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I am Italian. Currently paying around 0.2€/kWh (after all taxes and everything) Every house has a load limiter to 3KW. Anyone can ask an upgrade to 4.5KW, does

I am Italian. Currently paying around 0.2€/kWh (after all taxes and everything) Every house has a load limiter to 3KW. Anyone can ask an upgrade to 4.5KW, does not cost much and the price per kWh remains the same. I know exactly one person who has the upgrade (and does not even use it anymore). The limiter will let you go over limit for about a minute, then will stop, and you just have to go and flip the switch up again. That's how it has always been here. No big deal. You have to pay attention if you want quick heating on the furnace and kettle or laundry, yes. No big deal, almost everyone runs the laundry at night, the furnace and kettle can run together if you don't use the quick heating feature. Some microwaves at full power can get close to the limit by themselves. We don't really use electric heating though (which is a big difference), and if you leave in apartments, each apartment must have its own counter. We all have 240v only. The counter automatically reports the usage to the company, the new counters can be used as entry point for fiber optic internet (still largely unused though), I think it's difficult to find new contracts with activation costs. The big question is what is the limit, and the article says nothing on that. I am unsure but I think that here there can not be different contracts other than 3, 4.5kw (or more, but only for business). I think it's also very illegal to give different contracts depending on past paying history(which can not even be made available to any company), and our market has opened completely (used to have a single company) and you can not be limited to a single company (because they put down the cables for example). You can get disconnected for not paying, but I don't know the details and I don't think it's that easy either. All in all, we seem to pay more, but without hidden costs, and a lot more safeguards.

Scoundreller 5y ago
I'll assume you use natural gas for cooking and hot water. They're not too common in Canada. Maybe a big more common in Alberta (lots of fossil fuel extraction), but still, less common than Europe. Possibly with what's going on in Russia, Europe will move away from being gas-first. Electric space heating is exceedingly rare, unless you're really in the middle of nowhere off the natural gas network. and somehow can't/don't want to deal with propane or heating oil.
tlavoie 5y ago
I'm in Canada, and have electric heat. We've added a heat pump, being in a more temperate climate, but originally all the primary heat was electric baseboards with simple resistance heating. The baseboards still supplement the heat pump for rooms that we want warmer for example. Our stove is propane, but still needs electricity to run the oven's panel and glow plug igniter. We're in an area (island) without a gas pipeline, so the choices are electric, propane (portable tanks or delivered), or wood stoves. Space heating and hot water are definitely the largest hits to the hydro bill, but we'd be in a tough spot if the power tripped off completely for every transient load over the average.

Scoundreller 5y ago

I'll assume you use natural gas for cooking and hot water. They're not too common in Canada. Maybe a big more common in Alberta (lots of fossil fuel extraction), but still, less common than Europe. Possibly with what's going on in Russia, Europe will move away from being gas-first. Electric space heating is exceedingly rare, unless you're really in the middle of nowhere off the natural gas network. and somehow can't/don't want to deal with propane or heating oil.

tlavoie 5y ago

I'm in Canada, and have electric heat. We've added a heat pump, being in a more temperate climate, but originally all the primary heat was electric baseboards with simple resistance heating. The baseboards still supplement the heat pump for rooms that we want warmer for example. Our stove is propane, but still needs electricity to run the oven's panel and glow plug igniter. We're in an area (island) without a gas pipeline, so the choices are electric, propane (portable tanks or delivered), or wood stoves. Space heating and hot water are definitely the largest hits to the hydro bill, but we'd be in a tough spot if the power tripped off completely for every transient load over the average.