[Beowulf] electricity prices

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

I'm going to assume that the data is some sort of bulk average over all industrial consumers.. And the prices are remarkably low (are they subsidized?)

Does it include "distribution costs"..

For instance, here in Southern California, my all-in price for the next kWh is anywhere from $0.11 to $0.34/kWh (0.085 Euro to 0.2627 Euro/kWh), depending on what consumption tier I wind up in (there's 5 tiers.. pretty much nobody is in tier 1, since the breakpoint is at 2/3 the nominal minimum load for the dwelling size). 

However, of that, only about $0.05-0.07/kWh is the actual electricity cost (generation cost).  The remainder is transmission and distribution cost.  That is, I pay about $0.15/kWh to pay for the wires between the generator and me. (the $0.11/kWh tier is essentially subsidized by the >$0.20/kWh tiers.. a way to claim "we've reduced electricity rates")


At the "biggest" scale (i.e. Spot prices from the generating plant) , it looks like it's running about $40/MWh  ($0.04/kWh) on the spot market, peaking up to $80 in the last few weeks (it's been very hot.. 40C)

A large industrial consumer will be paying a lower distribution cost (perhaps $0.05/kWh) and closer to the spot price for the electricity.

Jim Lux


-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Per Jessen
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 2:48 AM
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] In appropriate post (was "In the news again HPC in Iceland")

Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

> Oh comeon i've been over there myself - everyone knows that this 
> bunker has a max of a couple of hundreds of kilowatt of very expensive 
> electricity. 4.3 cents the article quotes. That's what i pay in this 
> office as well.

According to this table, a kilowatthour is 8 cents in the Netherlands. 
http://www.energy.eu/#Industrial-Elec

Only Bulgaria comes close with about 5cents/kwh.