last year.
Total charges for electricity services -$189.08
Energy Plan:
Time Advantage 9 p.m. - 9 a.m. (FROZEN)
Winter (November - April billing cycles) Cents per kWh
On-peak kWh used (Mon. - Fri., 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.) $0.14515
Off-peak kWh used (Mon. - Fri. 9 p.m. - 9 a.m., and all day Sat. & Sun.) $0.05565
Summer ( May - October billing cycles) Cents per kWh
On-peak kWh used (Mon. - Fri., 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.) $0.17866
Off-peak kWh used (Mon. - Fri. 9 p.m. - 9 a.m., and all day Sat. & Sun.) $0.05774 -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Major power companies have learned how to invent and add 'non recurring, recurrent charges'.
FPL has recently got permission from state 'public' service commission to charge a monthly fee for a nuclear power plant addition that just about everyone agrees will never be built. They don't have to give it back if it is not built. They have charges for 'Storm fund' to make repairs when there is storm damage to their power lines.
Breaks down like this.
Non-Fuel charge
$0.04914/kWH for first 1000 kWH's
$0.059140/kWH for anything over 1000 kWH's
Fuel charge
$0.03800/kWH for first 1000 kWH's
$0.04800/kWH for anything over 1000 kWH's
This totals out to,
$0.087140/kWH for first 1000 kWH's
$0.10714/kWH for anything over 1000 kWH's
To kWH useage then there is added:
$5.90 Customer base charge
$1.45 Storm charge
$1.90 Nuclear improvement
$3.35 Gross receipts tax
$7.90 Franchise charge
$8.35 Utility tax
After all the charges are put together, my bill / my kWH's used is about $0.124 / kWH.
FPL fuel is primarily natural gas at over 50% of their total power delivered. They generate about 20% from nuclear. The rest is purchased from northern states that can burn coal.
Environmentally and politically it is much easier to get relatively small natural gas cogeneration power plants built then anything else. Cogeneration is basically a natural gas powered jet turboshaft engine running a generator that then uses the hot exhaust to boil water to run steam turbine generators. They can get over 40% fuel efficiency on the fuel used. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Since february I had benn making all power needed and built up 583 Kwh credit thru SEPt. Now using from my credited account. Still had 455 kwh banked at nov. 29 meter reading. Think my banked power should be about even for what I will need for the low production next 3 low production month. Monthly connection fee charges of Customer charge $8.89, smart meter charge $1.05, Pennsylvania Tax surcharge $.06 for total monthly charge $10.00. solarvic PS: I don,t know for sure what the Charge per kwh is as it wasn,t on my bill. Bill says if I want to know to call them. I know with all the charges it was between 11 and 12 cents per kwh on last bill that had them -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
solarvic,
are you sure your power company will allow you to rollover your credits to the next year as not all are allowed to do so?
hmmm. thinking further and i hope i'm wrong about this,
in the case of no rollovers allowed for the new year it would actually start in jan and go through feb and maybe into march as a deficit or you owe on your electric. if going 3 months without a payment most will disconnect you for non-payment and they wouldn't consider that you would make it up later. to hold off any disconnects by the utility then i see a payment of at least 1 month is needed and they would tack on late fees and charges for floating a debt to them after that. if you make it that far then the solar would start to reverse what is used and eventually breakeven not in power produced, but more to overcome charges and fees incurred plus the power used costs to the months you did not pay for to avoid disconnection. after that breakeven month excesses should start to accumulate in your favor until fall when you hit the breakeven point. after that your excesses should ideally pay for the charges accumulating in late fall to winter's beginning until it reaches the new year again to start over.
i think state governments should force all power companies to allow a rollover of credits until march or april or eliminate these cutoff points altogether to allow renewable power sources to work for the people that invested in them and not for the power companies to unduly and unfairly profit from your investment. with the utility's way of starting at the beginning of the new year with no credits allowed to rollover allows power companies to penalize a solar gt connected home or business with late fees and penalties and possible disconnection for non-payment if you allow the debt to float very long.
like i said, i hope i'm wrong on this and this would vary from state to state too so what california does has no bearing on pennsylvania or new jersey or ohio, etc. etc. etc. and it may actually be this way in some places, but i don't know this for a fact. as a reminder, i am not using grid tied solar. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
APS in AZ is one that allows a roll over of sorts. Excess kWh are credited at a generation avoidance rate of $0.065 per kWH on Dec 31. In 2011 our credit carried us to July with no effective bill covering the fee portion and our low off peak usage. This Jan will be less because of the add loads from the Volts. In 2011 we did pay some for off peak in the late summer months, less than $250 because the ways kWh are only a credit within the TOU when generated. This forced us to purchase off peak power while still having an on peak credit in kWh. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
$3 connection fee and 25 cents a KWH give or take depending on fuel charges. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Niel, I always get a monthly bill and pay it as soon as I get it. As long as I make an excess the monthly bill is $10.00. I had a bad month as it was always cloudy and drizziling. I am only 50 miles south of lake erie and get that dreaded lake effect. My meter gets read Dec 29 so I don,t expect many kwh to be left. I will let you know if I lose them in feb. when I get the january bill. Solarvic Had a lot of days with only 2 or 3 kwh and I have been doing a lot of experimenting with that magnum and new forktruck battery. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
.25 cents per kwh average -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Min. connection charge $15 a month ,up from $10.40 last year.
.09 kwh for electricity, .10 kwh for delivery=.19 KWH average -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
With Entergy Arkansas in a rural setting here the breakdown with a little rounding:
Customer connect charge 6.96
energy charge 0.063
Fuel & purchased power 0.019
Ferc imposed charge 0.004
ice storm charge 0.001/kw
count sales tax .011 %
state sales tax .06 % -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
mikeo,
i was thinking that's pretty cheap even over my utility bill until the last part where it said .06 state tax. if that's 6 cents per kwh then that's ridiculous. if it's 6% then that's different. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
No the tax percentages are on the total electric usage only. Yes we do have pretty cheap power at roughly 10 cents a kw with taxes included. The state has two nuke plants and a number of hydo plants so power here is still reasonable. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Here's a chart to show a Dallas example for the past 6 years:
Attachment not found.
The magenta line is for my grid power's 'stated' rate printed on the utility bill. Sometimes utilities omit taxes and fees from their rate calculation for billing statement purpose, and thus this rate can be lower than a simple calculation of total kWh for the month divided by total bill for the month.
The yellow line is for my grid power's 'stated' rate over a 12 month rolling average. This line shows the trend of the stated rate. Note that at the end of 2011 grid power average monthly 'stated' rate for the year ($0.099/kWh) was less than the average monthly 'stated' rate 6 years ago for grid power - ($0.103/kWh for all of2005).
Starting in 2010 my total power consumed was supplied from 2 sources: grid and solar PV.
The cyan line shows the monthly cost of the solar provided kWh consumption (kWh used from solar panels divided by cost of solar system ownership).
Of my total (grid and solar) 27,707 kWh consumption for year 2011, 7,993 kWh (29%) came from solar. For this 7,993 kWh, the monthly per kWh cost ranged from $0.058 to $0.079.
Netting everything today, monthly average cost for electricity consumption, including all sources, for 2011, was $0.091/kWh (purple line).
Bottom line for me, having a solar PV system that's supplying about one-third of my total needs is essentially resulting in about a 9 percent reduction of kWh rate I'd otherwise pay.
Best regards,
Bill -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Niel, I used all kwh in my account except 9 kwh thru jan 29 billing. The 9 kwh was rolled over. So on to another year of building up my account bank of kwh. :Dsolarvic:D Last year february was when my production started to accumulate a balance to my account. I had made 3 energy improvements that really cut back my energy use. Cloths dryer from electric to ng, waterheater from regular electric to a Ge Geospring and installing ng fireplace and ng space heater for heat which eliminated electric use of the furnace,solarvic,
are you sure your power company will allow you to rollover your credits to the next year as not all are allowed to do so?
hmmm. thinking further and i hope i'm wrong about this,
in the case of no rollovers allowed for the new year it would actually start in jan and go through feb and maybe into march as a deficit or you owe on your electric. if going 3 months without a payment most will disconnect you for non-payment and they wouldn't consider that you would make it up later. to hold off any disconnects by the utility then i see a payment of at least 1 month is needed and they would tack on late fees and charges for floating a debt to them after that. if you make it that far then the solar would start to reverse what is used and eventually breakeven not in power produced, but more to overcome charges and fees incurred plus the power used costs to the months you did not pay for to avoid disconnection. after that breakeven month excesses should start to accumulate in your favor until fall when you hit the breakeven point. after that your excesses should ideally pay for the charges accumulating in late fall to winter's beginning until it reaches the new year again to start over.
i think state governments should force all power companies to allow a rollover of credits until march or april or eliminate these cutoff points altogether to allow renewable power sources to work for the people that invested in them and not for the power companies to unduly and unfairly profit from your investment. with the utility's way of starting at the beginning of the new year with no credits allowed to rollover allows power companies to penalize a solar gt connected home or business with late fees and penalties and possible disconnection for non-payment if you allow the debt to float very long.
like i said, i hope i'm wrong on this and this would vary from state to state too so what california does has no bearing on pennsylvania or new jersey or ohio, etc. etc. etc. and it may actually be this way in some places, but i don't know this for a fact. as a reminder, i am not using grid tied solar. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?solarvic,
are you sure your power company will allow you to rollover your credits to the next year as not all are allowed to do so?
hmmm. thinking further and i hope i'm wrong about this,
in the case of no rollovers allowed for the new year it would actually start in jan and go through feb and maybe into march as a deficit or you owe on your electric. if going 3 months without a payment most will disconnect you for non-payment and they wouldn't consider that you would make it up later. to hold off any disconnects by the utility then i see a payment of at least 1 month is needed and they would tack on late fees and charges for floating a debt to them after that. if you make it that far then the solar would start to reverse what is used and eventually breakeven not in power produced, but more to overcome charges and fees incurred plus the power used costs to the months you did not pay for to avoid disconnection. after that breakeven month excesses should start to accumulate in your favor until fall when you hit the breakeven point. after that your excesses should ideally pay for the charges accumulating in late fall to winter's beginning until it reaches the new year again to start over.
i think state governments should force all power companies to allow a rollover of credits until march or april or eliminate these cutoff points altogether to allow renewable power sources to work for the people that invested in them and not for the power companies to unduly and unfairly profit from your investment. with the utility's way of starting at the beginning of the new year with no credits allowed to rollover allows power companies to penalize a solar gt connected home or business with late fees and penalties and possible disconnection for non-payment if you allow the debt to float very long.
like i said, i hope i'm wrong on this and this would vary from state to state too so what california does has no bearing on pennsylvania or new jersey or ohio, etc. etc. etc. and it may actually be this way in some places, but i don't know this for a fact. as a reminder, i am not using grid tied solar.
Me too Neil, in fact on Dec 31 they settle up my excess with a dollar credit on the Jan1 bill @ $0.065 a kWh. Then we start over for the new year. This years credit was $149.07 about half of last years settle up, mostly I think because of the Volt charging. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
They use a tiered program here. The more you use, the more they charge. I guess they don't want to sell us electricity.
The so-called "winter baseline allowance" is 261 kWh/mo @ $0.13/kWh.
Any usuage above that 261 increases the cost per kWh as high as $0.31/kWh.
During the summer, the "summer baseline allowance" (June 5 - Oct 8 ) is about 1273 kWh/mo to 1404 kWh/mo, (depending on what mood they are in when they send their bill). Again, any usuage above that allowance, increases the cost per kWh as high as $0.31/kWh.
They add little nickel-and-dime charges for bonds, nuclear decommisioning charge, franchise fees, competition transition charge, new system generation charge, public purpose programs, state tax (and once a year, a special tax to pay for the governors drunken birthday party - well, not really, not yet anyway).
I think they installed their Smart-*ss meter in Nov '10. Since that installation we've used 2430 kWh of grid power. (We're NOT grid-tied).
Total electric charge Jan '11 to Jan '12 (13 mos) was about $226.31 (including the governor's birthday party tax). -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
I'm in the San Jose, California (Pacific Gas and Electric). I got connected in 2006, so don't have a smart meter on our grid-tied system.
Monthly connection fee: 0
Minimum kWh charge per day: 0.13 (1 kWh is charged, whether we use it or not)
Rate per kWh: 0.13 (assuming we stay on the lowest usage tier, not hard)
My brother in Honolulu is paying 0.32 / kWh, down from 0.35/kWh in December. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
Nice there MikeO
On my Feb 2012 bill the rate is $.0629 per kWh Six point Two Nine cents per kilo Watt hour.
I recently received a notice that First Energy will be REDUCING their rate next month!
Ohio Edison has been FAR more reliable than any of the others around me also. ( Dayton Power , Columbus and Southern)
Very few outages, No brownouts, and any outages were quickly (compared to others) repaired and up again.
Looks like anywhere I would move to I'd have to pay a higher rate.
All things included about 7.45 cents per kWh
Customer Charge 4.00
Distribution Related Component 15.35
Cost Recovery Charges 4.47
Bypassable Generation and Transmission Related Component 21.01
Total Charges: 44.83
Kilowatt Hours Used: 334
334/44.83= 7.4503685 -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
I have had flat-rate billing up to now, currently 8.4 cent/kWh and at my relatively low usage (compared to my neighbors anyway!) after taxes and fees and other such it's closer to 14 cents/kWh. During the summer high usage period it'll average closer to 10 cents/kWh.
Just signed up for "Variable Peak Pricing", which of course only takes effect during the summer months (June-Sept). Non-peak months are the same - 8.4 c/kWh. During Jun-Sep off-peak hours (everything but 2P-7P weekdays) go DOWN to 4.5 c/kWh while on-peak (2-7) can vary wildly depending on overall system demand. The price is set a day ahead (they will send an email / text / phone call, as the customer requests) at 5PM. Pricing during peak varies from a low of 4.5 c/kWh to 46 c/kWh. Since most of my usage is after-hours already, I ought to save a fair amount on the summertime bills. -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
My current electric bill is in. Cost is now: 5.89 CENTS per KWH !!! Yes! FIVE point Eight Nine Cents per kilo Watt Hour! -
Re: Cost per kWh: what do you pay?
I'm on a small electric Co-op here in VA and I pay $ 0.1103 kwh. Not sure what they will pay me.
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