Hi.

A couple of friends and I were talking about the cost of electricity, and the merits of wind turbines and the like for lowering bills for standby equipment. It got me thinking, and I'm now wondering what prices people outside the uk (or inside it for that matter) pay for their electricity.

For example, I am currently with Npower (incompetent twits, but this is common with utility companies in my experience ), and their rates are 19.54p per kWh up to the first 728kWh per year, and a mere 9.06p/kWh after that. This is, incidentally, about twice what it was two years ago. For north americans, this is about US$ 0.3674 and US$0.17 per kWh respectively.

I pay around £40 a month for electricity, and that's after being fairly militant about cutting power usage wherever possible.

How much do YOU pay for electricity, eh?

pca

I just happened to have my PG&E bill right in front of me. So this is for San Francisco:

The baseline quantity is 324.8 Kwh @ $0.1143/kWh
101-130% of Baseline is $0.12989/kWh

My montly bill ranges from $35-$45 or so, including gas.

My latest bill works out to about $0.1176 per kWh. Last year, same month: $0.0947.

Holy shit. I use more power than that on computers alone. Last month, my rate was .10948, but I used 3186 kWh, so that comes to $348.81. Then again, I'm running my full house, about 2000 square feet worth, a FEMA trailer in the front yard, where I actually am living, and a pool. The only time I EVER had a power bill in the $80 range was when I was living alone in a single bedroom condo where I shared all but one wall.

There are two parts of my bill. "Delivery Charges" and "Market Supply Charges."

Delivery Charges:
First 250 KWH @ $0.05557 each
Next XXX KWH @ $0.05864 each

Market Supply Charges:
762 KWH (my last month's usage) @ $0.10597

My total bill last month for 762 kWh + various taxes/surcharges was $137.53.

Orange & Rockland

Last month my bill was $540.55 for 3701 Kwh used, it works out to 0.14605512 per Kwh. It is a large house and the AC is around 70 - 75 depending on the time of the day. We use a timer on the hot water heater to help lower the bill.

I also have a Watts up pro? used to test different usage in the house.

Ouch, AC really does hit the power... I got my place down to sub 400kWh/month. Then again, all the heating and most of the cooking is gas (there's an electric oven, but it doesn't get used much compared to the hob). We'd probably be down quite a bit more if we'd have sorted out the washing line and not needed to run the dryer at all.

"Dark current" of the house was the cable modem, router (switchmode PSU used instead of the supplied brick), and shuttle PC running the X10 control - total about 2kWh/day. Getting rid of the shuttle would have saved about 40kWh, but my experiments with Epia boards and windows didn't go down very well

Hugo

I am in the office at the moment, so I will post mine a little later. But I wanted to ... (I barely avoided a horrible pun here) ... make a recommendation for alternative power generation.

In NJ, we have the split bills for electrical power generation and delivery. (See Rob's post.) But we also have a Clean Power Choice program. Basically, it allows us to "select" a different power generator that uses renewable / clean energy sources. There are a number of options from various companies. I personally use a 50% wind, 50% small hydro option from New Jersey Wind for 100% of my consumption.

Granted, this increases the cost of the generation portion of my bill by between $20-30 a month. I pull from the grid like everyone else and everything else remains the same. But I at least have the illusion that the electricity that I pulled from the grid was generated completely from CO2 free renewable sources...

(Before anyone says it, I know that the power I pull from the grid is just from the general pool. I know I am not getting a "specific" source, etc. I just like the illusion that I offset that much generation from coal & nuclear with cleaner sources, and that I am funding / supporting / "voting for" clean energy generation with my selection.)

Australia:

About A$0.138/kWh + A$5.335/month for regular electricity here.
Also A$0.2609/day (compulsory) for our ambulance cover.
We also have "off-peak" electric tariffs for hot water in a lot of cases. Basically it's just a controlled supply to spread demand using a ripple control receiver and a reduced rate (as cheap as A$0.05665/kWh)

Our monthly electricity usage here over the past year has ranged from 600 to 700 KWH per month. The billing is somewhat over complicated, but when I just take the total of rates, surcharges, and taxes, and divide that into the KWH numbers, it gives about C$0.08/KWH, or about C$53/month on average.

We also have gas for heat, hot water, and cooking. The gas charges totalled about $$1075 for the past 12 months, or about C$89/month.

Our largest energy abuser is the (heated) waterbed. Our 24/7 mini-ITX server + DSL + switch also contribute, but not nearly so much as a 24/7 fullsize PC would have. No A/C.

The worst contributor, is the fact that we both work at home, which means the heat (this *is* Canada, remember) doesn't get turned down during the day, and we have a lot of other electric gadgets (lights, RAID servers, notebooks, various embedded gizmos, empegs, ..) running much of each day in support of earning a decent income.

Cheers

If you're thinking of a Windsave unit I'd take a look here:

http://forum.downsizer.net/search.php?mode=results

and

http://www.aecb.net/forum/index.php?action=search2

before buying.

In Atlanta, my rate is between $0.095 and $0.10 / kWh. My usage is between 500 and 700 kWh average, with August in the 900 kWh range.

I bought a Kill-A-Watt to find out what is consuming the most. These only cost $20-$25, and I found it helpful finding out where the power is going.

Germany:

I pay 0,1949 Euro/kWh for the usage and 9,28 Euro/month basic-price. I need 4000 to 5000 kWh per year, mainly on electronic stuff (computer, central, DSL, etc.), cooking, washing-machine, dishwasher and water-bed. The heating is gas and is billed extra. We don't have AC here, not even in summer, it's unusual for private houses.

There are slightly cheaper sellers, but mine is 100% of water and wind power.
The price is including taxes.