Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

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You've given me two links [0] that show on average the US has notably more expensive electricity than China, and one link [1] that shows there is a lot of intra-country variance in the US which isn't really evidence because there will also be large intra-country variance in China.

How are you getting from that to "China pays more for power than American industry"? Could you do a summary in one place? Your links seems to support the opposite conclusion but maybe you've got something going on across a few comments that I've missed.

I also went to look at the absolute numbers out of interest and China produces 8 PWh total and the US 4 PWh total according to [2] and playing around with the "Electricity production by source" graph. Although obviously that means per-capita the US is still a way ahead.

[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/ & https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy#country-profiles

> two links [0] that show on average the US has notably more expensive electricity than China

The median American pays more for everything than the median Chinese. Including power. For electricity, particularly for households, the difference is largely taxes.

The median kWh purchased in America, however, is bought for less than it is in China because power-hungry industry happens where it is cheap. This cost difference is partly because China underproduces energy by a third [1]. It’s partly because we make power more cheaply [2]. The first gives us security. The second economic advantage. (It’s also why ditching coal and oil is easier for America than it currently is for China.)

Also, fun fact: electricity is getting cheaper in America, and has been for at least forty years [3]. (Those are household figures. No ready source for industry, but same tale, you can deflate historic prices using the PPI.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_p...

[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

[3] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-...

Well, I appreciate your dedication to responding after I kicked off this thread. Given the first response I didn’t feel it was worth the time to continue engaging, but you hit pretty much every point I would have.

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