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Comment on If you save, we will charge you more

Electrical service should have a fixed connection fee.

The reason this happens is because electrical companies have two different kind of costs:

Those related to obtaining the electrical power from generation companies.
Those related to maintaining the grid and providing a connection.

In the past, normally what they did was to simply reduce this to a single price, and for that to be per unit of electricity used. That is, the consumer pays $N. That was at least not an entirely unreasonable approximation when people were pulling electricity off the grid.

The thing is, if a user mostly generates power locally, they still want to have that electrical connection and providing that connection still costs money. But now they’re also not paying for their share of the grid connectivity – it’s getting offloaded to the people who aren’t generating electricity locally.

Hence, the split that many utility companies are shifting to. There’s a fixed charge to have a connection to the grid, which covers the cost of grid maintenance. And there’s a separate cost per kWh of energy used.

If someone doesn’t care about the grid connection – like, they’re confident that they can handle their power needs locally, don’t care about having a grid connection, they do have the option to just drop service. But most people want to have the access to draw more power if they aren’t generating enough, so they want to retain their grid connection. With the grid connection fee being broken out, they cover their share of the costs.

Now, I’ve no disagreement that California electricity rates are pretty bonkers. They’re some of the highest in the US:

electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/

But the issue isn’t having a separate grid connection fee from an electricity used fee.

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The2b@lemmy.vg ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
At least in Illinois, there is no option to go off grid. You’re legally required to maintain a grid connection even if you are generating all power locally.

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GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
This is roughly what we have in the UK.

For electricity, the standing charge is 61.6p/day, then 23.3p/kWh.
And gas is 29.6p/day, then 6.1p/kWh. (The numbers vary, and you can choose to lock rates for the duration of a contract).

There has been some discussion of it in recent years (after it doubled, thanks Putin).
Whether it is fair for people using less energy…But in reality, everyone has similar 100 or 60A connections to the grid.
There are tarrifs for very low users, where the standing charge is combined with the first kWh.

Once I’m off the gas boiler, and on a heat pump, I may get my gas disconnected to save the standing charge.

On a tangent, as you may be interested, we now have the option of flexible electricity pricing that tracks the wholesale rates for the day. Usually, it’s cheaper, sometimes even negative. Link.
However, this week there has been a lot of expensive energy, so it’s been butting up against the £1/kWh limit!

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- kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  70с/kWh is insane lolol
  
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bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You do have to be careful here, because some localities actually require a grid connection to maintain a certificate of occupancy. Title 24 changed in recent years (here in CA), but you may still end up fighting your municipality and the POCO.

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kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
There’s certainly some reasonability to that. However, if the person decides to terminate service, maintaining the grid doesn’t become any cheaper for the power company. The lines are already installed, the connections made, and the company will continue to upkeep your connection all the way up to your home, even if it is terminated locally. They’ll do that just in case you or future homeowners wish to continue service, and your neighbors will likely still be using it anyway. So by that same reasoning, maintaining a just-in-case service connection that you don’t typically need because you generate your own power also doesn’t result in increased maintenance costs to the power company. So there is also an argument to be made that that cost shouldn’t be pushed to them, but to the power drawers that the power company actually wants to serve.

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- GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Well, I suppose they could just take out the stretch of power line between me and my neighbors who use their service and cut down those maintenance costs altogether!
  
  This isn’t like a driveway, it’s more like a road. It’s used by more people than the people whose property it’s in front of. And where I live, the property owner is considered to be the owner of the lines that extend from the grid to the home, so guess who already pays the maintenance costs on that?
  
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Legom7@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The way we do it in New York city is that the power bill has two columns. Delivery charges to pay for the lines and maintenance, and supply charges for the power generation. Both are per kW, like 3cents delivery plus 15cents supply. Plus a couple of fees and sales tax.

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Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Are you saying that someone who uses 10kWh of grid power per month should pay the same “connection fee” as someone who uses 990kWh per month?

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- thebestaquaman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  No, they’re arguing that the price of power should be split:
  
  A fee for grid maintenance (equal for all)
  
  A fee per unit of consumed power (scales linearly with consumption)
  
  This makes sense, because regardless of you much power someone uses, the costs associated with maintaining the infrastructure that allows them to draw any power at all remain the same. This also happens to be the model used in Norway, so it’s not an untested concept.
  
  Another option, relevant when the cost of building the power plant is large and the cost of energy production is negligible, is that everyone connected to the grid pays a near-flat fee in total, which is distributed among consumers depending on how much power they use. I’ve never heard of that option being used before.
  
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- bob_lemon@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Assuming both of those people use exactly the same infrastructure (which they do), yes.
  
  The person with the higher usage will still pay more in total because the connection fee is just a base price, you’re still paying per kWh (which is forwarded to the companies running the power stations)
  
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  - Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Ok, so, you’re in a neighborhood. You and 100 neighbors are each using 10kWh. 1000kWh total.
    
    Now a heavy industrial user comes in adjacent to your neighborhood. They are going to need 990,000kWh. The distribution infrastructure is going to need to be upgraded to meet the new need. It is going to need to be upgrade a lot. Those upgrades are going to be extraordinarily expensive to meet the extraordinary needs of that new user.
    
    Should you and your 100 neighbors each have their recurring connection fee jacked up next month and that charge made equal to the 101st “neighbor”?
    
    Of course not. That’s just absurd.
    
    The whole “local generation” issue you were raising is a red herring.
    
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    forrgott@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Wow. Talk about moving the goal posts. You’re not even taking about the same thing anymore.
    
    If you just wanna bitch about something, uh, then go in with your bad self. Or something. But rather than even attempt a rebuttal to any of the points raised in this thread, you’ve literally completely changed the scenario being discussed.
    
    Like, why even bother replying? Your whole tirade doesn’t even make sense in the context of the thread…
    
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    ramble81@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The “connection fee” would probably be flat by service size. Most homes have 200A connections so that would be one flat rate for everyone with a 200A ingress. If a business uses 400A, they’d get a different price but all 400A would be the same.
    
    Get it now? That has nothing to do with amount used, but rather the size of your “pipe”
    
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    FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    An industrial facility to the scale you are refering to will likely have its own electrical substation. Either maintained by the facility itself or contracted out to the power supplier.
    
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    Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Why are the industrial factory and normal residences using the same electrical hookup? Seems fair if they use the same hookup.
    
    Oh, they’re not? So then the factory likely pays one rate for their industrial connection that needs to pull more power than standard residential usage, and normal consumers pay a lower rate for their lower connection provided.
    
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    HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You would charge based on the kind of connection. A house isn’t going to draw the kind of power that a factory will, but you’re going to need the same equipment your house as you would as your neighbor’s house.
    
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- WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Generally you pay a grid connection based on the type of connection you have. A giant factory has a much beefier grid connection than single family residence, so the big factory has a higher connection charge.
  
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- BorgDrone@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  The way it works here (the Netherlands) the monthly cost for the connection to the grid depends on the maximum current and number of phases.
  
  Some examples: a 1 phase 1A connection costs €11,12 per month, 3x 25A costs €168,99 , 3x 80A is €408,94 (there are other capacities available with different rates).
  
  To me this seems like a fair way of doing it, someone who draws more power (or higher peak power) needs a beefier hookup and that requires beefier and more expensive equipment and cables.
  
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- Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Assuming they have the same type of connection, yeah, why wouldn’t they?
  
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  - Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Simplified scenario.
    
    The cost for the grid provider to maintain a transformer is $1000.
    
    A transformer can serve 20 low-use households, or 2 high-use households.
    
    Both the low-use and the high-use households have the same, 200A service to their homes. The only difference is in how much they actually use.
    
    A neighborhood has 20 low-use households (1 transformer).
    
    That same neighborhood as 10 high-use households (5 transformers).
    
    This neighborhood of 30 houses has $6000 in maintenance costs.
    
    Here are the two options we are talking about:
    
    Fixed rate. Each household in this neighborhood pays a fixed, $200 “connection fee” to cover these costs.
    
    Consumption-based. Each of the 20 low-use household pays $50 ($1000 total, for the 1 transformer they share) and each high-use household pays $500 ($5000 total, for the 5 transformers they share).
    
    Fixed fees only make sense for covering administrative costs, which scale per user. Grid maintenance costs scale based (primarily) on total consumption. Fixing maintenance fees forces low-use households to subsidize high-use households.
    
    I feel like I’m in the fucking twilight zone here. The community does not seem to comprehend what they are demanding.
    
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- Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Is the person’s connection to the grid using less energy a smaller connection, or is it the same? If they’re the same, why should someone using less be charges less of a connection fee? Why would usage impact a fixed on off fee?
  
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  - Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You would have a point if it were possible to downgrade a connection to closely match your consumption. But that is not the case. You can’t buy a 20A service when everyone in your neighborhood has 200A. It’s a matter of safety: service lines need to be sized based on the upstream current limited, but the current limiter for your service (the main breaker in your panel) is downstream of that service line. If you put an undersized service line to your house and it develops a fault, it will burn up before tripping the neighborhood “breaker”.
    
    It is more reasonable to charge you for the generation and distribution of 2A than for your 2A service to be charged the same “connection fee” as your cryptobro neighbor.
    
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    Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You absolutely could pay for a lower rating if you chose to also pay for the equipment to step down the supply to your intake values. That what a transformer substation is for, and why the factory and residential lines can share the same upstream but get different local outputs. It’s just going to be so much more expensive that you’re never going to go that route unless you’ve got a lot of people that want to do the same.
    
    It is more reasonable to charge you for the generation and distribution of 2A than for your 2A service to be charged the same “connection fee” as your cryptobro neighbor.
    
    Is that not what your consumption fee is for? You’re paying for generation/distribution for the power you use, and the power company also tacks on a base fee to account for other maintenance costs that had been bundled but were being lost due to net metering.
    
    From a collective perspective, it makes sense to pay to connect, and also pay per usage when you have the potential to have distributes generation, but centralized maintenance of the shared infrastructure.
    
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- teegus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  In Norway we pay a different fixed fee based on the maximum hourly use (average of three highest hours) during a month, so that consumers that need a lot of effect from the grid pays the most.
  
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