4 ms·

Honest question: is there any place in the US where electricity is subsidized or has discriminatory pricing?

mpalczewski 5y ago
California, sort of: They figure out what sort of place you own, pigeon hole it with other "similar" places and charge you more per kilowatt hour if you use more than they think you need. It's a procrustean bed approach.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
Electricity is routinely subsidized for large companies building new factories such as the GigaFactory Tesla is building in Nevada. You can also look up "name of area / state" and search for electrical tariffs.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Ok, but these subsidies are not based on a specific group. Some might think to be bad to subsidize Tesla, but would there be such a thing as subsidies for weed farmers? The reason I am asking: unless there are such subsidies, it would mean that people pay proportional to their usage, so OP's joke about "electricity neutrality" would not only be wrong, it would be against net neutrality as well.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    By way of example some states have discounted rates / special rates for cotton gins. Here is one. https://www.epelectric.com/files/html/Rates/TX_Tariff_Schedules/TX_Sch_No._34_Cotton_Gin.pdf https://www.epelectric.com/files/html/Rates/TX_Tariff_Schedu... Such things are complicated to figure out fully, the subsidized power might not be subsidized directly by the power generators / power distributors. In some cases two bills are generated for the duration of the power subsidy so the subsidized part only sees the subsidized rate.
jyrkesh 5y ago
A lot of electricity in the US is charged differently during "off-peak hours". I know some EV owners who take advantage of this by scheduling when they charge their cars.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Thanks, that's a more relevant example of discriminatory pricing. I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..."
  - jyrkesh 5y ago
    Probably not many, but you're probably not going to have much luck changing the minds of people on net neutrality. Judging from your comments, you and I probably agree on the issue, but I think technical folks in particular have pretty well-entrenched opinions on the topic.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..." Probably not, as it has nothing to do with where the electricity is coming from or how it's being used. Having different rates for different times of the day which still apply to all users and all services is not generally perceived as a violation of neutrality.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Suppose there was a broadband provider charging more for data transmitted when the network is congested, don't you think it would be a violation of net neutrality?
      - nybble41 5y ago
        No, not as long as they charged everyone equally for the same service during the congested times without regard for how the bits were being used. The point of net neutrality is that ISPs should ignore the content, source, and destination of the packets they carry when it comes to prioritization and pricing. QoS is fine as long as it's under the subscriber's control (for example, via DSCP tags), but it can be an issue if it leads to the ISP one subscriber's traffic over another's based on the services being accessed. Tiered services (paying for higher bandwidth, lower latency, etc.) are also fine so long as the tiers assigned to each class of traffic are chosen by the subscriber and not tied to specific protocols or peers. Consider the USPS as a model of neutrality: they offer various grades of service from bulk package deliveries to Priority Mail but everyone paying for the same service gets (more or less) equal treatment.
Qworg 5y ago
Definitely in WA state - certain counties with hydro plants sell power locally at ~$0.02 and sell outside the county at ~$0.2. They changed the definition of local after crypto miners flooded in to limit exploitatiom and boom/bust speculation.

California, sort of: They figure out what sort of place you own, pigeon hole it with other "similar" places and charge you more per kilowatt hour if you use more than they think you need. It's a procrustean bed approach.

JaimeThompson 5y ago

Electricity is routinely subsidized for large companies building new factories such as the GigaFactory Tesla is building in Nevada. You can also look up "name of area / state" and search for electrical tariffs.

rglullis 5y ago
Ok, but these subsidies are not based on a specific group. Some might think to be bad to subsidize Tesla, but would there be such a thing as subsidies for weed farmers? The reason I am asking: unless there are such subsidies, it would mean that people pay proportional to their usage, so OP's joke about "electricity neutrality" would not only be wrong, it would be against net neutrality as well.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  By way of example some states have discounted rates / special rates for cotton gins. Here is one. https://www.epelectric.com/files/html/Rates/TX_Tariff_Schedules/TX_Sch_No._34_Cotton_Gin.pdf https://www.epelectric.com/files/html/Rates/TX_Tariff_Schedu... Such things are complicated to figure out fully, the subsidized power might not be subsidized directly by the power generators / power distributors. In some cases two bills are generated for the duration of the power subsidy so the subsidized part only sees the subsidized rate.

jyrkesh 5y ago

A lot of electricity in the US is charged differently during "off-peak hours". I know some EV owners who take advantage of this by scheduling when they charge their cars.

rglullis 5y ago
Thanks, that's a more relevant example of discriminatory pricing. I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..."
- jyrkesh 5y ago
  Probably not many, but you're probably not going to have much luck changing the minds of people on net neutrality. Judging from your comments, you and I probably agree on the issue, but I think technical folks in particular have pretty well-entrenched opinions on the topic.
- nybble41 5y ago
  > I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..." Probably not, as it has nothing to do with where the electricity is coming from or how it's being used. Having different rates for different times of the day which still apply to all users and all services is not generally perceived as a violation of neutrality.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Suppose there was a broadband provider charging more for data transmitted when the network is congested, don't you think it would be a violation of net neutrality?
    - nybble41 5y ago
      No, not as long as they charged everyone equally for the same service during the congested times without regard for how the bits were being used. The point of net neutrality is that ISPs should ignore the content, source, and destination of the packets they carry when it comes to prioritization and pricing. QoS is fine as long as it's under the subscriber's control (for example, via DSCP tags), but it can be an issue if it leads to the ISP one subscriber's traffic over another's based on the services being accessed. Tiered services (paying for higher bandwidth, lower latency, etc.) are also fine so long as the tiers assigned to each class of traffic are chosen by the subscriber and not tied to specific protocols or peers. Consider the USPS as a model of neutrality: they offer various grades of service from bulk package deliveries to Priority Mail but everyone paying for the same service gets (more or less) equal treatment.

Qworg 5y ago

Definitely in WA state - certain counties with hydro plants sell power locally at ~$0.02 and sell outside the county at ~$0.2. They changed the definition of local after crypto miners flooded in to limit exploitatiom and boom/bust speculation.