Someone has to pay the billionare’s bills
Here’s the crux of the article for you.
In just two years, starting in 2022, residential electricity prices rose by 10%, while commercial prices increased by only 3%, and industrial electricity prices fell by 2%.
Even if you don’t like or use ai, you’re forced to pay for it
But why is it this way? Why wouldn’t they want to charge both groups more for a higher profit margin?
Wouldn’t want to upset corporate overlords.
Partly because doing so risks that they might decide to invest in their own production instead, and therefore not buy any electricity from you at all which would result in loss of demand, and a reduction in overall electricity cost.
Like how rising a bus ticket fare by 10% means you will lose some customers because they decide to walk instead, so your profit increase will be lower than that 10%. Raise it too much, and almost everyone walks, and you sell no tickets.And it’s a lot harder to build your own solar or wind farm if you are a person living in an apartment building.
I don’t get it either. Electricity providers have a monopoly based on location. It’s not like I get to choose whose wires I want to hook up to, there’s one choice. So why would the power company choose to give anyone a deal? I get that during the planning stage they could be courting various locations but still I don’t really get it.
The company that maintains the lines is typically not the same company that generates the power. That’s why you can shop for electricity providers.
Who can ship for electricity?
I have literally never heard of this anywhere.
It’s like Internet. You get one provider who puts wires up to your home. That’s it. Don’t like it? Good luck physically moving your home elsewhere.
Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas all have deregulated markets which allow for it.
California, Georgia, Michigan, Oregon, and Virginia have partially deregulated markets.
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It’s easier to screw over consumers than businesses.
Busunesses like to complain. They have long-term contracts. They have a lot of purchase power. They’re more likely tp swotch to a competitor. When they threaten, they’re more likely to go through with the threats since they have both money to burn and employees to blackmail with pay cuts.
Among other things.
There’s a lot of consumers, so those that do jump ship usually don’t cause a big dent in profits when they do. Consumers are also less likely to jump ship in the furst place since they have only their extended family and their family lawyer to look out for them (if). They usually have “bigger” problems than the electricity bill: car payments, mortgages, school bills, you name it.
Again, among other things.
I pay 40c/kWh ^^’
The working class get the ‘get fucked’ tax on top of the costs. Companies get cheap power to make more money.
I’d like to see this graph with the EU power costs. I pay AVG € 0,27 per kWh now. Used to be € 0,20 before the attack on Ukraine began. That’s a 35% increase.
It’s what the maga working class voted for. That, and cruel deportations.
You think fucking over the working class is MAGA specific? Fucking us over is 100% bipartisan.
Scratch a both sideser, find Russian agitprop. Every goddamn time.
That’s cute when liberals try to co-opt phrases they don’t know how to use.
Are Russians in the room with you right now?
No but they are all over your comments, it’s like you work for RT or something. You sure do repeat basically all their points ad nauseum.
Liberals conflate everything that conflicts with the echo chamber as Russian
What? I pay around ninety cents! What is this shit.
My electric bill last month would have been $1,700 at that rate. We would just have to freeze to death.
Damn I pay around 7c + 3€ static fee
Its 30c + 12€ in southern Germany
2024 and 2025 not included in their data.
How to pin someone else’s comment?
The star will save it so you can easily read it later. Click your profile name, and its the “saved” tab.
I got a bunch of effortposts from other lemminators saved for rereading.
Yes, I am Fucking Pissed at my energy bills for the last 6 months. Like WTH. It is like $500 a month vs what was $300 max. I told my husband… it is time to start investing in solar generators. We are getting screwed for some stupid tech boy.
I would love if this creates some kind of decentralized energy network. You know how you can sell your energy back to the grid when you have solar surplus? We should have the option of choosing the rate too. If they don’t want to pay our prices, they don’t need our electricity,
I don’t know anywhere you can actually sell it back to the network, usually they just give you credits that deduct future payments, so you can’t ever get money out of it. But maybe that’s only some places.
You could when solar fist started becoming available. Energy companies quickly realized that if everyone did that, they’d have way too much power during the day, and none at night.
Our local co-op power generator barely makes it useful to have solar unless you also have battery storage.
In my naive view I don’t see why they wouldn’t just give less and less money until they’re effectively giving you none or even charging you for putting it back into the grid. It would then incenticize people to get battery banks and put it in during the night.
But again, naive view. Maybe I’m missing something obvious.
You know how you can sell your energy back to the grid when you have solar surplus?
I know this is for the USA, but I’d like to point out something really fucked: in Denmark, if you don’t use the energy your solar power produces, YOU have to pay the energy company for the extra electricity you put into the grid! Like… What‽‽‽
YOU have to pay the energy company for the extra electricity you put into the grid! Like… What‽‽‽
That might be logical in some situations. Where there’s surplus in the grid and it plays the role of amortizer of what you give it. They can’t just shut you off when they are getting too much load. Or they can but prefer to have a soft curve where you get less and less until you start paying for what you give.
Like water is a resource, but you do pay for water disposal (that is, I live in Russia, and there’s a separate line on the bill for what goes into sewers), or, if someone provides passive cooling service somewhere, you might pay for the heat you give away. Even if that’s energy.
Seems like you need a battery for your solar
We all have to do our part and stop using AI. It’s time to pop the bubble.
You think they’ll drop those prices when the AI pops?
Here in Germany we have balcony solar panels. They are just plugged into a socket - no electrical installation needed - and pay off quickly.
I have something like that I bought here in the US but the power generated won’t power the whole home. It does charge my emergency battery though for when the power is out.
to power the whole home you need a hell of a lot more than the balcony ones. but every little bit helps.
Right but the way I understand it is if you get the plug in style and let it generate some power during the day it will offset your usage and save you money on the bill.
Yes, lile that. There are also types (like the Anker generators for mobile homes / boats etc) which can run stand-alone, but the German balkony solar panels just add cheap supply to the domestic power use by plugging it into the household AC system.
Huh that’s neat, I didn’t know they just plugged into a socket. From what I know balancing the voltage and frequency of an electric grid is extremely delicate business, but I guess it’s fine since it’s so much electrically smaller than the main generators?
Also stuffing an inverter in random small electronics is probably so much easier than it used to be not that long ago.
What about batteries? Could you plug one of those big, AC camping “powerbanks” in between the solar and the mains? So that devices downstream are able to run directly off solar energy without going “into” and “out of” the grid?
If mains goes down they stop feeding in power within 10 ms, or so. Of course, you can illegally feed in more, if you know what you’re doing.
I have 54 solar panels that are 1x2m apiece (108m2 total), and they generate barely enough to keep my house running in the winter, and have to be supplemented by a generator in the winter for December and January since it’s entirely offgrid.
I don’t think a couple panels on a balcony are doing much more than charging a couple phones.
Since a lot of people live in rented flats, the 800w these so called “balcony solar plants” can cover your base load, thus reducing your electric bill. Of course they can’t support whatever setup you seem to have where 108m2 of solar can’t cover it
Sadly, Switzerland missed the oportunity and even conventional solar installations barely pay off now.
come on Muricans, stop complaining and get a third job to pay for the slop machine until the bubble burst and the you have to pay for the bailout
stop complaining, remember “you are not there yet”
I ran three jobs for a couple of years. I ended up high enough up in my current job that they’d take offence to a second job. And the market is shit. I just want to move to a nice quiet country where your neighbors aren’t an actual liability with decent healthcare and work until I’m dead giving my kids a chance at living a happy life. Is that too much to ask?
The AI data centers and crypto miners should be paying much higher rates than everyone else.
That’s not how capitalism works.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs
Amen.
just sayin’ this is still so incredibly cheap… 8c/kwh… australian electricity prices are 24-43c/kwh (obv usd vs aud but the aussie $ isn’t that weak)
yeah we have a “supply charge” that’s ~$1/day on top of that base rate too, so roughly the same situation :(
we’ve got this crap because of privatisation so it’s not likely to change any time soon.
i hope your energy prices come down when energy things stabilise in europe!
In Canada, the only province that historically has a rate that high is Ontario, and that is because they use Nuclear power, which is more expensive to maintain, and also they have no protection laws for consumers. So residents of Ontario pay what the US companies are willing to pay for power.
The neighbouring province, Quebec, uses primarily Hydro Electric dams, and has protection laws that restrict pricing for hydro power for residents of Quebec to a reasonable margin above cost, regardless of what the US is willing to pay for the power.
When I lived in Ontario, the price was $24c/kwh, while Quebec was $8/kwh
Ontario has had new laws passed with the energy board and now it appears their price is down to $14c/kwh according to this site, but I’m willing to bet that is highly dependent on surge pricing. Getting straight answer on costs is difficult these days with all the tiered pricing.
Apparently Alberta is more expensive than Ontario now… Must be all that “freedom” they have… Did they privatise electric in addition to everything else there? I’m not familiar with how their grid is powered… Maybe its oil/coal based. Which would be unsurprising.
God don’t I know it. Looking at 500 dollar a month electric bills and I’m possibly disconnecting my heat pump.
Where are you? That’s what I pay a year, granted I live in a shoebox.
Under the boot of Georgia power.
Well I’m sure you’ll be heating your place with Venezula heavy sour by next week!
That’s crazy, up north I’m paying $130 monthly this winter and it’s actually cold here
$600 last month to run my heat pump. Can’t really disconnect it because it’s 30 degrees here rn. Awesome
I suspect that it’s always been the case that bigger customers are able to negotiate better prices. 1 car a year vs 1000 cars a year? 200 pounds of bread a year vs. 200 tons of bread?
Also, isn’t a steady state power consumption of a data centre easier to manage than homes flipping toasters on and off? I suppose that the inefficiency drives up the costs for home usage
My city still owns the utilities and the council doubles as the utility board. They’ve been trying to privatize it, but it’s very contentious. Rightly so.
ok damnit, how many more servers do i need to install…
Indiana price increase in 2025 ~20% (I believe the new rates went into effect in November, and this does not include a base increase for having your house connected to the grid. I believe it was $10/mo increase making that % even larger.
The lowest rate I can find here in Texas was triple what I was paying last year.
