Comment on If you save, we will charge you more
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 day agoAre 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?
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)
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.
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…
I love when folks introduce hypotheticals, then pile on hypotheticals and nonsensicals, and believe they’ve championed their cleverness.
I used exaggerated examples to clearly demonstrate the nature of the problem, not to quantify it.
The problem is still present even within the neighborhood. Residential consumers rarely draw more than 1/10th of their rated service. Crypto-bro comes into the neighborhood and his miners continuously max out his service.
The power company normally installs and maintains a single service transformer per block; but he alone uses as much power as the rest of the block combined. They have to install and maintain a second transformer just for him, but they spread those extra costs among the entire block.
Why is it reasonable for the power company to demand you subsidize his electrical connection than for him to pay for what he is using?
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”
Cryptominer maxes out the same connection that you rarely draw 1/10th of. Why are you subsidizing cryptobro?
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.
Of course. I used that exaggerated example to demonstrate the nature of the problem, not to quantify it.
Cryptominers can use the same connection that you do; they just max it out 24/7, while you rarely use more than 1/10th of your connection.
Why should you be forced to subsidize your cryptoneighbor?
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.
Exaggerated to clearly demonstrate the problem.
With residential housing, consider the cryptobro continuously drawing 180+ amps of his 200A service, while the rest of the community averages 10A, and one unit is down around 1.5A.
Why is Mr. Ampandahalf paying the same connection fee as Mr. Wunetty?
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.
Residential crypto miners can easily draw more power than small factories. I reject the premise of your argument.
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.
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.
Assuming they have the same type of connection, yeah, why wouldn’t they?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Is that not what your consumption fee is for? You’re paying for generation/distribution for the power you use,
Based on that comment, I think I understand the issue.
In my state, I can purchase power from literally any of a hundred generators. I pay them to put power on the grid, for me to take off.
I also pay a single grid provider to (ostensibly) transfer that power from where it generated to me.
What I am talking about here is the fact that both the generator and the grid operator have costs that depend on “consumption”. The more power I use, the greater the load on the grid, and the more infrastructure they need. They might be able to use a single transformer to adequately serve 20 low-use households; they might need 5 transformers to adequately serve 10 high-use households.
Even though all 30 of these households have 200A service, It does not make sense that the cost of these 6 transformers should be evenly assessed. It does make sense that two high-use households (who use a full transformer) pay the same total fee as the 20 low-use households (who also use a full transformer).
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.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, they’re arguing that the price of power should be split:
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.