Future infrastructure for residential electric service?

[Bill Howatt]

I think the reality is electricity is going to become a lot more expensive. I'm already paying the most I have ever paid in my life and it's almost doubled in less than 10 years. With all fees added in now I am at 20 cents per KWH.

Based on your mention of fees, I guess your bills are structured like mine. Looking at the oft-quoted rate for electricity makes it look fairly cheap but by the time the taxes, delivery charges, etc. get applied, the real price per Kwh is much higher. I think anybody who believes that the construction of increased electrical infrastructure to support the new "electric" era isn't going to be reflected on utility bills is dreaming.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I am afraid that the future infrastructure for electricity will be a lot more like this movie clip than all homes having 400 amps. Does anyone remember the brown outs and blackouts of 1977?

[Monte Milanuk]

Local rates - read 'em and weep

A) Residential and Commercial services:

Basic charge: $14.21 per month

Energy charge: $0.0233 first 25,000 KWH
$0.0262 25,001 KWH to 49,999 KWH
$0.0267 50,000 KWH and over

Demand charge: $2.19 per kilowatt of demand in excess of 50 kilowatts.

[Doug Garson]

Local rates - read 'em and weep

) Residential and Commercial services:

Basic charge: $14.21 per month

Energy charge: $0.0233 first 25,000 KWH
$0.0262 25,001 KWH to 49,999 KWH
$0.0267 50,000 KWH and over

Demand charge: $2.19 per kilowatt of demand in excess of 50 kilowatts.

Where and when was that? The average residential electricity rate in Washington is 13 ¢/kWh, which is 29% lower than the national average rate of 18 ¢/kWh.

Current rates for residential customers in British Columbia as of October 1, 2023, are: Basic charge = $0.2117 per day. ($6.30/month) Step 1 energy charge (first 1376 kilowatt hours (kWh))1 = $0.0975/kWh. Step 2 energy charge (every kWh over 1376) = $0.1408/kWh.

Note these are Canuck Bucks $.72 US.

[Monte Milanuk]

Where and when was that?

Current, copied it off the local utility's website today.

One of the benefits of living along the Columbia River... There's a reason why Microsoft and others are building huge data centers in Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties - power is stupidly cheap, even if it's not considered 'green' by the eco-freaks, and most of the utilities invested heavily in fiber backbones years ago.

The average residential electricity rate in Washington is 13 ¢/kWh, which is 29% lower than the national average rate of 18 ¢/kWh.

The only reason the average residental rate in WA is that low is because of the metric butt-load of hydro along the Columbia River. We make enough to cover our own needs, and sell most of the rest on long-term contracts to places like Avista and Puget Sound Energy. The remainder gets sold on the spot market to anyone who needs to make up a shortfall on their own commitments.

[Doug Garson]

Current, copied it off the local utility's website today.

One of the benefits of living along the Columbia River... There's a reason why Microsoft and others are building huge data centers in Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties - power is stupidly cheap, even if it's not considered 'green' by the eco-freaks, and most of the utilities invested heavily in fiber backbones years ago.


The only reason the average residental rate in WA is that low is because of the metric butt-load of hydro along the Columbia River. We make enough to cover our own needs, and sell most of the rest on long-term contracts to places like Avista and Puget Sound Energy. The remainder gets sold on the spot market to anyone who needs to make up a shortfall on their own commitments.

Thanks Monte, I didn't realize there was that much spread in rates around the state. Hydro is definitely one of the cheapest options. In BC we essentially have one Crown Corporation as our utility and I think rates are the same province wide.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Poles to carry electric for a neighborhood? Why not underground. I paid to bury my line back my driveway from the road, 890 ft didn't want any crappy poles screwing up the view or above ground lines to get screwed up by birds planes, trees, incompetent power personnel etc. we do have propane heat, hot water and cooking so only 200 amp needed, but I think a higher amp line was installed. . We have all sealed led light fixtures inside and out. replaced one light fixture in 8 years. Our well pump does come off the barn electric which is a 1/4 mile away and on it's own meter

[Monte Milanuk]

Poles to carry electric for a neighborhood? Why not underground.

Well... in my experience (spent a few years doing "retail" / 'low-voltage' substation work, from 69kv on the high side coming into the transformers, down to 2.4 kv on the circuits heading out of the substation to houses (and businesses), but mostly 34.5kv and 12.5/13.8 kv)... the advantages of underground are aesthetics (no unsightly overhead lines), less concerns about interference with over/under build i.e. higher voltage lines above, or lower power / telecom lines below... less likely to get smacked by drunk drivers... fewer concerns with vegetation management (trees growing into the lines, or lines sagging under high load current / high temps (or conversely, ice buildup in the winter))... the problems are fewer, but constitute a fair PITA from the maintenance POV. Fault somewhere along the line? Modern relaying and metering can do a pretty good job of localizing where along the line the problem is, but someone still has to go out and put a Mk1 Mod 0 eyeball on it. Overhead - drive the line and you can pretty easily *see* the problem. Underground? Get a backhoe. It ain't gonna be fun. If you're in a region with any degree of seismic activity... overhead can (to some degree) move with the motion, and can be rebuilt fairly easily/quickly. Underground? Not so much, and you're back to the backhoe. With overhead... the only points that have to be actually insulated are at the cross arms or where the lines connect to other pieces of equipment - the ambient air around the wire makes pretty good insulation. Underground... can be done fairly compactly, because you don't need as large of minimum clearance distances since you aren't using air for the insulator, but (usually) a solid material designed for the purpose. Unfortunately, that material has a service life - during which it breaks down and loses effectiveness. Restringing aka re-conductoring overhead power lines is a royal PITA, but really doesn't have to happen very often - either when the utility is upgrading the line. When the insulation on underground starts to fail... well hopefully you can imagine what nightmare digging it all up and replacing it can be.

We had some particular fun at the utility I was at previously, where a whole bunch of underground had been put in a couple decades prior, and was beginning to reach EOL. More and more service interruptions due to spot failures, and the test equipment for locating said faults basically consisted of applying high voltage pulses to the line, and walking down the path with a set of microphones along the ground, listening for the 'thump' of the voltage arcing to ground (literally). That got you close enough to call out the backhoe Problem was, you'd patch one bad spot, and then a couple weeks/months later have another fault caused by... the high voltage pulses used to locate the last fault. The next generation of test equipment did a much better job, using TDR (time-domain reflection) to pin-point the location using much lower voltage pulses and causing fewer subsequent secondary failures.

Even that was quite a while ago (20+yrs) so I can only imagine what they have now - but remember, not every utility *has* access to that kind of tech. The one I worked for then, a state-wide public utility in Nebraska, was a pretty firm believer in preventative maintenance and aggressive maintenance schedules - they'd rather control the timing of outages than get caught flat-footed. Many of the smaller municipalities and rural co-ops... practiced more what we called 'burn-down' maintenance i.e. they'd just let it go until something burned up (or down), and then fix just what they absolutely had to to keep going.

It's not a simple subject.

[Bill Howatt]

Informative perspective from the other side of the pole or burial site!

I found the TDR interesting since many years ago, maybe around the time it first appeared, I used TDR in a lab environment to investigate transmission line and device impedance matching - not power lines but hardware for use at microwave frequencies. Of course, a break or non-terminated cable would show up as a huge mismatch.