To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Cc: WSFAList at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 01:21:06 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: power plant visible from 50 miles
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 00:32:15 -0400 (EDT) "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
> Rich Lynch <rw_lynch at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > A web search shows that the price of electricity in NSW and
> Victoria
> > is about A$20-30 per megawatt-hour.
>
> It costs about $100 (A$180) here.  Why would it be so much cheaper
> there?  Is it possible the website you found is mistaken?
> --
> Keith F. Lynch

U.S. $20-30 is a typical wholesale price for electricity here in the
U.S., in most heavily populated regions, at least for long-term
contracts.  That's 2 cents to 3 cents per KWH.  Electricity 'retails' to
home users at two or three times that price, if you include distribution
costs, and the premium that retail users pay for getting a guaranteed
price.

On the volatile 'spot' market, where energy is traded hour by hour for
exchange among utility companies and generating companies and industrial
users and industrial co-generators, on regional grids, the price should
normally be in the range of $10 to $50 per MWH, but it could spike up to
$100, or even much higher, on a very hot (or very cold!) day when there
are several unscheduled plant outages in the region.  Sometimes during
the summer 2000 California energy crisis it went over $2000 there.

It is believable that the wholesale price in Australia is as low as U.S.
$10 to $15 per MWH, if coal is plentiful there, as was claimed.  Some
places in the U.S. have chronically high electricity prices, e.g. Hawaii
and Florida.  Hawaii, because they have to ship in all the fuel across
the ocean, and because the 'grid' there is very fragmented.  In past
decades, some places in the U.S. had very cheap electricity, because of
the proximity of large hydroelectric dams.  Thus the electricity-hungry
aluminum refining industry got established in Washington state, and that
may in turn help explain why the aircraft manufacturing industry is
centered there.

Interestingly, many commercial users in the U.S. do not buy electricity
by the KWH, instead they buy it on a 'demand' schedule, where they pay
the same amount of money each month so long as they stay under an agreed
peak power demand at all times during the month, e.g 25 KW, 100 KW, etc.
They use a special meter which registers peak power demand, rather than,
or in addition to, the amount of energy delivered.

Ron Kean

.

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