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My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil
by HtmlProgrammer 3mo ago
My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes
edit: I live in Ireland
- hunterpayne 3mo agoThat's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?
- Keloran 3mo agoI am going to assume based on the fact that the article is about Ireland, and Ireland uses the euro, the commenter is in Ireland
- keane 3mo agoAlso the mention of turf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B3rd_na_M%C3%B3na https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B3rd_na_M%C3%B3na
- hinkley 3mo agoThat makes it worse! A euro is worth about 10% more than a dollar. Ireland has a lot of oil in their power mix from what I'm seeing, so that makes a bit of sense. Maybe the high power cost is why they're deploying ~600GWh of new wind capacity per year for the last 15 years. Because at those rates the wholesale prices should be able to subsidize a lot of loans.
- hunterpayne 3mo agoWe don't measure capacity in GWh, we measure it in GW. And if Ireland had 600GW of wind, their entire island would be surrounded by a forest of windmills. Also, Ireland lacks any energy storage so none of that wind can be used for baseload, only variable load.
- hinkley 3mo ago> We don't measure capacity in GWh I cannot even express how much hatred I have for bad charts, and getting tricked by one anyway when I go in already expecting it to be lying to me is incandescently indescribable. On Wikipedia there's a very progressive-looking chart that is measuring in TWh/year and going up up up. And as you say, >Ireland lacks any energy storage so none of that wind can be used for baseload You always measure baseload in GW or if you're fancy, TW. So what that chart is really saying is that Wind is adding on average about 70 KW of capacity per year, when amortized over 24 hours. Which is probably on the order of an additional .3GW of capacity per year when the sun is shining and bupkis the rest of the time. Although given how overcast that region is, maybe measuring solar in TWh/year is a bit excusable, and then they end up measuring everything else that way?
- rsynnott 3mo agoIreland doesn't use oil for generation these days; the last oil plant closed a while back. We use a lot of _gas_, which is under a lot of price pressure at the moment.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoPaying 50 cents here in California. Running the electric oven costs literal dollars. However, this isnt new. Im hoping the data centers bring more attention to our state run cartel and push it over a tipping point.
- delichon 3mo ago18 cents here in New Mexico. You must be getting premium government services for paying all of that in California.
- lotsofpulp 3mo agoCalifornia utility prices are a function of income. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-costs/care-fera-program https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...
- mh- 3mo agoOnly the fixed portion is. So about $20 of my $400-800 monthly electric bill is income-based.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoNot really. There is a standard rate and then the companies are required by the state to offer an opt in low income tier. There was a push a year or two back to make it fully income based, where you would have to give the power company your w2 to determine your rate, but it was rejected (for now)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dymk 3mo agoI'm in the PNW and I pay 11c/kWh (well, I would, if I didn't have solar). Seattle is 13c, King County averages 16c. Where are you paying 5c/kWh? That's exceptionally cheap.
- hunterpayne 3mo agoNear Vancouver.
- devindotcom 3mo agoGuessing Vancouver WA (just north of Portland OR) not BC (Canada). For those not familiar with the area.
- hunterpayne 3mo agocorrect
- loeg 3mo agoSeattle is nearer 14c (13.75) and likely to increase over the next decade (because of nonsense like[1]). [1]: This alone will increase costs by something like 4c/kWh from these 70 year old dams: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/skagit-river-dams/seattle-mayor-sign-skagit-river-settlement-seattle-city-light-relicensing/281-ad111f28-8ecb-4b7a-b97e-8e0937804a0c https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/skagit-riv...
- Schiendelman 3mo agoSeattle now has variable rate. I pull most of my power at night, when it's 8c/kWh.
- loeg 3mo agoNice. I had heard they were planning this, but last time I looked into it, they hadn't rolled it out yet. You have some kind of home battery?
- mvdtnz 3mo agoA thread in which yet another American learns how ludicrously cheap the cost of living is in USA despite the constant neverending moaning. My power is USD$0.271/kWh and I'm nowhere near Ireland.
- dyauspitr 3mo agoYou pay $0.05/kWh? That’s insanely low and I though I had it good at $0.1/kWh.
- IncreasePosts 3mo agoAt 34 cents per kwh how can you afford to not get solar?
- hinkley 3mo agoBeing poor is expensive.
- bawolff 3mo agoI mean, if you own a house (you cant put solar on the roof of something you don't own), you probably do have access to loans. Houses make great collerateral. Not neccesarily saying it makes economic sense to get a loan to install solar, just that homeowners usually aren't the poor class that saying usually applies to.
- hinkley 3mo agoHow many people do you know who own a house? Not a mortgage, own. The housing market is such that a lot of people are overextended, and the mortgage market encourages people to change their definition of 'enough' house which makes it worse again. The fact that I don't have solar on my roof is substantially my own fault. I moved in a year after a subsidy ended and it contributed to my procrastination. But then my power grid is comparatively cheap and comparatively renewable, which also contributes. But I know a lot of people who know a lot of people who can't even stay on top of keeping their expected house repairs up. And that's also an investment in energy and your time and having construction people in your personal space for 2x as long as they estimated it would take.
- simonw 3mo agoThe Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
- WheatMillington 3mo agoWhat kind of question is that? Without knowing anything about the person's geography or local cost of solar, how can you make such a bold assessment of affordability? I live in New Zealand where the capital cost of solar is very expensive and the climate is OK-not-great for solar generation. Even at 30c/kwh the payback (without batteries) is still 15 to 20 years. Not an obvious choice, especially as the capital cost is still declining.
- socialcommenter 3mo agoIt's crazy that people have to eat the long payback time to switch to renewable, while these wildly profitable (maybe?) data centers can just drink excessively from the grid or switch on natural gas turbines, and skip the lead times/upfront costs. If they're so productive, make them eat the cost and lead time so we can all have a cheap, functional electricity grid. It would be so easy to mandate no new data centres unless they can procure their own renewable sources of electricity.
- onel 3mo agoFor people outside of Ireland: these rates are not the norm. They are usually around 20-22. Can go down 17 if on special plans, or even 12 if you have an electric car.
- HtmlProgrammer 3mo agoActually as of July 1st it is now 38 cents. This is very much the norm https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/news/detail/electric-ireland-announces-price-change-from-1st-of-july-2026 https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/news/detail/elect...