Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Fuel prices hitting an eight year high
by
DaveF
on 10/10/2021, 19:47:26 UTC


Question on this since I can't find the answer, in the EU is electricity priced as 2 separate things on your bill or just 1.

In most of US you have delivery charges which are what it costs to keep the power lines up, the substations running, the distribution network, etc.

And then you have the generation charges. What it actually costs to make the electricity.

They are separate line items in most places.  What I have seen in many locations is that the generation costs have gone up some but not a lot.
The DEILVERY costs have gone insane. Mostly due to years and years of neglect of power infrastructure that now has to be fixed / upgraded / replaced.

When Hurricane Sandy hit NY / LI 9 years ago it really showed how badly our power infrastructure was neglected. Over the last 9 years the power company has been upgrading and doing tons of other stuff to make sure it does not happen again into the BILLIONS of dollars of costs. Which we get to pay for.
Had it been done over the decades before the costs would have been less since it's cheaper to keep things maintained then let them get that bad and have to do full scale replacements. And the delivery costs would not be what they are now. Since 10 billion over 30 years is a much smaller per month number then 7 billion over 10 years. (Made up the numbers, but the point remains the same) It's just hard to get people to spend money when everything is working.

-Dave