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Comment by jjav | Hacker News Reader

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jjav·

The PG&E rates are hard to believe for anyone outside their grip of death. From my February bill:

peak: 53.0 + 18.3 = 71.3 c/kWhw

partpeak: 51.3 + 11.1 = 62.4 c/kWh

offpeak: 34.4 + 09.8 = 44.2 c/kWh

Electricity is my third largest monthly expense (after mortgage and food) but at the current rate of increases, it'll be the second largest in a few years.

This is for a tiny house with nothing special using electricity.

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What the actual fuck. I live in Germany and pay ~35c/kWh, I thought power was supposed to be cheap in the states.

In bengaluru, which is notorious for is high electricity rates, I pay an equivalent of 10c a unit. As a part of a government subsidy, my first 200 units are free too!

The US is big. It is very location dependent and whether your utility is private or public.

I live in rural Washington and my rate is $0.0634/kWh. My utility is a public one and also non-generating. The power comes from a Federal agency(Bonneville Power Administration) which is is in turn overseen by the Department of Energy.

I believe that PG&E, even more than high housing costs, is going to ruin California. The costs are already so astronomical and they keep rising so fast, that it's becoming more and more unreasonable to afford. Even on a silicon valley salary, those bills are shocking.

What are the two things summed? Are they really both c/kWh? Just confused because in the UK they'd be p/day and p/kWh respectively, and the numbers look 'in the right ballpark'. (Except that it would be mental to have the standing charge vary according to peak/not time.)

Assuming it’s the same as my PG&E bill, it’s split into “generation” and “delivery” charges.

As the other post said, the numbers are delivery cost (the larger number) and generation (the smaller one), both are cents per kWh.

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