On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 01:52:46 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

How is electricity sold to the consumer in the U.S.

By the kw-hr. Rates vary by time of day, state, season, type of
service (residential, industrial, and commercial) and regulatory
gouging. There are local government owned utilizes (such as Los
Angeles Dept of Water and Power), independent investor owned utilities
(such as PG&E and Cal Edison), and power cooperatives, which buy bulk
kw-hrs, and resell the power to its members.

To keep it all looking sane, the federal government produces reports
on the cost of power that is intended to remind the power consumers of
their position in life.
http://www.eia.gov
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/

The May 2012 report. Note that the cost per kw-hr seems to be
missing:
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/epm.pdf
However, the new and improved data browser has it:
http://www.eia.gov/beta/enerdat/#/topic/7?agg=0,1&geo=g&endsec=vg&freq=M&start=200101&end= 201203&charted=1

Presumably it is by
the 'unit' of 1 kWh the same as here in the UK, but is the price constant
across the day, or is there an equivalent of the night-time economy period
that we have in the UK, where the per unit cost is significantly lower for
seven hours ?

In general, it's the same price all day. The exception are a few
large industrial plants and commercial buildings that have time-of-use
billing. The basic idea is to reduce energy use during peaks.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/timeofuse-electricity-rates.htm

And is the pricing structure 'simple' like it used to be here,
or a minefield of different tariffs that you can choose from, that make it
so complicated that you have to go onto a price comparison site to try to
get the best deal, and even then can't be sure that you've got it right ?

With normal billing, it's fairly simple. Consumer electricity is
divided into tiers. The low usage tiers are fairly economical.
However, if usage increases to tier 5, it can get really expensive.
The regular billing schedule:
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ResElecCurrent.xls
The Time-of-Use version:
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ResTOUCurrent.xls

And who do you buy it from ?

Usually, it's from the local regulated monopoly. In my area, it's
PG&E. However, you can buy from a wide variety of independents. The
electricity is delivered by PG&E, produced by some alternative
producer, and is billed through some other entity. This usually costs
more than PG&E, but allegedly gives the consumer that warm fuzzy
feeling from buying clean energy from an ecologically correct vendor.
http://www.calpine.com

Do you have a national supplier, or a state
supplier, or a local supplier or all of those ?

In general, local. However, many producers are large enough that they
server half of the state.

Is it a massive mire of
'competition' between suppliers like it is here now ? I say 'competition' in
inverted commas, because in reality, it's actually nothing of the sort for
the most part. Do you also have 'combined' tariff suppliers who will supply
your gas as well as electricity, to further muddy the waters ?

No confusion here. The state divides up the pie according to which
electricity producer and operator can do the best job for the state. A
few years ago, they stupidly demanded that the major delivery and
billing companies, divest themselves of all of their production
facilities. It was suppose to result in lower prices, but instead
managed to raise them. It's not as neat as I would like, but it
works.

What is your
typical price now for a unit of daytime electricity ?

It varies too much by tier and season to offer a single value. See:
http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ResElecCurrent.xls
Somewhere between $0.11 to $0.34/kw-hr.

Just interested, as it's so ridiculously expensive and top heavy here now,
and I was wondering whether this has become the norm around the world. Any
of you Aussie boys (or girls) want to chip in with how it's done down there
? Anyone else anywhere ?

Arfa
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558