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Comment by fowkswe | Hacker News Reader

I know people who spend $480 per month.

Yep. I had electric water heater (60A @ 120v) and still use a small electric AC unit (12A). And I still can't find anything that matches incandescent or halogen lights (I'd pay a lot for real, bright, warm lights, not the ugly yellowish fluorescent, or the weird off-white LED stuff - some LEDs are getting close, but not good enough for residential). Electricity costs were over $480 some months.

This is Guatemala, where I don't trust the grid much. I ended up buying ~$1000 worth of portable battery backups (UPS) and plug them in wherever I need it, but they need replacing every couple of years.

It'd be much simpler to have a simple battery pack, although I'm not sure this would handle the load.

Electric bills in Hawaii can top $1000/month.

IIRC, that's because of the silly way (given Hawaii's abundant solar and geothermal resources) in which most electricity is generated in Hawaii: burning imported fossil fuels. If the local renewables were fully exploited, I can't think of a reason for costs to be so high.

You're right! Hawaii's utility is fighting against solar installations, and I see Tesla's energy solution coming in to push the uptake of solar installs in Hawaii.

You don't have to wait on the utility for their approval if you're not connected to them.

The island layout doesn't help either. The geothermal resources are all on the Big Island, and that's also where it would be easier to install large-scale solar facilities. But the main energy usage is on Oahu, and there isn't an inter-island power grid.

Yeah, anyone in the northeast US with electric heat.

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