What does a kw/h cost in your area?

[wasyoungonce]

Hey EEVblog..Actually this is a good subject matter, maybe worthy of a sticky
Here is Australia, Melbourne, Origin supplier:
$.28c ~$.38c per Kw Hr...and a supply charge of 117.42c per day!...do I win? Yes read and weep for us.   Wow...talk about being screwed by "free market"!

edit:
Some stats:
0-347 kWh @ $0.2813c (28c) per kWh..  We used this 347kWh ...plus
347kWh and up @ $0.30.99c (31c) per kWh..we used another 664kWh....wow
We use an avg of 32.64kWh per day...we are not heavy users... I think?  I mean we don't waste pwr...maybe its my 121Gw MULTIMETER.....nah haven't got that yet.
Supply charge: 117.42c per day! wow!.

Anyone want to donate to our cause? ...obviously we need solar ~ 5kW's of panels.  Love to see the harmonics that puts on the grid....let alone enough roof space to do this.
Billing period15 Aug -14Sept 2017. (exc GST)! Oh we are in credit $600 dollars plus..guess our supplier is screwing us.

[Beamin]

We in the US, because of an export ban thats been in place since the 70s enjoy the lowest wholesale energy prices in the world but that's about to change dramatically because they're about to start exporting natural gas.

A lot of the impact depends on the weather. Recently the winter weather in large parts of the US has been milder than the average but natural gas (and electricity) prices are likely to rise more the colder (and likely also hotter, in the summer) it gets as local customers start competing with export for the same LNG. The shift may take more time to effect prices if weather gets milder and demand falls. But if not wages will have to rise or many people will not have any options but to move. Nobody knows where they can go if they lose affordable housing as its unlikely to be replaced with more affordable housing.

The impact is likely to be felt the most in those large parts of the US where most of the housing stock is older, built when energy was cheap and wages higher in relative terms than they are today.

Most US homes built before the 1980s or 90s are not very well insulated with construction techniques which are no longer seen in many other cold winter areas. Many commercial buildings also lack adequate insulation.

Its not a little thing. Many older Americans unable to afford heating (and cooling) may be in grave danger of freezing to death (or dying of heatstroke in the summer). Their homes may become physically dangerous to live in without energy (or retrofits) they can't afford. But, well connected lobbyists and PR pros claim this is "our energy moment", and frame the US as becoming the new Saudi Arabia, exporting energy to quench the thirst of Asia and the rest of the world until its gone. A series of articles in the New York Times revealed that some of this is hype, with the natural gas reserves overestimated and investors being led into a bubble.

Regardless of how much energy is actually there, nobody seems to be expecting this change, except the energy and construction industries. Construction.. is expected to rise as older postwar buildings are replaced.

Even areas like California with relatively mild winters may see changes because the price of electricity there like everywhere else in the US, basically tracks natural gas prices.

Almost every place I have rented even in places that cost 1500 a month have little to no insulation. This one place I rented had NO insulation built in the 1960's and slum lord will NEVER upgrade them. The AC ducts are totally uninsulated and were exposed to the outside air with tons of leaks. In the winter you heat would run full time below a certain temp. With electric heat this was an exponential rise in heating costs. 2'F difference would result in the heat running 100% of the time vs 75%. Same with the AC. I bashed a hole in the Freon line in mine thinking they would put in a new unit. Nope they got an identical used unit and stuck it in. Only option was to move but many poor people can't because their electric bill is so high then they go on gov asst. heating and the tax payers have to pay for the slum lords not willing to spend 100$ on spray insulation. Think of the millions of tons of CO2 just from that.

[CatalinaWOW]

Almost every place I have rented even in places that cost 1500 a month have little to no insulation. This one place I rented had NO insulation built in the 1960's and slum lord will NEVER upgrade them. The AC ducts are totally uninsulated and were exposed to the outside air with tons of leaks. In the winter you heat would run full time below a certain temp. With electric heat this was an exponential rise in heating costs. 2'F difference would result in the heat running 100% of the time vs 75%. Same with the AC. I bashed a hole in the Freon line in mine thinking they would put in a new unit. Nope they got an identical used unit and stuck it in. Only option was to move but many poor people can't because their electric bill is so high then they go on gov asst. heating and the tax payers have to pay for the slum lords not willing to spend 100$ on spray insulation. Think of the millions of tons of CO2 just from that.

I agree that many places built before the 1970s had little or no insulation.  Remember in the 1950s nuclear energy was going to make electricity "too cheap to meter".

But having been the owner of rental property (I guess that makes me a slumlord), I want to point out that there is no payoff to the owner for for insulation upgrades.  You spend money and or time on insulation and your renters bills go down, but your rent doesn't go up.  So you are asking for a free gift from the property owner.  The only case where that might not be true is when there is a glut of rentals available and property owners are trying to compete for tenants with amenities rather than with reduced rents.  But even then, people tend to look for low rents instead of good insulation.  It is easier and the savings are immediate, not a few months later.

I also will point out that insulation generally costs far more than $100 if it is to have significant payoff.  If it were that inexpensive renters could do it themselves and see the savings within a single rental contract.

Bottom line, I did one of my biggest happy dances when I unloaded the rental property.  There were no huge profits and endless headaches.

[Red Squirrel]

Too much.



Actually it's not the usage that's so bad, I could cut that down if I added a solar system or what not.  It's the fixed charges that are ridiculous. Even if you don't use any power you're paying quite a lot, as they just adjust those charges to be higher for that particular bill.  You can't get a bill that is under $100.  If you don't use any power at all (ex: cottage that is closed for season) they'll just raise delivery to $100.

[cdev]

A sudden jump in energy prices will give landlords who want to leave the business an excuse to do so. Also in the US a 2005 legal decision, Kelo v. City of New London, made large scale redevelopment of well maintained owner occupied homes legal based on profit oriented economic arguments that tax receipts would increase if they were replaced with more expensive housing. That is just madness in my opinion.

[cdev]

We all should keep an open mind on energy to homes, maybe its time to rethink the whole situation.

[CatalinaWOW]

A sudden jump in energy prices will give landlords who want to leave the business an excuse to do so. Also in the US a 2005 legal decision, Kelo v. City of New London, made large scale redevelopment of well maintained owner occupied homes legal based on profit oriented economic arguments that tax receipts would increase if they were replaced with more expensive housing. That is just madness in my opinion.

Or will give many more the incentive to do what is already a common practice - making the utilities the renters responsibility.   Which is actually an appropriate thing to do from one perspective.  When utilities are included in the rent there is no incentive for the renter to reduce usage.  Run air conditioning with the windows open.  Why not?  Take four hour hot showers?  Why not?

Of course having utilities be the property owners responsibility does provide them with incentive to provide insulation and energy efficient appliances - if they can justify it financially.  Insulation is probably a yes in most cases.  Probably HVAC systems.  But other than that, probably not.  Unless you have maintained rental property you have no idea how short the life of fixtures and appliances that are in the hands of someone with no skin in the game.  That is not universal, some do take excellent care of rental property.  Most are just careless, not outright malicious.  But an amazing percentage deliberately destroy stuff.  Maybe it is a way to "get back at the man" or something like that.

[cdev]

When I was a teenager growing up outside of NYC, I used to have a lot of friends in the City, and one of my friends lived in a building which had been abandoned by its landlord over unpaid taxes and utility bills. His building was actually quite nice. Really unusually nice. They were lucky, other buildings in that area were getting burned down by landlords for the insurance money. That said, CatalinaWow, you are right about some tenants being destructive. But I think both really bad landlords and really bad tenants are rare in nicer cities/communities. When they happen, though, you don't forget it.
----

One way other countries are claimed to be framing the low natural gas prices is as a subsidy or "protectionism".

[Raj]

It's Rs 3.2/kWh (or 0.049 USD as per current exchange rate) for domestic consumers + fixed charges of about 1 USD/month.

Wow, that's pretty low.In punjab, its 8 Rs or 5-6 cents

[SeanB]

As to rentals including utility, here is South Africa the bill is required to be in the owner's name ( or the juristic owner), and then is a separate part of the rent each month, typically being 2 months behind the actual billing, mostly due to billing dates not being fixed, but staggered over the month by the Metro's, and thus you can have your rent due on the first of the month ( or the 15th, for those paid by Government) and the utility bill being sent the next day, up till the last day of the month, so typically you will be up to 6 weeks behind on the payment for consumption.

Then you get the bills that are wrong, like the person who got a $1 million plus bill, and had to pay within 21 days or be cut off. Hard to get that kind of a water bill with a 3/4in connection that is read each month. Ah well, at least the energy part for me is typically under $50 per month, and the water is a lot less, I watch for leaks and check regularly, plus I live in a small unit. A pox on being charged for sewage, which used to be part of the water bill, but which was split out ( and water price was not lowered either) to increase revenue. Septic tank users also have a charge, plus have to pay for the private honeysucker every few years.

[Beamin]

I rented this one place that wasn't cheap: 1400 for a two bedroom and they had this scam where you would have two utility bills. You had gas stove, heater, and electric. Then your hot water heater ran on its own gas that was on one meter for the whole apartment of 16 units. The second utility bill was usually $40-50USD a month which was the average for the whole apartment building which was also bullshit. Since it went to a third party billing company you had no way of checking to see if the hot water heaters were actually using that much. You got doubly screwed if you lived in a unit where it was primarily indian families with 8 kids each taking tons of hot showers. The people in the rental office were all women in their 40-50's but acted like high school kids and would just argue with you in the most unprofessional setting I have ever dealt with. That place has about 100 reviews on google all bad and the 10 good ones are fake.