what on earth does electricity cost near you?

grsthegreat · Jan 29, 2014

were 100% hydro here in north idaho. There was a push years ago to breach the dams for the salmon....they were actually having meetings trying to push this agenda.

These idiots forgot that the dams were built to
1. Store drinking water
2. Provide clean power
3. Prevent the periodic flooding that used to occure

After the calif power fiasco that the power companies manufactured...the dam breaching nut cases seamed to disappear up here......not much heard from them.
They liked their 0.05/KWH power.

oh...one funny thing. We do have a natural gas fired power plant here that gets its fuel from the Canadian underground line and ships the power to Seattle. None of the power is used here. i find that odd.

3930dave · Jan 29, 2014

I understand the distinctions you raise jeje, including the macro level view of Time of Use.

Personally though, what I don't like about Time of Use is the obfuscation. I could readily reconcile straight time metering, with Time of Use, I just have to drink the only data Koolaid in Town.

Many people have commented on intentionally idled wind farms. Storage technology needs to be dramatically improved.

A couple of decades back, Canadian Hydrolizer (sp?) was using PV power to hydrolize water. Why aren't we storing/using hydrogen more today ?

Water is a good place to store energy, as in Pump Storage.

A slight exception to this is as Allan W describes. There are a few hydro power stations in Britain which are designed as "pump storage" stations. These have an upper and a lower dam. Whilst generating electricity, the water falls from the upper dam to the lower dam driving the turbines as it does and thus generates electricity.

At night, this action can be reversed and the turbines act as pumps and use electricity to pump water back up to the upper dam.

Scotland has two - Cruachan and Foyers and Wales also has two - Dinorwig and Ffestiniog

Whats happens to excess electrical power generated at night? - Yahoo UK & Ireland Answers

I do like some of the new alternates for power, but they aren't really as efficient as some people think.

One thing I like about locally generated power, off-grid, is that I can decide what happens to the excess power. I can use a diversion controller and pre-heat domestic hot water once my battery bank is full, or even just use it as space heating.

I'd be interested to know what remote control commands are typical on grid-tied inverters. I won't be surprised to learn they can be selectively disconnected w/o the homeowner being any wiser. I can understand the priority of shedding 1,000s of those, rather than modifying the operation of a baseload generating station.

Rgds, D.

buickanddeere · Jan 29, 2014

3930dave said:
Green is kind of subjective... depends who you ask.

We have a fair amount of hydro and nuke here, so alt NRG isn't necessarily displacing a fossil fuel.

Yes, even some senior (Mother Earth News founder) greens are looking at nuke differently today.

Personally, I'm all for excess capacity in an off-grid system, and am willing to pay for it. Understood, that not everybody is.

A properly designed grid has quite a bit of excess capacity available - otherwise you end up with brown/blackouts at Max Summer/Winter worst case loads. Summer gets you back to the long distance transmission thing...... if an HV line (actually, any line) is dealing with a 40C ambient, well, that just derates how much current it can carry. A lot of traditional generation sources driving the grid can only throttle Up/Down so much, so at less than peak loads, a surprising amount of power gets thrown away - kind of like keeping the car running in the driveway, just in case you want to go somewhere.

To keep my usual rambling short(er ), let's just call me middle-of-the-road green. I wouldn't have a problem offsetting battery bank size initially by having a backup generator in place. Folks have had good economical performance from a small air-cooled Honda engine belt driving an alternator as a dedicated 12v generator.

While some might not deem my approach Green, if it moves my overall project ahead, I'll manage to sleep at night :thumbsup:

Rgds, D.

You can thank the son of a Liberal Senator and university buddy of Justin Trudean. The green weenie's name is Gerald Butts and he was Liberal Party Secretary for McGuinty . Even when Europe was starting to back away from "green power" . McGuinty was convinced to charge ahead , all in. To even closes clean coal Ontario Power Generation plants and replace with more expensive NG Enbridge gas turbines.
You can bet somebody's palms were greased .
Last I heard Butts was tied into the Canadian branch of the World wildlife federation.
Rotten scoundrals cost Ontario 10's of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.

I seen Dalton Mcgiunty in person in person at Ken Ray and Ray Walter's Firefighter funeral in Listowel. One of those people you can feel the sleaze from like the chill off a person walking in from outside.

dmccarty · Jan 29, 2014

3930dave said:
Many people don't react well to being expropriated. It's a general problem, not just with hydro-electric projects. Can't say I blame them.

Hydro project designs have evolved somewhat, but that aside, I don't know of any technical reasons that dictate you can't source drinking water downstream from a hydro plant. You're only spinning a giant pinwheel with kinetic water energy, the water is not consumed or contaminated.
...

Rgds, D.

If the water spins the turbines, the water is now down stream and not as available for drinking water. While some water is taken from the two rivers downstream of the two large dams in my area, most of the water goes into the ocean. If the dams were supposed to provide power, water would be released in greater amounts for power generation and when water was needed for drinking, there would not be as much. Our lake levels can drop drastically in droughts and it would be even worse if the water was used for power production, thus the choice of do you want water to drink or power for the lights?

My town used to get power from a dam on a different river. That dam was built in the 20's or 30's, and never was really good at power production because not much water was contained behind the dam. The dam was torn down a few years ago to "free" the river, improve water quality allow fish to move up river to the next small dam.

Later,
Dan

grsthegreat · Jan 29, 2014

our dam system here has multiple dams downline ... the same water powers 3-4 dams.

sooner or later it does reach the ocean. but theres always plenty of fresh water for drinking (up my way).

jejeosborne · Jan 29, 2014

3930dave said:
I understand the distinctions you raise jeje, including the macro level view of Time of Use.

Personally though, what I don't like about Time of Use is the obfuscation. I could readily reconcile straight time metering, with Time of Use, I just have to drink the only data Koolaid in Town.

Many people have commented on intentionally idled wind farms. Storage technology needs to be dramatically improved.

A couple of decades back, Canadian Hydrolizer (sp?) was using PV power to hydrolize water. Why aren't we storing/using hydrogen more today ?

Water is a good place to store energy, as in Pump Storage.

A slight exception to this is as Allan W describes. There are a few hydro power stations in Britain which are designed as "pump storage" stations. These have an upper and a lower dam. Whilst generating electricity, the water falls from the upper dam to the lower dam driving the turbines as it does and thus generates electricity.

At night, this action can be reversed and the turbines act as pumps and use electricity to pump water back up to the upper dam.

Scotland has two - Cruachan and Foyers and Wales also has two - Dinorwig and Ffestiniog

Whats happens to excess electrical power generated at night? - Yahoo UK & Ireland Answers

Rgds, D.

I would be the opposite and welcome time of use. I would feel like I had some control of my costs. For this to work, the customer would need to know the current price for the next hour and you current demand. It could be as simple as a small electronic device the size of your thermostat or a laptop. Before starting the dishwasher are dryer, you could glance over and see what it going to cost. Your usage would be easily tracked and you would be more knowledgeable come bill paying time.

As far as storage, there isn't an economical and environmentally good way to currently store electricity. You mentioned pump storage and it is used here in the states as well. There has to be a large price gap between on and off peak for it to make sense. It takes about 25% more electricity to move the water back up then what you get coming back down. It has to be cheap coal or nuclear units doing the work at night so it isn't a good option environmently but sometimes economically.

LD1 · Jan 29, 2014

I am a little late, But have tracked my electric usage since I have moved into the place. Here it is in a nutshell

year.....avg monthly KWh..............average cost per KWH
2006..........1150....................................0.087
2007..........1280....................................0.087
2008..........1614....................................0.084
2009..........1763....................................0.092
2010..........2310....................................0.098
2011..........2393....................................0.103
2012..........2496....................................0.111
2013..........2710....................................0.111

My usage made a pretty large jump in 2008 with the addition of the pole barn and spending time out there.

Made another significant jump in 2010 where I built the goldfish pond and run a 150w pump 24/7 (about 110kwh/month and also our son was born in august so that added a good bit.

And in 2013, I added the larger pond and run a 210w aerator pump 24/7 (about 147kwh/month) and also was laid off for about 6 months and spent alot of time home and working in the shop.

With our daughter born november, I expect to see this years average about 3000kwh per month. and an average bill of ~$330 or so if electric rates stay around 0.11-0.12

3930dave · Jan 29, 2014

jejeosborne said:
I would be the opposite and welcome time of use. I would feel like I had some control of my costs. For this to work, the customer would need to know the current price for the next hour and you current demand. It could be as simple as a small electronic device the size of your thermostat or a laptop. Before starting the dishwasher are dryer, you could glance over and see what it going to cost. Your usage would be easily tracked and you would be more knowledgeable come bill paying time.

As far as storage, there isn't an economical and environmentally good way to currently store electricity. You mentioned pump storage and it is used here in the states as well. There has to be a large price gap between on and off peak for it to make sense. It takes about 25% more electricity to move the water back up then what you get coming back down. It has to be cheap coal or nuclear units doing the work at night so it isn't a good option environmently but sometimes economically.

Electric Utilities (some, not all) have "evolved" into very predatory animals.

One scam - meter gets changed out, then about 2 months later you get a notice. "Your old meter was innaccurate, so you now owe us $x,yzw for power that we are backbilling you".

My response would be something along the lines of " If you weren't competent enough to have an accurate meter in place originally, why should I believe you now ?". Knock wood, it hasn't happened to me yet.

And no, I'm not making this up, although I wish I was. Last case in Toronto, the guy got backbilled for $14,000 - they came in and yanked his meter and said "Have a Nice Day". None of these cases involve any type of meter tampering by the customer..... It's nothing but a good Olde Fashioned Shake Down.....

I know one guy personally who went through this.... he went back and forth with them, and got them down from about $4k to something like $2k.

I understand the technology (a lot of it at least) behind Time of Use Metering. What I don't trust is the integrity of certain utilities today. As cited already, mega-scams were cooked up in California not all that long ago.

Under the old flat rate metering system, if I have a history of pretty consistent power useage going back a number of years, and my bill takes a drastic jump w/o any new loads added, I would have been reasonably confident that the issue (incoming line fault, meter failure...) would be sorted out fairly quickly and equitably.

Present day, let's say the billing computer decides (on its own, or with some human "help", perhaps near the end of a financial year) that 90% of my power use was during Peak Time. What is my recourse ? I'd say none - it would come down to Pay Up, or We'll Disconnect.

IMO, Time of Use was nothing but an overly elaborate way (as I've said before, I'd much rather have those billions of $ spent on new energy development and storage) to crank up electricity rates, while allowing Pols to hide behind a Green smoke screen.

Like it or not, there are many loads that can't be shifted, like heating, refrigeration, and groundwater pumping to name a few.

If I wasn't already interested in alternate energy systems, the recent nonsense of the last decade or so here would definitely have motivated me in that direction.

Rgds, D.

jejeosborne · Jan 29, 2014

3930dave said:
Electric Utilities (some, not all) have "evolved" into very predatory animals.

One scam - meter gets changed out, then about 2 months later you get a notice. "Your old meter was innaccurate, so you now owe us $x,yzw for power that we are backbilling you".

My response would be something along the lines of " If you weren't competent enough to have an accurate meter in place originally, why should I believe you now ?". Knock wood, it hasn't happened to me yet.

And no, I'm not making this up, although I wish I was. Last case in Toronto, the guy got backbilled for $14,000 - they came in and yanked his meter and said "Have a Nice Day". None of these cases involve any type of meter tampering by the customer..... It's nothing but a good Olde Fashioned Shake Down.....

I know one guy personally who went through this.... he went back and forth with them, and got them down from about $4k to something like $2k.

I understand the technology (a lot of it at least) behind Time of Use Metering. What I don't trust is the integrity of certain utilities today. As cited already, mega-scams were cooked up in California not all that long ago.

Under the old flat rate metering system, if I have a history of pretty consistent power useage going back a number of years, and my bill takes a drastic jump w/o any new loads added, I would have been reasonably confident that the issue (incoming line fault, meter failure...) would be sorted out fairly quickly and equitably.

Present day, let's say the billing computer decides (on it's own, or with some human "help", perhaps near the end of a financial year) that 90% of my power use was during Peak Time. What is my recourse ? I'd say none - it would come down to Pay Up, or We'll Disconnect.

IMO, Time of Use was nothing but an overly elaborate way (as I've said before, I'd much rather have those billions of $ spent on new energy development and storage) to crank up electricity rates, while allowing Pols to hide behind a Green smoke screen.

Like it or not, there are many loads that can't be shifted, like heating, refrigeration, and groundwater pumping to name a few.

If I wasn't already interested in alternate energy systems, the recent nonsense of the last decade or so here would definitely have motivated me in that direction.

Rgds, D.

You have lot of distrust. It would be very inexpensive to monitor with your own meter your usage and time of day. Yes there is a lot of load that cannot be shifted but there is equal load that can. How many factories are currently running one shift during the day? Some countries have daily rolling blackouts and it is just a part of life. Their refrigeration is designed for intermittent use, they plan their day around when their power will be on. Unless someone comes up with an economical and environmently sound way to store huge amounts of electricity, the only option to maximize generating efficiency is to have a constant and steady load. Until one of these two options come to fruition, we will continue to have to over build the electric grid and operate at a less than optimal efficiency.