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In Sweden there are 2 separate charges, one for infrastructure and one for consumption. The infrastructure bill scales with how big your breakers/fuses (English
by lillecarl 5y ago
In Sweden there are 2 separate charges, one for infrastructure and one for consumption. The infrastructure bill scales with how big your breakers/fuses (English) are while consumption scales with how many KWh you've used. You often have a different infra provider and power provider.
For someone living in a condo/apt the infra cost is usually higher than consumption while in houses where heating often is powered by some heat-pump system(drill, air, ground) consumption is higher.
Houses with district heating can scale down their capacity to lower the infra price.
- secabeen 5y agoYes, this model is common in other utilities in the US (both by water and gas bills are structured this way), with a large meter fee and a consumption charge in line with the resource cost. Electricity could certainly be charged this way (and should), but it would be a huge change in how electricity is billed here, and the PUC would rather just make changes to just the net-metering system rather than open the can of worms of a full rate re-write.
- Bilal_io 5y agoThat's how it is for electricity in Texas. You pay a delivery charge, and then usage charge, both based on kw/h.
- junon 5y agoYou also pay for power you don't even use, from other power providers, in the case of extreme crisis, it seems. I've never lived there but from the outside Texas's power situation seems broken at best.
- Bilal_io 5y agoThat's accurate. We're in constant fear of losing power whenever there is a freeze warning (we're on that today and tomorrow at least), rain or heat. That's all thanks to the greedy for-profit system enabled by "conservative" politicians.
- hunterb123 5y agoThat's not really accurate. I've lost power 4 times total in 30 years here. Usually big Texas thunderstorms, never heat. The 100 year winter freeze I lost power for two days, that was the longest ever. Haven't lost power since then, didn't lose power for a couple years before that. We have the cheapest rates because of the way distribution and providers are setup. The problem with big user bills were SV companies like Griddy tricking people into buying variable rate electricity, something we made illegal since then.
- Bilal_io 5y agoI am not denying your experience, but I was talking about my own. I lost power for over 3 hours just 2 nights ago. And since the horrible experience we had in February 2021 we (me and everyone I know) have been living in fear it might happen again. A quick look at Centerpoint's own outage tracker[1] shows outages everywhere in different parts of Texas. 1. https://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/?WT.ac=OC_Image_Callout https://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/?WT.ac=OC_Im...
- nomel 5y agoI don't see why "fear" is necessary. Power has never been a constant. When I was a kid we had a box of candles under the sink and warm blankets stacked in the garage, and some emergency food/water to last a week. Now that I'm an adult, I still have the same. I don't understand this trust and expectation of flawless infrastructure, where "fear" would come into play. Inconvenience, sure. You should be able to easily remove the fear aspect, with minimal preparation.
- Spooky23 5y agoBecause in the pursuit of efficiency, we are less resilient. I maintain a old inefficient boiler for my home. It has a pilot light and stays lit as long as there is service. It costs me about $250-400 more annually vs an efficient boiler.
- 5y ago
- secabeen 5y agoBut that's the problem! The cost of the grid is the same whether it delivers you 100kWh or 10,000kWh. The delivery charge should be a fixed monthly charge, based on the size of your meter, not scaled to the number of kWh you consume.
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoIt encourages you to use more electricity though, which is not good.
- zbrozek 5y agoThe current system in PG&E territory encourages me to prefer gas to electricity everywhere I'm able to make the choice. That's surely worse.
- Panzer04 5y agoOnly if it means you’d prefer resistive heaters to heat pumps. In home gas is more efficient than a resistance heater.
- zbrozek 5y agoFalse; the heat pump is still more expensive. You need COP of >=4 with baseline rates, and it only gets worse from there (the baselines are tiny, and TOU is also bad). Heat pump water heaters only barely scratch 4 under ideal conditions, so you'll generally do worse with a HPWH than with a condensing gas one. Arithmetic is about the same for home heating systems. Basically around here (PG&E) you should only electrify if you can also get your electrons from not-the-grid.
- sokoloff 5y agoEncourages you in what way? Your bill is still higher the more energy you consume, just increasing more slowly than if the rates were higher. Many believe (and I’m inclined to agree) that encouraging a switch from locally burned fossil fuels to electricity is better even if that electricity is currently* generated partially from fossil fuel. The theory is the electric plants could more easily become cleaner than if millions of home need to have their heating equipment upgraded. The problem where I am is that natural gas is so cheap (though less than previously) that it’s hard to make electric heating competitive. * no pun intended
- Dma54rhs 5y agoThe way electricity market in Texas works in general looks very similar to EU countries.
- danans 5y agoIn CA it's the same these days with the advent of community choice aggregators (CCA) [1]. If a CCA is available in your area, and you choose to use it, you pay the main utility for transmission/distribution, but the CCA for energy, both on per kWh basis. It all gets aggregated on the same (confusing) bill. Because they control the energy sourcing, CCAs can offer things like 100% carbon-free or 100% renewable plans. Some even subsidize batteries to add to homes in exchange for a portion of the stored energy capacity. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Choice_Aggregation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Choice_Aggregation
- Arainach 5y agoI've seen this model, but it seems counterproductive to any environmental goals. For instance, my water infrastructure bill absolutely dwarfs my usage. I could take an hourlong shower every day and barely notice the increase in my bill. It seems like it's sending the wrong message.
- secabeen 5y agoIs water scarcity a thing in your area? Perhaps your water is cheap because its readily available in your area. In Chicago, they have so much water in Lake Michigan, most homes don't even have water meters.
- manquer 5y agoLiving close to a water source or reservoir doesn’t make conservation less important.It is a intricate system with complex interconnects A lot of places downstream will be using the water from your Lake /Dam /river as their only source. Same reason why in some states like Colarado it is illegal to rain water harvest. Riparian rights and ethics are complex
- secabeen 5y agoFair. I still prefer an honest system that charges a fair, flat rate for the infrastructure, and then a usage charge for usage. If we want to disincentive usage, we can put a tax on the consumption rate; that's certainly better than wrapping up some/all of the infrastructure costs into the consumption rate just to make the latter higher.
- manquer 5y agoIt is not just about conservation and high consumption. For example, it is lot easier to build infra when you charge people 4x their consumption cost as single item, than split into line items. When you need to build a new power plant the infra costs are going to shoot a lot and nobody would want to pay for that when they see an line item for infra. Every SaaS company and all of Cloud is built on this human behavior . I would even go so far to say that even mortgage, insurance, any credit business depends on this behavior. Most people would pay extra for their server by hour or second rather than pay for consumption + infra. Also infra costs split equally is unfair ? if you consume more, more of the infra costs have to be apportioned to that person right ? Basically if power plant producer 1000MW the person consuming 900MW has to pay 90% cost of building the plant in addition to paying 90% for consumables for generating that 1000MW . The solution here is to have spread between buy / sell rates which account for distribution losses, maintenance, infra and storage and peak capacity planning etc
- OJFord 5y agoYeah, similarly in the UK we have a 'standing charge' (£/day) in addition to the 'unit charge' (£/kWh) - same provider though. And I can't see why it wouldn't tie up with the reality of the costs. (Competitive downward pressure, and no silly anti-competitive cap as there is on variable £/kWh pricing.) From memory mine's about £6-7pcm.
- pmyteh 5y agoThe cap was never really intended to be a fixed price for electricity: the main purpose was to ensure people with an arbitrary supplier (chosen by previous tenants, or the landlord, say) and who weren't canny enough to notice they were being overcharged and shop around, didn't get ripped off too badly. Lots of people who stayed with the descendant of their old regional electricity board paid over the odds, for example, because consumer inertia meant it was profitable for them not to have competitive prices. That all electricity prices are now essentially at the cap, so it's also acting as a floor, was not intended or particularly anticipated, I think.
- emeraldd 5y agoHad to look up `district heating` ... that's a not a common thing in the US.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating
- jrockway 5y agoIt's a thing in the US. If you're ever walking around Manhattan and see steam coming out of a traffic cone, that's the side effect of district heating (groundwater hitting the very hot steam pipes and vaporizing).
- andi999 5y agoWhich should not happen, I mean do you not insulate the pipes?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 5y agoWon't insulating the pipes reduce the heating effectiveness?
- KptMarchewa 5y agoNo. It would reduce transport losses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated_pipe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated_pipe
- lillecarl 5y agoNot a common thing != not a thing
- FabHK 5y agoHa, in Germany it's called "Fernwärme", which corresponds nicely to "teleheating" (which Wikipedia lists as an alternative name). It's great, not only does electricity and water magically come from a wall in your basement, but also heat :-) I thought they had abandoned the idea of using heat from a nuclear power plant for district heating in Russia, but apparently that is actually done [1, 2] extensively. Having a pipe into your house directly (well, not directly, indirectly, but still) from the nuclear power plant next door... not sure how I'd feel about that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#Tertiary_cooling_circuit_and_district_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#Tertiary_cooling_circuit_... [2] https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclea...
- tempnow987 5y agoThis is common in the US as well actually. A-10 rates for example in PG&E land have a demand charge - https://www.pge.com/en_US/small-medium-business/your-account/usage/manage-your-usage/usage-terms-definitions.page#:~:text=Demand%20charge%3A%20A%20measurement%20of,during%20a%20monthly%20billing%20cycle https://www.pge.com/en_US/small-medium-business/your-account.... Basically, based on breaker size. If you have a 400A breaker you might pay $2,000 / month demand charge. Usage might be small (sometimes these loads are spikey). It's not uncommon for folks to then pay more attention to peak load if you pay based on breaker size effectively.
- clairity 5y agothis is a form of two-part pricing[0], which is a compromise between simple (single) pricing and continuous pricing (aka perfect price discrimination) to maximize value capture with minimal complexity. two-part pricing also tends to make markets (from the demand-side) more rational and efficient, but that's not often the reason it's employed, which is why regulation is often needed (particularly in monopoly markets). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-part_tariff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-part_tariff
- cameldrv 5y agoIt seems like what is getting lost here is that the reason PG&E only charges for usage and not a fixed connection fee is that that's what the state wanted. They wanted heavy users to pay a disproportionate share of costs to encourage lower usage. In fact, they even put in a "climate credit", which is a fixed rebate users get that effectively makes the connection fee be negative.
- tguvot 5y agothere is a minimal usage fee, which is essentially connection fee
- m463 5y agoPunative pricing in california is really a disservice to customers/consumers. In just about every other business, if you use a lot of something, you get a discount. For california electricity, it's the opposite.
- ketzo 5y agoIt's a matter of tradeoffs. California electric companies – and PG&E in particular – desperately need to decrease load during fire season so that they have more flexibility in the grid. It's important for them to try and disincentivize power usage pretty much however they can. Plus, using less power is better for the environment.
- zbrozek 5y agoIs using less power really better? People are going to use energy and this is driving loads to other sources of energy, typically gas. Most (but not all) people I know are avoiding electrification on economic grounds.
- cool_dude85 5y agoIt's a disservice to the high-usage customers, who want to offload their environmental costs onto their grandkids and/or countries less equipped to deal with climate change. Soak 'em, I say.
- sfteus 5y agoThis is the case at least in some parts of the US as well. I believe in all of Texas (North Texas here), your costs are broken down by energy costs and delivery costs, the latter of which is paid to your TDU to maintain the infrastructure. For our plan the delivery charge is roughly 45% of the kWh price.
- pabs3 5y agoWhy is it based on breaker/fuse size? Surely the cost should be based on cost of maintenance over the entire grid over the last year divided by the amount of customers using the grid?
- moogly 5y agoOverprovisioning/grid stability.