Your Power Bill:
1 - Fees and bullshit. There's always fees and bullshit. Let's just get that out of the way. Billing, administration, etc.
2 - "Energy" charges. This is what most of you probably think you're paying for, but it's actually the smallest part of your bill. This is how much energy you use. It's an amount. If you conserve or use no electricity, this part will be zero. It scales linearly with how much you use. I.E. If you use twice as much energy, this portion will cost you twice as much. I don't think Alberta has different cost rates for different times of day like you see in other places like California. It's just one rate. This rate goes up and down slightly, and you can shop around for different rates from different power companies, lock in at a certain rate, go with a floating rate, etc.
3 - "Demand/Delivery" charges. This is what most of you probably don't understand. This is what you're charged to be part of the grid, but it's not a flat fee, and it's what makes up most of your bill. You are charged for the largest amount of power you needed at any moment that month. Power is the rate at which energy flows, in watts. It's basically saying "How thick did the wires need to be to go to your house this month?" or "How big of a grid did we need because of you this month?" and charging you a linear rate for that. If the highest rate you needed last month (how many things were turned on at a time) was 5000 watts, and this month is 10,000 watts, this part of your bill will be twice as high this month.
Now obviously the wires to your house aren't growing and shrinking each month, and it doesn't cost the utility company any more money based on how much you use at a given time (generally, there's a power supplier auction that happens on an hourly basis for the people who run the grid, and some times of day are more expensive to purchase power to supply the grid, etc, but ignore that). It only costs them more money for how much energy you use (more water through the dam, coal burned, etc). But... the grid isn't free, and this is how they break up the cost of the grid in a sort of fair way. If the system needs to put out 10,000,000 watts for even 60 seconds a month, the system has to be built to be able to provide that. Those that have higher demand blips that month, pay a larger percentage.
Your power company is billed the demand charges from the... grid organization. Not sure if it's government owned or whatnot, but, they pass those charges onto you. Most (all?) of your utility companies are actually just marketing and billing companies, they have nothing to do with the actual electricity.
So...
The "problem" for solar people is that #3 up there, your demand charges, have a base rate. So unlike the energy portion of your bill which, if you use zero you pay zero... there's a base amount you will pay for demand. For me it's 3,000W. If nothing is plugged in all month, I still pay as if I'd plugged in 3000W worth of stuff (2 toasters or hair dryers running full blast all month). You don't pay for the energy (if you plug nothing in, you used no energy), but there's a minimum part of the grid they'll say you're responsible for.
Some numbers to help wrap your head around this... The average power draw of a home is around 1,000 watts. If you took the amount of energy consumed in a month, and perfectly spread it out over the whole month, it would be about 1,000 watts.
A cellphone charger is about 10 watts. A computer or TV is about 100 watts. A toaster or hair dryer or space heater is about 1500 watts. A clothes dryer is 6000 watts. An oven is probably 5000 watts and the stove is another 5,000 watts.
...
Conserving:
For people who want to reduce your electricity bill, what can you do?
The government has all these nice programs about "conserving energy" and the utter inconsequential bullshit "conservation theatre" tips that make you feel like you're doing something but have no effect. "Phantom power" from your cell phone charger being plugged in even if not in use? Better put that on a power bar so you don't have that scary phantom power. It adds up to literally not even a penny a year. Turn the lights off when you leave a room? Might add up to a dollar or two a year.
They have you running around trying to be energy efficient when it makes no impact on: A - Your environmental impact, and B - Your bill.
The best thing you can do to reduce your power bill is make sure you're not cooking while you're drying clothes, ever, even once, in a month. Pull that one thing off and your power bill will drop 30%.
That's the only thing that's tripping your demand charges from 5kw rate to 10kw rate. Nothing else, even added up, is likely to have an influence or not have you living in paranoia. There's 100 little things that you'd have to get perfectly and there's no point in stressing about. Just make 1 rule: No cooking while drying clothes, even for 1 second. Boom, 30% reduction in your power bill.
Electricity Demand/Delivery charges
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Originally Posted by killramos
