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Comment by elif | Hacker News Reader

GP customer here.

They have a monopoly anyway, so they will recover costs one way or another anyway.

Also, we pay some of the lowest energy rates in the country so there's not much to be mad about. Overnight I pay $0.01/kwh ($0.03 if you include fees).

Lastly, why get mad when you can get solar.

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Wow, I thought my $0.08/kWh in PNW was great.

Note that elif said "overnight" rate. I'm pretty sure they're on the EV rate plan from GA Power[1]. You only get that rate at night, and you pay a pretty punitive $0.21/kwh for any peak usage. As they mentioned, that's a pretty solid number for the marginal rate you'll pay for an extra kwh, but there are a number of base fees tacked on to that. I'm not on the EV plan, but my average out the door winter final rate is about $0.13/kwh and my summer rate ends up being more like $0.17/kwh.

[1] https://www.georgiapower.com/residential/billing-and-rate-pl...

Oh, that makes more sense.

Still great for charging your EV overnight

Pff, your punitive 21¢/kWh is cheaper than our overnight 25¢/kWh or so in the Bay Area :P

Is night time energy still cheaper than day time? I thought that with the rise of cheap solar, day time energy would have been cheaper by now.

That also incentivizes home battery systems. Charge it up overnight and then use the battery power during peak times. It's a good deal for the power company if you do that too because it reduces amount of swing in the grid.

It also incentivises solar, which provides super cheap energy during the day.

Yup during peak hours I'm usually pumping 3-5 kw to the grid. It's a win-win.

GA Power net metering is still limited access, right? Did you have to wait on a wait-list to get approved for it?

I modeled buying a few Tesla Powerwalls to do time of use shifting, and it didn't make any sense from an investment standpoint. It's a great incentive if you were buying the battery backup anyway, but not as an investment.

It's worth noting that the "punitive" peak is only 5 hours, does not include weekends, and is only for 4 months out of the year.

And since it is during peak solar hours, I've never had to pay that rate once.

Jesus. I pay 28c/kWh + 8c/kWh delivery (and many other fees that add to another 7c/kWh).

California costs are unhinged. I'm extremely excited to get my ducks in a row and move out.

These are MA prices.

Oops; wrong guess then. Still, that's extremely high and I'm glad it wasn't a destination on my list. I'm thinking of moving from CA to the southeast to escape the cost of living. Probably KY, TN, GA, SC, or NC.

If the US is so big on the free market, why are there monopolies everywhere? In Netherland I can choose who to buy my energy from (I buy mine from a company that provides only green energy).

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