Hacker News Reader

Isn’t that the case everywhere (in the USA)? Wholesale electricity is cheap, but you’ve gotta pay to have it delivered. If you’re a big enough customer (like a data center), you can pay near wholesale rate by building your own infrastructure to a large substation, but then you’re paying to maintain that infrastructure.

View on HN

Some areas like Kelso and Longview, WA have 4 cent per kWh delivered rates, but your paying a meter base charge of tens of dollars a month, which makes low usage households pay more to remain grid connected.

The marginal cost of generating electricity is different than the fixed price of maintaining the local grid infrastructure serving your home

I'm in WA, and my rate per kWh isn't quite that low, but the fixed "customer charge" is high enough that it ends up being about half of my total bill on average. I get that the utility needs income to maintain the infrastructure, which is particularly expensive per customer in rural areas.

What I don't like about this setup is that there's little incentive to conserve energy, invest in solar, etc. On the plus side, whenever I get an electric car, my "gas" will be practically free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com