Energy costs for your area?

[Doodski]

So far most of ours do go out in winter or at least in one nice rainfall this time of year....we got a teaset last night/today but nothing too significant here so far. Keeps the smoke down at least.

W don't get a large amount of rain here and the snow is very dry too.

 

[dougi]

Well difference in climate, house size, family size and age of house will matter a lot. Where I live electricity is about 15.5 cents per kw-hr. With a monthly minimum fee to be connected.

In my "state" (ACT) in Australia, cost is about $US 0.186/kwh. Australia is mostly coal but with a significant portion of renewables at times. The ACT pays for 100% renewables. Pop only about 450,000.

 

[bluefuzz]

Here in east Denmark my electricity price currently fluctuates between about 1 and 5 DKK/kWh depending on time of day, demand, weather etc. After the Ukraine invasion prices went up to about 10 DKK/kWh for a while and haven't fully come down again.

Last year I used ~5000 kWh whiich cost about 10000 DKK for my small and quite poorly insulated house ...

 

[Induna]

I live in the mountains of Southern Costa Rica. I pay around $.19 a kwh at the current exchange rate. I pay virtually no taxes as long as I stay below 250 kwh, which I always do. So, all in all, I pay less than $400 a year.The Colón is very strong now so that cost is a bit elevated. I use 150 kwh a month or less and have no heat or AC because neither is necessary. Electricity here is almost entirely from Hydro and geothermal. We have lots of rain, mountains and volcanoes

 

[Jmudrick]

I live in an all electric 2100 sq ft. 4 bdr house in Pittsburgh PA. All in costs for electric service including various fees and taxes are about $.16/kWh. Usage ranges from 600kWh per month in April-May to 1400kWh in January-February. Bills range from about $90 to $215 per month. Monthly average is $129. We have a pretty great heat pump system.

 

[Gary_G]

It is very interesting how electric cost vary so much !

I have been tracking electric usage since we build our new home and attached are a few plots.

The house is 2,700 square feet, 2 story. Instead of solar we decided to build a tighter home. So, 2x6 exterior walls, spray foam insulation, conditioned crawlspace and triple pane windows. Heating and Cooling is all electric and we included two ERV systems to circulate stale, inside air with fresh, outside air. That system is about 80% efficient at heat exchanging.

These construction methods really did help. Our previous home, built in 1990 and 2,600 square feet had an average cost for electric of $300/month. This home is about $185/month. The thing is in the previous home we were both working out of the house so for 10 hours a day it was dormant. In this home we are here all the time.

Edit: we do use propane for a fireplace and backup generator. That cost is maybe $10/month.

 

[ENG]

The price of 1 kWh fluctuates all the time here. The average is 3-4 DKK equal to 0,40 - 0,54 EUR. It has doubled in 5 years.

 

[Timmy]

After the Ukraine invasion prices went up to about 10 DKK/kWh for a while and haven't fully come down again.

This seems to be true for the most part of Europe. I’d guess it could be quite interesting to investigate the development of U.S. energy prices since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

 

[voodooless]

This seems to be true for the most part of Europe. I’d guess it could be quite interesting to investigate the development of U.S. energy prices since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Seems like it didn't have any impact on average:

[ https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61903 ]

 

[Willem]

Right now we pay about 0.25 euro per kWh, but hardly paid anything, given our solar panels.. Three years ago the flat roof of our already quite well insulated 2500 sq feet house from 1998 began to leak. We knew that when this would happen we should improve the insulation. So we replaced the existing R=2.5 roof insulation with modern R=6 PIR insulation. We also upgraded the crawl space insulation to R=7.5 (we have floor heating, so adding more insulation made real sense). This reduced our consumption of natural gas by about 30%, from about 2600m3 gas to about 1800 m3. This also made for rather greater comfort. More recently we decided to replace our old and tired gas boiler with a heat pump, and had the gas line removed (we had transitioned to an electric induction cooker already). The insulation part was financially quite attractive, but whether this also applies to the heat pump remains to be seen.

 

[Timmy]

Seems like it didn't have any impact on average:

Since the U.S. inflation rate dropped quite drastically shortly after the Ukraine war began (what a nice coincidence), the inflation adjusted prices for electricity should have gone down in rather the same manner, I’d guess.

 

[Willem]

In the Netherlands, for gasoline, it’s 63.7% taxes. For gas and electricity it’s around 60% taxes.

Part of it is to encourage energy saving and the energy transition. Hence the taxes on gas are being increased gradually, and those on electricity are being lowered. For most people this will more or less balance out, with an incentive to go greener.

 

[pablolie]

Hard to not allow forest fires. I live in a forest. We have fires around us all too often (even now).

That's a very sore subject for me. I lost my weekend cabin (75% of it) to one. :-( Now it's a private camping ground. :-(

 

[Ken1951]

It's not super simple to translate our electric company's rates from their website. We have bi-level/dual-fuel HVAC systems. Heat pumps down to 35 then switched over to propane fueled furnaces. We designed our house, about 3300 sq ft, and have great cross ventilation and insulation and we manage the windows during the summer to minimize our A/C use. B-burg is at 2,000 ft elevation and it doesn't get either very hot or very cold for any extended length of time. With our solar panels, which have now broken-even, and the SRECs we get from them, our total energy cost for our home is about $125/month.

 

[Chrispy]

That's a very sore subject for me. I lost my weekend cabin (75% of it) to one. :-( Now it's a private camping ground. :-(

Fortunately our worst casualties have only been a few forest service campgrounds in our immediate area, has gotten close to town a few times last few years but solid defense lines were put up plus some luck with winds....not so true for the next drainage north, tho, they got hit hard a while back, many homes burned.

 

[Doodski]

Fortunately our worst casualties have only been a few forest service campgrounds in our immediate area, has gotten close to town a few times last few years but solid defense lines were put up plus some luck with winds....not so true for the next drainage north, tho, they got hit hard a while back, many homes burned.

I was living in South Central British Columbia in a dry belt mountainous area when a huge forest fire approached the city to about 4 miles away before the word was spread around that we might have to move out. We never moved out but there was burned pine cones, burned tree needles and small burnt branches on the patio deck. Blown up high due to the fast rising air from the forest fire. We got in the car and went across a lake from the fire to about 1.5 miles away. The candling flames appeared to intermittently jump up about 1.5 inches from the distance where we where at. I got my S100 fire suppression training but never used it. We where warned that if we had to fight a fire that before the fire got even close to us we would be evacuated because the super weather at the forest fire leading edge is like a flaming hurricane or tornado and nothing survives that and then they showed us the USA issue shake and bake tents and they said we won't be using those anywhere at any time. I live in a forest fire safe zone now. They never happen here as I am out on the prairie now and grass fires are about as much as we see. We have tornados and extreme cold.