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pstrateman

Their example is California, where electricity prices are about 0.40-0.65/kWh.

Sole source advanced cycle natural gas plants are about 0.08/kWh.

That's quite a lot of cost.

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I'm on LADWP and my rate is .19 per kWh, so you're off by 2-3x. Many municipal power companies are even lower.

If you're comparing using PG&E rates, I don't think a utility that has to pay off damages from causing one of the largest wildfires in history is a good metric for comparing costs of different sources of electricity.

I don't think the utility is the one paying off damages here.

They're paying significant damages. And it drives them to bankruptcy repeatedly. But at the end of the day there's just one grid.

Yes and then they turn around and immediately charge us, so it doesn’t seem like it is doing much.

There's no "turning around". You're in a place with a problem. The utility is not capable of wishing that away.

The utility could have fixed it with the money they got to fix it, of course.

PG&E has over 100k miles of electric distribution lines (excluding transmission). Their numbers state it's $3M per mile to bury a line. Did they get $300 billion?

60%+ of cost on my bill in northern CA is delivery, not generation. Which is dumb, cause it's a fixed cost charged as variable, but that's a separate discussion.

The 0.08/kWh includes delivery, it's more like 0.04/kWh without delivery.

Well, that's just not what you are actually charged for delivery in California.

It's done like that to try and approximately apportion the cost based on each user's use of the infrastructure.

The cost is almost entirely driven by peak use though, so what would actually be "fairer" (or at least more cost-reflective) is to charge the transmission cost based on your individual contribution to peak demand on the infrastructure. People kind of hate that though because it's difficult for most consumers to predict or control their contribution to peak demand, and for the same reason it doesn't drive behaviour change / more efficient use of the infrastructure as much as you'd like.

In the end it'd probably still be about 60% of your bill anyway.

Some industrial users are charged in this way, and that's another driver for battery adoption as you can avoid the peak spikes with batteries locally in the same way the larger grid does.

FWIW where I live in Sweden the delivery is charged based on peak usage also for residential customers. Based on average of top three peak kWh/h in a month.

Iowa has more renewables as a proportion than CA yet has lower electricity prices than the national average. There are a few examples like this. Raw retail prices are not an accurate reflection of anything. You actually have to do your homework properly.

Exactly. The price of Coke is based on where you're buying it not on the production cost.

Iowa and California are on the same grid.

They're both the exact same resource mix because it's the exact same grid.

Here's the resource mix https://feature.wecc.org/soti/topic-sections/resources/index...

The difference in cost is entirely contracting and last mile transmission.

A quick glance at this next map will show that Iowa is not in WECC (although Idaho is):

https://www.wecc.org/_catalogs/masterpage/wecc/Images/WI-Map...

Also, just because 2 states are interconnected doesn't mean that the interconnects have enough capacity for electricity sources to be fungible.

You're right they're on the eastern interconnect, which is even larger and harder to reason about.

Edit: After the 2003 blackouts the Eastern interconnect got much more... connected

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/UnitedSt...

This article did not touch on it that well I think. Its less about replacing gas plants and more about replacing the peaking plants. I know this is true in Texas at least. A lot of sites are adding battery systems to replace an older peaker. Its very cost effective.

Seems more like .26-.46/kWh[0] And at a quick glance that seems more likely (to me) to be a response to capital cost spikes after all the wildfires as well as higher labor costs for the state, rather than because they are shifting to batteries[1]. The delivery layer is definitely bloated though, I agree with you there. Personally I think that's a regulatory capture problem.

[0]https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

[1]https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

I honestly think PG&E is going to collapse. It’s $0.49 / kWh here, which means our power bill would be $600-1000 per month if we didn’t have solar.

Full off the grid with propane backup costs less than $80K. ($20K each for panels, batteries, install and generator — I’m wildly overestimating intentionally).

At $600 per month, it takes 11 years for cutting the cord to pay for itself. More realistic estimates lower that to under 5-6 years.

Having said that, there are ecological reasons to give them free electricity from our batteries and excess solar.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s cheaper to just build your own power plant and not do business with them.

Ultimately, someone needs to pay for grid maintenance, and, given the current insane market distortions, there’s hardly any economic incentive for individuals to continue to do so.

2000 kWh per month is crazy. Presumably that includes an electric car? Otherwise I don't even

Cooling (and heating) a 2.5k+ sq ft home with 10ft+ ceiling and open foyer will get you there easily.

If open foyer means what I think it means, an open foyer is pretty crazy.

Lots (most?) of 2 story US homes built in the last few decades have 20ft+ tall foyers or living room vaunted ceilings. Extremely inefficient for heating and cooling, especially since almost all have only 1 zone air conditioning.

https://www.homestratosphere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/...

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/two-story-foyer-design-ideas-p...

We have a small, >4mi/kWh EV, the heating / cooking is all electric, and the house is small and extremely energy efficient by US standards.

Our panels produce 2000-3000 kWh per month in the summer, which is when we actually hit 2MWh of usage.

In California I assumed open foyer means literally open to the elements.

I should have been clearer and written foyer with tall ceilings where air flows freely between the top and bottom floor of the house.

Probably the potential differences in climate and home sizes between America and Germany.

2000kWh is not that exceptional for a normal American sized home.

Peaker natural gas plants aren't that cheap. Batteries are competitive with peaker plants.

Edit: misread comment, please disregard!

Seems lower than CA right now: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

I believe historically that hasn't always been true, but I'd bet that after all the bad press Texas utilities are eager to keep their prices as low as possible. In about 20 years I'm guessing we'll find out if that's because they've been skimming off their capital costs or what

I didn't say that, it's from batteries and solar and wind.

Pretty in Texas is 0.02/kWh right now at wholesale. https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html

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