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Another reason: consumers subsidize industry. Look up your local utility rates for high demand users. (These usually include things like factories or data cen

Another reason: consumers subsidize industry. Look up your local utility rates for high demand users. (These usually include things like factories or data centers.) They pay a lot less for energy than you do at home -- even though the power plant doesn't care if the electricity is used for your hair dryer or smelting aluminum. If the consumer goes solar, industry will suddenly have to pay their fair share of the bill.

hga 12y ago
You're ignoring all the ways it's cheaper to provide service to big, compact consumers like factories or data centers, vs. a big branching distribution network, more transformers and metering and billing costs. And then there's math is not optional details like power factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor), although I don't know how they play out for these different sorts of consumers, but it's important to realize the grid past power plants is anything but simple and passively operated. Plus factories can negotiate schedules of when they're pulling X amount of power, and most of them can shut down during extreme peak demand. It costs power companies a lot to avoid brownouts and blackouts during those worst periods of a year, and most of us home consumers don't have a firm deal to conserve during them. The biggest devil in the details of all of this is what comes after whatever is producing power, solar cells or conventional power plants, baseline and peaking. That is, after all, what this topic is about.
maratd 12y ago
I experienced the exact opposite with PSE&G in NJ. I had both a residence and an office in the same municipality. I was paying a higher rate per kWh at the office. Almost twice as much. When I asked them about it, they said it was because I was at an address marked as a business. I think this depends heavily on state-level regulation of the utility and market conditions for your segment.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  To be fair, you're talking about a third distinction in the eyes of utilities. They typical tier pricing by residential, commercial and industrial. It's not uncommon for commercial power to be more expensive than residential, but it's extremely uncommon for industrial power to cost more.
deleted 12y ago
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hga 12y ago

You're ignoring all the ways it's cheaper to provide service to big, compact consumers like factories or data centers, vs. a big branching distribution network, more transformers and metering and billing costs. And then there's math is not optional details like power factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor), although I don't know how they play out for these different sorts of consumers, but it's important to realize the grid past power plants is anything but simple and passively operated. Plus factories can negotiate schedules of when they're pulling X amount of power, and most of them can shut down during extreme peak demand. It costs power companies a lot to avoid brownouts and blackouts during those worst periods of a year, and most of us home consumers don't have a firm deal to conserve during them. The biggest devil in the details of all of this is what comes after whatever is producing power, solar cells or conventional power plants, baseline and peaking. That is, after all, what this topic is about.

maratd 12y ago

I experienced the exact opposite with PSE&G in NJ. I had both a residence and an office in the same municipality. I was paying a higher rate per kWh at the office. Almost twice as much. When I asked them about it, they said it was because I was at an address marked as a business. I think this depends heavily on state-level regulation of the utility and market conditions for your segment.

mikeyouse 12y ago
To be fair, you're talking about a third distinction in the eyes of utilities. They typical tier pricing by residential, commercial and industrial. It's not uncommon for commercial power to be more expensive than residential, but it's extremely uncommon for industrial power to cost more.

deleted 12y ago

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