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Comment by ev1 | Hacker News Reader

$0.05 to $0.10/kWh seems like normal pricing.

Average US house uses ~1100-1200 kWh (I don't actually know this, based on googling, assuming most places in Texas are standalone houses) per month.

If prices are $3000-9000 per MW, then ~40 to 60 kWh/day (let's be generous, people are explicitly turning on heat for this extreme cold) for a week...

Even $2/kWh (which was exceeded days ago) would demolish peoples' budgets.

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I think most people are on fixed prices though. The supplier gets a big mark up over the wholesale cost and then is expected to have a plan to deal with situations like this.

Griddy is a different provider which gives you grid prices for power

Yeah, this is the answer to slater's question, that some people have signed up for exposure to wholesale prices.

griddy's twitter is full of people angrily demanding refunds because "i signed up for cheaper rates and it's been cheaper til now why am i paying higher rates??? this is a scammer"

Those prices are far below normal prices. Normal is 28-50 cents in places like San Diego (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...).

In Texas griddy exposes you to real time spot pricing. I was frequently getting paid to use electricity at night due to excess generation by wind. As an electric car owner this was fantastic as I frequently got paid to recharge my car. My average delivered rate before this week was 7c/kwh all in.

Does anyone there get a battery system, like a Tesla Powerwall, to save up negative priced night electricity to use in the daytime?

It doesn't happen enough that I've seen to make it worthwhile

Of course, during these cold snaps, the battery doesn't really work well, right?

Powerwalls have an operating temperature range of -4 F to 122 F (-20 C to 50 C), although they recommend 32-86 F (0-30 C).

They can also be mounted indoors.

My power comes from, I believe, a nuclear plant in Wisconsin.

$0.098 per kW-h, with $15 a month connection fee.

Wi has a lot of coal by the lake, where is there a nuke? Chicago was almost all nukes at one point

Point Beach is still operating afaik. Kewaunee shut down several years ago though.

CA power is hilariously expensive compared to the rest of the country. 10c is much closer to average.

The weighted average price is 10.54¢ per kwh. In California it's 16. Both 5 and 35¢ are pretty poor estimates.

I paid $.36 last month living an hour north of SF.

Average or marginal? Most PG&E customers have a “baseline allowance” with a higher marginal cost as you draw more energy over the month.

Marginal. I was doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation about getting an EV and realized that the $/mile cost to charge it would be about the same as paying for gasoline on a car which gets 30 mi/gallon.

I'm paying 8.5-8.3 cent kWh on a fixed contract.

Power is very very very cheap in Texas.

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