20 Comments

    1. TobysGrundlee on

      Right in the middle of all of that green and got solar when everyone said it was stupid. Now my electric is 1/3 what everyone else’s is *and* I switched to EV and have no gas payment, lol.

      Don’t listen to the idiots kids.

    2. Ooh, this is a fun one!

      My county (Santa Clara, CA) is listed on that dataset as having $0.303 – in reality, it’s actually a fair bit higher for most cities in the county because of added on fees, between flat fees + variable pricing it’s closer to $0.50 for most people…

      … *Except* in the city of Santa Clara itself, which is on a public utility and pays $0.17.

      Worth bringing up because at least 11 of the top 25 counties are all under the private utility company (PG&E) that Santa Clara (city) is distinctly independent from.

      *Also* worth bringing up because we get tons of solar here, and even my inefficient, poorly-built solar setup that doesn’t get economies of scale costs about $0.04-$0.08, most of that coming from the cost of the batteries (width in estimate depends on if the batteries are expected to last 15 or 30 years).

      *EDIT*: This is also *definitely* an under-estimate, at least for the expensive Californian counties. My friends in Alameda county (also Bay area) pay $0.65 after accounting for all the bells and whistles.

    3. As a Californian this really highlights how high our electricity prices are. As far as I’m aware most of the cost stems from distribution. It’s hard not to see aging distribution infrastructure as anything but a profit grab from PG&E. Or the tight relationship between the governing board and PG&E and Newsome as anything but corruption.

      We need to prevent catastrophes like the Paradise Fire and the annual natural gas explosions but negligence and mismanagement shouldn’t be the justification to raise prices on consumers. Incompetence should be the reason a utility is absorbed and becomes a public utility. We’re already bearing the cost of all the fire and aging infrastructure liability.

    4. I wonder how many border states CA electric rates subsidize.
      How many states does CA buy power from at above that states cost to local consumers?

    5. I love SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) They are the reason Sacramento County is lower than all its neighboring counties. All our neighboring counties use PG&E.

    6. California trying too hard to get me to not move there. Like I got the hint with $2K+ for ‘regular’ 1 bedroom apartments lol

    7. I love how it maxes out at what we paid here on the Big Island 15+ years ago. Damn, I wish it was only 29.3!

    8. Fallacy_Spotted on

      The government should *always* own the infrastructure and then private companies can supply the power if competitive. Of course public plants should also exist but private should have a shot if they think they can do it better. The floor will always be the public plants. Strict maintenance schedules and firewalled funding so it remains entirely independent. No one else can rob their emergency coffers.

    9. Seeing Southern Florida that low when the only reason it’s habitable is because of the invention of A/C is crazy to me.

    10. apackofblackbears on

      Nebraska – the only public power state! Electricity should be a state owned utility everywhere.

    11. I love how you can tell which parts of Cali have public electricity and which are stuck with PGE.

    12. Representative_Bat81 on

      How the fuck is California more expensive than Massachusetts? We literally import a very large proportion of our electricity from Canada with tremendous efficiency loss. Seriously, what are you guys doing?

    13. crankbait808 on

      Is this the average across the year because Georgia power increases their prices during the 8 summer months

    14. vroomvroom450 on

      Ours is $0.13 in NY according to this, but the transmission charges are half of our freaking bill. Last month it was slightly more than half. It’s not OK.

    15. This is really beautiful. I wonder what it looks like if it encompassed NA (i.e., include Canada) maybe central America as well, … But I can appreciate the data being lackluster in some cases. In BC residential tiered rates are 0.1172 and 0.1408 with lower purchasing power I think it breaks through the bottom of this graph’s lower limit? Would also be interesting to see comparisons with places like PR, DR and Mexico

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