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Comment by zbrozek | Hacker News Reader

Where does the pricing data come from? The page for my own utility, PG&E, says the average residential rate is around $0.12, but no plan exists anywhere close to that. Residential plans start at $0.32.

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Data comes from the EIA. They release company revenues ($), sales (kWh), and # of customers for residential. We calculate the rate as revenues / sales (and correcting for units). It's a bit more nuanced than that, like we sum up all of the revenues and sales for each company that is owned by or merged into the specific company (adjusting for % ownership as well). The numbers are definitely not perfect, and for many companies are a year behind (they only report to the EIA yearly), so that's why there might be a major different in prices (there has been a MAJOR increase in electricity prices in the past couple of months). There are some companies that we have exact rate data for, and those rates are visible on the page when that's the case.

They haven't been $0.12 in PG&E territory since ~2010. Seems like the data source must be very misleading.

I decided to look into this, because the data is often a bit off, but not by this much. It turns out there was an error in the calculations. For some providers, we extrapolate the values based on historical data, and in this case, it was being done incorrectly. The values have been updated here: https://findenergy.com/providers/pacific-gas-and-electric-co...

It looks a lot closer to the numbers you've been quoting now (hitting 31 cents / kilowatt hour in March). Thanks for catching that.

this is an important observation on rates -- IMO a typical way to cheat at the executive levels is to state as fact some rate or charge in a long overview with many other details. Then, when that rate or charge is implemented, away from oversight and review, actual charges are not the same, due to "special fees" or categories. This practice is far older than digital record keeping.

EIA says the average retail price was 18¢ in California in 2020, and though not all of California is PG&E territory, that is a data point.

The residential rate I pay in Palo Alto is 16 cents. PG&E is one of the most expensive providers in the state. That's why bay area datacenters are concentrated in Santa Clara and use Silicon Valley Power.

I hope that if V2G happens we'll start seeing electricity arbitrage from Santa Clara to nearby communities. We desperately need competition in that market.

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