[CallMeMarc]

Is electricity really that cheap in the USA? The cheapest price I've found for my city here in Germany is like 0,24 EUR. And this is already including a new customer discount and cashback. Not even guaranteed green energy...

0,24 EUR is currently ~0,29 USD. That's 0,29 USD for my cheapest price against your most expensive price with 0,20 USD.

[peckrob]

Where I live (southeastern US) it's $0.089/kWh. There's additional taxes on it that make it functionally closer to $0.10. But yeah, fairly cheap.

Which is a good thing because we have electric heat and it's been a very cold month. I'm expecting an about $350 bill.

[johanvts]

It is also a bad thing because it makes it reasonable to live in houses that are not properly insulated and just run the air heater on full blast all winter, like I did when I was living in the US. In Denmark the kWh price is around 0.5$ (the wast majority of that is taxes), and the energy efficiency of the house is a key data point in any house purchase and is always listed next to the price.

[PragmaticPulp]

In many US locations we use gas heat instead of electric. It’s far more efficient to burn fuel for heat instead of burning fuel for electricity and then converting that electricity to heat.

US building codes are also increasingly strict about insulation and energy efficiency. Premium home builders go even further with insulation. In some locations, new houses are so well insulated and sealed that extra fresh air heat recovery units are necessary to exchange the indoor air.

[nikomen]

Building codes are strict, but unfortunately building codes aren't often followed closely enough.

I recently noticed in the house I just purchased that a lot of cold air was coming in behind my kitchen cabinets and appliances. I pulled out my range and noticed that cold air was rushing through the gap between the drywall and the floor. Fortunately a can of expandable foam was an easy fix.

This house is only 2 years old. Corners were cut when building which makes this home not as efficient as it could be. I'm hoping to make gradual improvements.

Even though my electricity rate is only around $0.12/kwh and my gas bill isn't high, I'd still like to do what I can both for the environment and to save money.

[JoeAltmaier]

Electricity may be a bad example. Creating electricity is very efficient. Its marginally more efficient to use gas? What's better about gas heat is, it takes load off the (possibly) overloaded electric grid, taking pressure off the need to expand it.

[belval]

This is only true if you don't enforce building codes that ensure everything is built with good insulation.

In Canada (Quebec) we pay 0.06$/kWh but the government gives incentive for energy efficiency as a tax deductible.

[ogre_codes]

Varies greatly based on state or even county. Hundreds or maybe thousands of utility districts each with a unique set of regulations and resources.

[CallMeMarc]

Is there any state or nation wide search for good utility prices? We've got Check24[1] in Germany which basically is a no brainer to find good price for stuff like this.

[1] https://www.check24.de/strom/

[kube-system]

The approach to utility regulations varies a good bit by state, and things are always changing so I doubt there’s a good lookup beyond the data the federal government collects.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

Although, the states that are “energy deregulated” will often have a marketplace type website where you can compare suppliers. In those states, the utility commission sets rates for your local utility to run the transmission and local distribution wires, but allows you to choose which supplier generates the power on the grid on your behalf.

Really, the best way to figure out utility rates in the US is to check with that state’s utility commission or directly with the utility that provides physical infrastructure in a particular area.

[ogre_codes]

Not really sure. Most places I've lived we haven't had a ton of options on pricing so haven't dug around.

[stanmancan]

We pay about $0.10 in British Columbia, Canada. There is a $0.20 daily base rate and over a certain amount it steps up to $0.14. It’s 95% hydro electric so it’s green too.

https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

[carlob]

hydro is really not that green: salmons are losing their spawning runs for an example in your area. Also not renewable, because dams get filled with sediment and lose capacity over time.

[belval]

Hydro has a big upfront cost because you submerge a lot of land which usually was covered with trees. It also adds a bunch of mercury to the water. However over the lifespan of the dam this is not a real concern especially compared to gas/oil. Furthermore if you need to account for energy stockage with batteries for wind/solar as they are conditional to the weather the environmental cost analysis becomes much closer as you have to account for all the manufacturing externalities. Hydro on the other hand can increase and reduce production by drawing from its reservoir which makes it at least as green as other renewables that we have right now.

[BelenusMordred]

> dams get filled with sediment and lose capacity over time

I'm struggling to believe this. Can you name one dam on Earth that has lost over 10% capacity due to sediment?

[abdullahkhalids]

> Because the source of the Indus River is glacial meltwater from the Himalayas, the river carries huge amounts of sediment, with an annual suspended sediment load of 200 million tons.[15] Live storage capacity of Tarbela reservoir had declined more than 33.5 per cent to 6.434 million acre feet (MAF) against its original capacity of 9.679 MAF because of sedimentation over the past 38 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbela_Dam#Lifespan

[jmkd]

Dams all over the world capture sediment. This not only reduces their capacity, it deprives downstream areas of sediment needed for natural habitat, to fertilise wetlands and to buffer against oceanic incursion.

The Sanmenxia Dam in China lost 17% of its capacity in the first 18 months of its operation due to sediment accumulation [1]

Countless other dams have already been dismantled due to sediment build up, and many more will follow, considering that around 19000 large dams worldwide are over 50 years old [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmenxia_Dam [2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/water-warning-the-looming-thr...

[belval]

Honestly this sounds like mostly poor engineering planification and analysis. If you look at the dams with a lot of sediment it's mostly in South-East Asia and Africa while Europe/North America have little of it.

[jmkd]

Asia's rivers have by far the highest level of sediment of any continent [1] meanwhile the US has quietly destroyed over 1000 dysfunctional dams in the post war period [2]

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/WR0...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/dam-removals/

[rualca]

> I'm struggling to believe this.

If seems you didn't even did the most basic cursory search on the issue.

Here's literally the first hit on a google search for "dam sediment".

https://www.hydroreview.com/world-regions/dealing-with-sedim...

And think about it: what's a dam reservoir other than a big old sedimentation basin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sediment_basin

Also, think about it: hydro power is not the only use for a dam. They are also typically used for things such as flood control, water supply, and energy storage. All of those usecases rely on the sam's ability to hold water (and it's sediments) and lower discharge, if not totally block it.

[nimbleal]

Depending on the impounded area they can (in some cases) be worse than fossil fuels for greenhouse gases.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/not-all-h...

[stanmancan]

I wish that went into more detail! I have no clue how it could be worse than fossil fuels. I get that trees are a store of carbon and if they get submerged they will break down and release it all, but surely over the lifespan of the dam that’s significantly lower than burning coal non-stop? Wouldn’t it be equivalent to a forest fire clearing the area?

I always assumed they would clear the area of trees first anyways. Why let the wood rot when you can cut it down and use it?

[nimbleal]

> I always assumed they would clear the area of trees first anyways. Why let the wood rot when you can cut it down and use it?

The spaces are often so vast that chopping down the wood could delay a project by impractical lengths of time.

> I get that trees are a store of carbon and if they get submerged they will break down and release it all, but surely over the lifespan of the dam that’s significantly lower than burning coal non-stop? Wouldn’t it be equivalent to a forest fire clearing the area?

My understanding is that microbial breakdown means a lot more carbon is released as methane vs. CO2 from fires — methane being a much more potent greenhouse gas.

Here’s one related paper I found

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/11/949/275427...

(I work for a hydro developer but I’m not an expert).

[stanmancan]

While it’s not perfect it’s significantly better than burning coal.

Geographically we can’t rely on solar; I’m not sure why we don’t have more wind turbines!

[gruez]

see: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

There are several states where the retail rates are lower than 10 cent/kwh.

[CallMeMarc]

Thanks for the link. Insane to see that some of them even got cheaper in 2020.

[fulafel]

US households use 3x the electricity vs German households. They get wholesale prices.

[HPsquared]

Germany has super high prices for electricity.

[zufallsheld]

See https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/13020/umfrage... for a comparison of prices around the world. Germany is at the top.

[diimdeep]

> stat

paywalled, any open source for this data?

[marsokod]

Here is another one: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Germany/electricity_price...

[fy20]

Here in Lithuania it's ~€0.18/kWh for peak rates. That includes all connection and admin fees, which in the US is usually billed as a separate line item. Most of our electricity is imported from Sweden. Our media keeps saying we have the highest electricity prices in the EU, but I guess not :-)

[kabes]

Germany, Denmark and Belgium are all bordering 0.30/kwh. Cheapest is Bulgaria around 0.10. So Lithuania pricing seems to be quite average. Maybe they mean highest relative to average income?

[em500]

The majority of the consumer energy prices in Europe go to taxes. Here in the Netherlands, average rates are around €0.22/kWh, which breaks down into €0.12 energy tax, €0.04 VAT and €0.06 electricity.

[m463]

In the california bay area with PG&E it is .25/.31/.39 per kwh in tiers:

first 300 kwh @ .25 the next 1000 kwh @ .31 above that you pay .39

[BelenusMordred]

USD$0.05/kwh here. Not in the US. My monthly bill comes in around $25 a month.

[xutopia]

In Quebec I pay 0.0938 CAD.

[Robotbeat]

Yes.

1) The US has good hydro resources (in the northwest where it rains all the time and there are lots of mountains so you have both lots of water and altitude change) as well as nuclear (especially in the long-industrialized northeast) that (mostly) has long been paid for and that we just keep running for cheap. Nuclear is about 19% of our electricity, and it's cheap once it has been built for decades.

2) Lots of cheap wind, especially in the middle of the continent where all the maize and stuff grows.

3) Way better solar resource especially in the south and southwest where it's about twice as much sun as in Germany and with much, MUCH less seasonal impact. See: http://www.sunisthefuture.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Sun...

4) Like Germany (but even more so), LOTS of coal. Over a quarter of the world's recoverable coal reserves. However, we don't even use that much of it anymore. Just the cheapest kind (usually not the crappy lignite stuff that Germany often uses for power) is still used for power. We use much less than half the coal for electricity than we did even 10 years ago. Because...

5) We have a ridiculous. A RIDICULOUS amount of cheap gas right now. Fracking has opened up the spigot. Texas, Pennsylvania, Lousiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, etc, etc. (And Canada produces a bunch that we end up using because they don't have anyone else to sell it to and it's produced a long way from Canada's cities.) We make so much natural gas we export it to Mexico, and are even starting to liquefy it and export it to Europe.

So yeah. While Germany has long relied heavily on imported fossil fuels, the shutdown of nuclear plants hasn't helped. Think of how expensive it is to send natural gas all the way from wherever Russia makes it (Siberia) all the way to Germany and the markup Putin asks for. (and that's roughly a third of Germany's natural gas, IIRC)

And I think the way wind/solar subsidies work in Germany and different than in the US. In Germany, the solar subsidy is paid for by all the ratepayers. That alone is like 4.6 US cents per kWh on top of your electricity. In the US, the solar subsidy is funded as a tax credit which means the cost isn't directly borne by consumers but ends up being paid for or borrowed by the federal government. (Also, having twice as much sun means the same solar panel makes roughly twice as much electricity...) This has the effect of solar actually reducing the cost of electricity in the US while it increases the cost of electricity in Germany for the consumer... which probably is why German companies have been more reluctant to switch to electric cars than you think they would have been.

So yeah. The US has a huge amount of land, so really good solar/wind resources (and decent geothermal while we're at it), a pretty solid hydro and nuclear power situation, and massive amounts of fossil fuel. The US is now actually a net energy exporter. That's why electricity is so cheap.

You can check out good statistics for US energy production and consumption here: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

[salty_biscuits]

Also your network infrastructure is much cheaper than a lot of places around the world. This is a large part of the price of electricity where I come from (which is far more expensive).

[xyzzyz]

Yes, Germany has very expensive energy because of their transition away from reliable energy sources onto renewables.

[panarky]

Are you implying that Germany's electric grid is unreliable?

If so, a citation would be good because my sources say Germany's electric supply has been stable.

[xyzzyz]

See for example https://amp.dw.com/en/winds-of-change-push-german-power-grid... or https://www.greentechmedia.com/amp/article/germanys-stressed... .

[panarky]

Neither of these articles says Germany's electricity supply is unreliable. There's no mention of power outages, or equipment damage, or anything like the power crisis in Texas power.

Instead, your citations say renewables are producing more energy than can be used.

That's a good problem. It can be solved by turning some of the supply off, or adding long-distance transmission to move the excess power to where it's needed.

But there's no hint of renewables causing instability or unreliability or power outages.

[Toutouxc]

My source (a guy who works on the Czech power grid) says the Germans kind of abuse the Czech power grid in order to move their wind electricity from the north (wind turbines) to the south (industry). They even had to take measures on the Czech side to push some of that electricity back across the border.