Electric Rates - Time to Strike?

self | May 29, 2025 | fwdud

[fwdude]

I have a questions for those more financially savvy than I.

I live in a state that has deregulated electric energy markets, in an urban area with a lot of choices for providers. My current electric service contract is up in just over a month.

Seeing that energy prices are beginning to come down, is it wise to lock in with a new provider now, or wait as long as possible, possibly risking a spike in July?

Also, long or short contract? Fixed or variable?

Thanks for any advice.

[FrozenAssets]

We have about 2080 sun hours per year at this lattitude. >64N.
There is also snow on evrything for about 7 months of the year. In the right place this stuff really works well, but not here.

[GenXPolymath]

Alaska? For truly off grid power, some power is better than no power. More accurately every kWh of solar means less diesel or fuel oil must be trucked or barged in at very expensive rates. What does diesel cost per gallon where you are if it’s Alaska in guessing $6+ a gallon. Solar panels have gotten cheap you can get 750 watt commercial panels for $450 singles and in pallets worth they are 14 cents per watt of capacity. With kWh/kWp in the 1000s a single panel will make 750kWh per year. Typical diesel generator heating rate for megawatt scale not home scale generators is 14,000BTU per kWh. Small scale diesels 10kW to 100kW are much higher in BTU use per kWh produced.

That means 750 kWh is equal too 10,875,000BTU of diesel per year or 78 gallons worth at $6 per gallon that’s $468 worth of diesel. This means a single 4 foot by 8 foot panel even at a low PVOUT of 1000 is worth in a single year what it cost retail and at while sale it’s 3 months worth of time...for a panel that has a 25 year capacity warranty.

High latitude and snow help vertical solar fences produce 40+% more power vs horizontal panels at an angle equal to their latitude. Bifacial panels use reflections to nearly double the output snow is the best reflector and it cannot stick to a vertical panel set them high enough the drifts blow under them.

https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1844102046871666963

There is no better source of off grid power than large commercial solar panels in a stand alone system. Obviously dark winter nights mean no power, they should be looked at as a way to cut the diesel imported at Gucci expensive rates down by leaps and bounds.

Alaska has more solar potential than Germany. (Page 2)

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Solar-Prospecting-AK-final.pdf

https://environmentamerica.org/alaska/center/resources/rooftop-solar-and-storage-in-alaska/

Midway down even Canada has kWh/kWp in the 650 to 1000 range here again each panel is making dozens of gallons of equivalent in diesel off grid.

https://theconversation.com/how-shading-crops-with-solar-panels-can-improve-farming-lower-food-costs-and-reduce-emissions-202094

Wind is of course the natural complement to any off grid system. Alaska has significant wind resources. Wind tends to howl at night in the dark winter days in the roaring 40s,50s,60s North or South latitudes. Check out the 50 meter state wide maps anything class 4 that’s purple and above is going to rock a wind turbine.

https://www.akenergyauthority.org/What-We-Do/Renewable-Energy-and-Energy-Efficiency/Wind/Resources

A 50kW turbine cuts in at 3.5 meters per second that’s class 2 winds with 5kw of output at 4mps it’s 10kW, by 8 mps it’s over 30kW and by 9.5 it’s at.max power all the way to 20 mps cut out speeds. A turbine of this size from China is $6500 American B2B prices. Those class 4 purple zones would make rated power 40+% of the time for a year. That’s 50kw for 3500 hours of a year in a class 4 zone. Or 175,000 kilowatt hours you could power a village on that the average American household not individual uses 10,800 kWh per year. Yeah wind can put up some serious numbers in high latitude field fields.