There are places where electricity rates are below 5 cents per KWH. Some
of it comes from hydro and some from nuclear. Meanwhile, natural gas has
been skyrocketing for the past few months.

In central VA, we pay a little less that 8 cents during the summer air
condioning season and about 6 cents during the winter. Heat pump users can
get "budget billing" with a fixed monthly charge.

Our power comes from a mix of coal fired plants and nukes.

There may be a few "peaking" plants that use oil or NG but there are also
some coal fired plants that aren't owned by the same folks that distribute
the power.

Some of this may change because (as happened in California) our local
utility promised to keep rates down in exchange for permission to sell off
its power plants. The "modern" pattern is for a particular company to own
distribution systems in one area and power plants in another area and high
voltage links in still other areas. Essentiallly, these three aspects of
the costs to the consumer will be controlled locally by three different
companies.

You can "look it up" but for year and years in most places "hydro" is used
mosly for "peaking" rather than base load. Base load plants (coal and
nuke) are often placed on the lakes created by "hydro" dams.




** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **