Comments on: What’s The Average Price Of Electricity In…

By: Ralph

Ralph — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 15:36:00 +0000

Its not difficult to find this data for developed countries, but do you have accurate and timely data for the Caribbean countries, Central America, and South America? We would love to see a comparative matrix of industrial electricity prices across this region. Thank you!

By: Just wrong

Just wrong — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 23:03:00 +0000

The prices for Canada are misleading. Looking at wikipedia, for example, will show you that our electricity price is is around 6.3 to 11.8 cents/kwh, but we are also subject to a delivery charge of an additional 11.7 cents approx. In Ontario, when I get a $300 hydro bill, $125 is actual usage of around 9 cents, the rest is delivery, account charges, “debt retirement” charges, and taxes. The local government makes the cost look low, but tries to hide several other costs on our bills.

By: NRG4All

NRG4All — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 21:18:00 +0000

If we had a modern grid, it seems that the cost of electricity could be standardized within the U.S. at least to some extent. In Phoenix with time-of-use metering we pay $0.10 for off-peak, but we pay $0.26 for on-peak from Arizona Public Service. On top of that APS is requesting that net-metering be abandoned which has the effect of decreasing the benefit of distributed homeowner generated power.

By: Carmen Johnson

Carmen Johnson — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 06:19:00 +0000

nice this

By: JamesWimberley

JamesWimberley — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:29:00 +0000

The first graph is wretchedly amateurish, the sort of thing dreamt up by innumerate media types. Do you interpret the electricity price as the area of the house elevation, or the height? It seems to be the height. At least you later switch to non-misleading bar charts.
Anybody producing charts professionally should read Edward Tufte first.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 22:22:00 +0000

Der Spiegel starts a lot of this crap and other papers pick it up.

By: Ivor O'Connor

Ivor O'Connor — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:31:00 +0000

Somewhere I saw those numbers last week. I have been using them since I saw them. Now I can’t find them. Despite using zotero to track my references. Your numbers seem much more believable but I liked their numbers because it really brought home the point Americans spend more for their electricity as a percentage of their paycheck than Germans.

And if you noticed I replied to somebody last week about that NY Times article too. Basically the way I figured it was that if the guy was real good and saved his electricity each night by using a 5 watt bulb that would allow him to light one cigarette and take a puff before putting it out and doing the same thing the next night. However he would blow his electricity savings for a week if he smoked a single cigarette all the way down to the butt.

I’m amazed the NY Times makes it so easy. Then again so does the Der Spiegel so maybe it is the same everywhere.

By: Lindsay Wilson

Lindsay Wilson — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:33:00 +0000

Oh it was terrible wasn’t it, more WSJ than NYT. The interesting number for me would be total energy costs as a share of household income. That gets past the issues of what share of energy electricity is.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:01:00 +0000

I ran those numbers in reply to a POS article the NYT ran which talked about how Germans were suffering due to the high price of electricity.

They talked about one unfortunate (employed) guy who was using a 5 watt light in his kitchen rather than turning on a 25 watt tube.

Running a 25 watt tube five hours a night would have cost him about $1.50 per month. They didn’t bother working that out, it would have hurt their hit piece.

(Of course the obvious answer would be to get a 7 watt LED, have the equivalent of a 60 watt incandescent, and decent light.)

By: Lindsay Wilson

Lindsay Wilson — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:40:00 +0000

Really interesting numbers Bob

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:32:00 +0000

True. German industry pays EUR 0.086 ($0.12) per kWh for its electricity vs. the residential rate of EUR 0.268 ($0.36) per kWh.

That is less than the EU27 average cost of industrial electricity.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=ten00114

By: arne-nl

arne-nl — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:22:00 +0000

This article is misleading its readers by keeping mum on the fact that these are retail prices for households and small businesses. The EEG Umlage in Germany is only paid by these small customers and lets big industries off the hook. They enjoy low energy prices just as industry everywhere in Europe and the world.

It points more to a different problem that large industries still can dictate their own laws.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:20:00 +0000

The cost and usage numbers are what I found on line. The sites could be wrong. Do you have different numbers?

By: Ivor O'Connor

Ivor O'Connor — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:18:00 +0000

I was under the impression from the article last week the difference was much greater. Something like 6% vs 2%. Did you look into that as well?

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:35:00 +0000

I ran some numbers last night for a different reason, but they might add something here…

Germans pay EUR 0.268, $0.36 per kWh and use, on average 3,512 kWh/year. The average household bill for electricity in Germany is about $105/month.

American pay $0.1261 per kWh and use, on average 11,698 kWh/year. The average household bill for electricity in the US is over $120/month.

Germany – $105/month on an average $5,000/month household income. 2.1% of income.

US – $120/month on an average $4,400/month household income. 2.7% of income.

Also, it should be pointed out that the price of electricity in Germany was quite high well before renewables became big players on their grid and before the decision was made to close nuclear.

http://www.economist.com/node/13527440

Germany has a problem with little competition. Renewables have dropped the wholesale and industrial cost of electricity but the savings are not being passed on to retail customers.

By: Ivor O'Connor

Ivor O'Connor — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:17:00 +0000

Nothing here shows how painful it is for the citizens to buy their power. For instance if the electricity costs 10 US cents per kilowatt-hour and they spend $60 a month on it and their disposable income is $1000 a month then electricity is costing them 6% of their income. Now if electricity costs the equivalent of 40 US cents per kilowatt-hour and you use $120 a month but you make $6000 a month your electricity is only 2%.

The simplistic versus the more complete analysis apparently flips Germany’s electricity price from the most expensive to the cheapest. In other words when the cost of electricity used in a household compared to their disposable income Germany is 3x cheaper than in America.

Seeing the complete picture is important.