Sure this was a thing back in the day with incandescent lightbulbs - but like, you can leave a 10W bulb on for like 4 days straight for the price of ~1kWh (~20c USD here in Australia), right?
Night lights are like half a watt. You can leave a 0.5W bulb on all night (let’s just say 12 hours), 365 days per year, and you’d be coming up on a total energy use of about 2.1 kWh per year, or about $0.35 per year in USD.
I’m in Alberta Canada, so it’s recently converted coal plants to natural gas power plants supplied by private deregulated utility companies and resellers. Energy prices have been dropping as a result of the upgrades.
If you’re still curious:
I just switched to the cheaper market rate, so this bill is my previous 9.25 ¢/kWh.
Edit: natural gas bill too why not.
Context matters: Zone 3b climate region, 1200sqft 70’s built bi-level with 3 adult humans worth of consumption.
You’re getting absolutely railed on your connection charges; that’s like $4.88CAD a day!?
I recently resigned with our provider so we only have 21 days of usage, we’re in summer, and we have a 5 bed, 3 bath two-storey home with solar panels for 4 adults and a child:
Factoring in the exchange rate, $1CAD ~= $1.12AUD; just makes the comparison even worse.
My state’s energy composition locally is ~35% renewables, mostly wind and solar, with the rest being a mix of natural gas, black & brown coal.
As an aside, our feed-in tariff (i.e. how much we get paid to export excess solar into our grid) has absolutely cratered over the last few years: down from ~15c during COVID to only ~3.3c this year - it really incentivises us to explore solar batteries as an option.
You’re getting absolutely railed on your connection charges; that’s like $4.88CAD a day!?
Your professional opinion is on point 🤣
Yeah. Deregulation happened under our previous idiot premier and he parachuted into a cushy job at one of the utility companies after he had a tantrum and quit for an essay worth of reasons that lead to our current predicament with the alt right. Anyways, nothing sus about that!
We can sell back to the grid here too, but it’s not as great a deal with only really generating power in the summer months. From what I’ve seen locals can basically break even covering the fees on average over a year with the remnants of the solar programs UCP didn’t destroy at best. That’s also deliberate. They won’t let you install a system bigger than the power you consume over an average of three years. So what savvy people do is overconsume on purpose to get a bigger solar setup approved. I might do this one day, but it’ll be DIY to save 15k from hiring goons to mount panels to my roof and run the wires. I can do that myself.
I don’t anticipate any cratering in foreseeable future because despite the upgrades…they were already overloaded before and borderline now. They’ve (gov) actually been going around and asking manufacturing plants to shut down in summer months strategically and offering lump sums each time they participate when asked to make it worth shutting down. Clown show.
There was a solar farm getting built…but Amazon owned it so, can’t say I was excited. Probably a dead deal now with everything going on.
We had a not too dissimilar experience here in Australia with the privatisation and/or ‘deregulatory’ sabotage of our public infrastructure (SECV in the ‘90s, Telstra in the ‘00s, NBN in the ‘10s); I liken it to pigeon politics - they fly in, shit on everything, then promptly fuck off!
I imagine with the amount of snow cover you guys get up there - solar wouldn’t be feasible for ~40% of the year and likely cause massive load balancing issues in the summer due to the glut of supply, so that’s probably why they try to cap the size of systems you can install.
Feels very short sighted though, could be putting surplus production towards industry, rather than incentivising them to shut down!
Best of luck to you, hopefully Carney is going to be able to help address some of the issues you guys are facing!
Sure this was a thing back in the day with incandescent lightbulbs - but like, you can leave a 10W bulb on for like 4 days straight for the price of ~1kWh (~20c USD here in Australia), right?
Night lights are like half a watt. You can leave a 0.5W bulb on all night (let’s just say 12 hours), 365 days per year, and you’d be coming up on a total energy use of about 2.1 kWh per year, or about $0.35 per year in USD.
I’m not made of money! The light stays off!
0.087 CAD / kWh here, but it doesn’t matter. The bill is majority delivery fees/fuck you fees.
Damn, that’s a pretty good rate! Hydro power - I assume? We also have a daily charge to maintain a collection at ~ $1 AUD/day… is it similar there?
I’m in Alberta Canada, so it’s recently converted coal plants to natural gas power plants supplied by private deregulated utility companies and resellers. Energy prices have been dropping as a result of the upgrades.
If you’re still curious:
I just switched to the cheaper market rate, so this bill is my previous 9.25 ¢/kWh.
Edit: natural gas bill too why not.
Context matters: Zone 3b climate region, 1200sqft 70’s built bi-level with 3 adult humans worth of consumption.
I’m a Data Analyst, I’m always curious! 🤣
You’re getting absolutely railed on your connection charges; that’s like $4.88CAD a day!?
I recently resigned with our provider so we only have 21 days of usage, we’re in summer, and we have a 5 bed, 3 bath two-storey home with solar panels for 4 adults and a child:
Factoring in the exchange rate, $1CAD ~= $1.12AUD; just makes the comparison even worse.
My state’s energy composition locally is ~35% renewables, mostly wind and solar, with the rest being a mix of natural gas, black & brown coal.
As an aside, our feed-in tariff (i.e. how much we get paid to export excess solar into our grid) has absolutely cratered over the last few years: down from ~15c during COVID to only ~3.3c this year - it really incentivises us to explore solar batteries as an option.
Your professional opinion is on point 🤣
Yeah. Deregulation happened under our previous idiot premier and he parachuted into a cushy job at one of the utility companies after he had a tantrum and quit for an essay worth of reasons that lead to our current predicament with the alt right. Anyways, nothing sus about that!
We can sell back to the grid here too, but it’s not as great a deal with only really generating power in the summer months. From what I’ve seen locals can basically break even covering the fees on average over a year with the remnants of the solar programs UCP didn’t destroy at best. That’s also deliberate. They won’t let you install a system bigger than the power you consume over an average of three years. So what savvy people do is overconsume on purpose to get a bigger solar setup approved. I might do this one day, but it’ll be DIY to save 15k from hiring goons to mount panels to my roof and run the wires. I can do that myself.
I don’t anticipate any cratering in foreseeable future because despite the upgrades…they were already overloaded before and borderline now. They’ve (gov) actually been going around and asking manufacturing plants to shut down in summer months strategically and offering lump sums each time they participate when asked to make it worth shutting down. Clown show.
There was a solar farm getting built…but Amazon owned it so, can’t say I was excited. Probably a dead deal now with everything going on.
We had a not too dissimilar experience here in Australia with the privatisation and/or ‘deregulatory’ sabotage of our public infrastructure (SECV in the ‘90s, Telstra in the ‘00s, NBN in the ‘10s); I liken it to pigeon politics - they fly in, shit on everything, then promptly fuck off!
I imagine with the amount of snow cover you guys get up there - solar wouldn’t be feasible for ~40% of the year and likely cause massive load balancing issues in the summer due to the glut of supply, so that’s probably why they try to cap the size of systems you can install.
Feels very short sighted though, could be putting surplus production towards industry, rather than incentivising them to shut down!
Best of luck to you, hopefully Carney is going to be able to help address some of the issues you guys are facing!
Yup, most electricity cost these days come from using appliances.
Yep. A/C alone is about half of your power bill.
Appliances and climate control (if you don’t consider furnace/ac an appliance)