What we should do is pay a large flat monthly fee for the grid connection, then a lower rate for generation/usage, rather than bundling the delivery costs in. This is how many other utilities (Gas, Water, etc.) are billed, and it makes much more sense. This would also line up better for people with solar panels, as those who choose to leverage a grid connection would lay in line with their utility, or could choose to go off-grid, if they didn't want to pay for the availability of the grid.
When you’re trying to solve public policy problems especially where conservation is concerned the notion of math gets complicated very quickly.
Water is different in that we really only have usage concerns about water, AFAIK there is never any issue with the water pressure drops at peak times (perhaps thanks to water towers). With electricity the concerns are mostly about the peak usage, and not so much the overall usage.
$0.15/kWh seems like enough to begin the dis-incentivizing of usage, and that can certainly be pushed up more.
So you’re asking for a regressive rate in electricity.
If your solution to a public policy issue is “why don’t we just” then you don’t understand the issue. I’m just pointing out externalities that you guys aren’t thinking about when shooting the shit about upcharging low income families and allowing the rich to get richer. You are contributing to the problems we complain about.
Note: the most recent English document still describes this as "planned", but it has been approved and has gone into effect with the start of 2023.
The difference is though that the state subsidies the "cheaper" rate. When a customer has consumed the subsidized amount of electricity or gas, they pay the full market price.
Also I thought PG&E still had the reverse situation, of people voluntarily paying more for green power.
Also, the companies for infrastructure and that provide the actual energy are separate but the energy supplier charges for the infrastructure provider. The infrastructure provider is semi privatised while the energy supplier is fully privatised.
It kind of works, except that we need like everyone else, to upgrade the power grids to deal with increased consumption and we haven’t invested in that.
That's...not a lot of power. O_o Is it common to get that little amount of power?
I have 200 amps going to my house, but the master breaker on my panel is 160 amps. My car charger alone is 48 amps. When I had an electric stove, that was on a 40 amp breaker.
Only recently, with the introduction of climate goals and ditching gas, houses are getting heavier connections. Electric ovens are typically 16A, although induction cooking stoves are getting 32A or 3phases.
The 22kW car charger is by far the most power hungry device and needs 3x32A.
This is the absolutely worst way to bill. It enourages wasteful use and hits very hard the poorest people who can't afford the flat fee.
I do agree there should be a connection fee, like an Internet connection, that covers fixed costs. Watts cost more than bytes, so a usage fee makes sense too.
Good question! The more power you generate locally, the less you need to transmit along expensive infrastructure, so it is actually in the interest of utilities to utilize and pay for all of the generation capacity they can as close to the consumer as possible. You can't get any closer to the consumer than paying their neighbor to power their house!
This is true, but I don't think the savings on infrastructure scales linearly with the distributed power generated. For example, if you generate 1 MW of distributed power, that reduces the load on wires, transformers and towers across the grid, and may even mean you can eventually use cheaper gear at your next replacement, but it's not going to eliminate the baseline costs (towers, wires, transformer sites, etc.) of serving any particular customer or region.
Increasing capacity is really expensive.
It’s cheaper for them to do stuff like buy every customer a more efficient refrigerator or insulate their attic than build a new power plant so they go for schemes like that.
First you pay for the electricity itself, can be from anyone, as on the level of the country in question electricity is entirely fungible.
Next is the connection or standing fee. Make sense, eventually you have to pay for the transformer and cabling to your home, even if in some location this is rather high.
And final piece is taxes + transfer fee paid by kWh. Again, you have pay for the local grid and charging by use makes some sense.
There is two prices that vary per use and one that doesn't. And reasonably so. Maintaining existing lines have a cost.
