• Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Why is commercial power so cheap and residential so expensive? We could fix two problems by balancing that back.

    • Nighed@sffa.community
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      9 months ago

      My understanding is tha some commercial/industrial users will get a highly variable tariff. This may be cheaper much of the time, but can get ridiculously expensive at times of high demand.

      The difference is that a bitcoin farmer can shut down at those expensive times, but a home user still needs to heat/cool their house, run their fridge etc, so the savings cancel out. Because of this, averaging the costs works out easier/better for most home consumers

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        You can get time of use billing at home with many power companies. Only makes sense if you have solar panels or storage batteries or some such.

        • st3ph3n@midwest.social
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          9 months ago

          I have real time pricing from my utility. It works out well because we charge 2 electric cars overnight for a fraction of what they would cost to charge at the standard fixed kilowatt-hour rate. My house is heated by natural gas; I don’t think the savings would be there if I also was heating my house with electricity as I live in the midwest, where it gets cold as fuck for the winter.