Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vericiab 738 days ago
Although your bill might only show one bundled price depending on who supplies and delivers your electricity, the cost of electricity in the US usually includes both a "supply" or "generation" charge and a "delivery" charge. Based on what I'm seeing on that page I think it's almost certainly only showing the electric supply rates, not the combined total of supply + delivery.

I don't live in California so the nuances are lost on me, but it looks like for SF county the residential delivery rate is about 19c/kWh, the supply rate ranges from roughly 12-16c/kWh, and "surcharges" are 0-1c/kWh, for a total of 31-37c/kWh. For San Diego county the delivery rate is 25-26c/kWh, the supply rate is 15-18c/kWh, and surcharges are 2-5c/kWh, with a total of 45-46c/kWh.[1]

[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/RateComparison

2 comments

Fair point, but SD in particular also has some of the highest electricity costs in the US. This BLS data seems to be the actual cost to consumers, and the average is $0.17: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
To be clear when I said 0.11/kWh in Chicago I was giving the total price, including both the supply and delivery.

California has some ridiculously expensive power costs. I moved to Chicago in 2021 after living in the bay area for 11 years, and the amount I spent on electricity absolutely plummeted.