Posted on 02/26/2026 3:00:56 PM PST by devane617
TLANTA, Ga. (WALB) - Millions of Georgia power customers could see lower electricity bills after the U.S. Department of Energy closed a $26.5 billion loan package for Southern Company, the largest loan in the department’s history.
Officials said the deal is expected to save customers more than $7 billion in electricity costs by reducing the utility’s interest expenses.
Southern Company has announced plans for multi-year rate freezes as part of the partnership with the federal government.
(Excerpt) Read more at walb.com ...
Who pays?
That’s because, to the government, that amount of $ isn’t even pocket change, it’s pocket lint.
Looks like the state and feds are gonna pay for those new reactors...
Who pays?
You and me, ComputerGuy.
If they gave it to FPL, the rates would still keep skyrocketing.
If it’s to pay for Rosatom (the Russian nuclear plant manufacturer, who does jobs around the world), they’d get 6 nukes for what they’re paying. US union boys, maybe 2, on a good day (sorry TG, but that’s reality).
California needs these modular reactors, desperately. We need at least 15-20 of them. We need some for desalination so we can drink water and put out fires at the same time. We need some to power all the Teslas. And we need some because our rates are too damn high! I was just thinking today how much I pay to SoCal Edison. Between the home and work and office it’s probably $80,000+ a year. Just for power. And we’re not a big company.
I am ready to move, though power is expensive everywhere it’s probably at least 25%-30% higher here. I made a decision a few years ago to switch from gas boilers to electric boilers. The gas boilers were aging and of course they need vents. It was during Covid and the lead time to install a gas boiler was 15 months! No parts. But in retrospect it was a big mistake. I could move out of state or down the block. Either way, I would very much like to go back to natural gas boilers.
My small company AND my home together costs us about $6,000 a year in electricity here in New Mexico.
Yeah, it’s sick what we pay here in California. Though what gets me is I do manufacturing so sometimes we’ll use a lot of wattage. They also hit me with a “demand charge” every month. Every business with an average of over 20kwh gets this demand charge. If we are running an average of 120 kw a day the demand charge is about $1200 a month. Sometimes that’s equal to the usage charge. A typical month we use 3500-4000KWH total. But lately we picked up some work and now were pulling 10,000 kwh. The Demand Charge barely budges 10% even if we pull 3x more power - we just have to pay for extra usage. Demand Charge is hard to explain or understand - it is a fee they impose to “remain ready to deliver a surge in electricity” to any property. Everyone using more than 20kwh average daily gets whacked with it though it scales somewhat with how much you use, the more you use it doesn’t go up by leaps and bounds.
And you want to know something even sicker about it all? During the day when most people are not at home, the rates are cheapest and in the area where I live about 30% of the homes are generating solar. There is so much solar being produced during the day that the public utilities literally burn off excess production! They just dump it. So theoretically, daytime usage for industry could be subsidized lower - imagine that! “Hey we want to attract and retain manufacturing in California so we are going to take advantage of all the solar production and give industries a break on electricity”. Democrats don’t think like that, though. Peak time is from 4pm to 9pm when people get home, turn on air, wash their clothes etc. By 4 pm our machines are pretty much idle but our computers, office lights etc are on. By 6 almost everything is off or in sleep mode.
They are probably working with Georgia Power on this deal. We built Nuclear Power Plant Vogel and GP wants to light the AI Datacenters that are or soon to be finished to take our money from another pocket.
With Alabama Power, the “demand charge” is not an average, but the highest amount of power pulled at any one moment during the billing period. Times $1.50.
Who voted for the crazy RAT politicians that got CA in the mess it’s in now? That’s who you should be mad at.
Not only Georgia, several southern states will benefit.
Who wants a cheap Russian built nuclear plant? Also, depending on local laws, they'd still have to hire union boys.
To be fair, I am guessing we are a much smaller business. We employ five people. We produce decorated apparel, so we have two large DTG/DTF printers, a six head and two single head embroidery machines, and three industrial heat presses. We do have to temperature control a good size warehouse and showroom. In the summer we may peak at $400 a month. Our bill for January usage was just over $100.
One thing they are doing out here is a cooperative solar farm. I literally just sign a form and I get credit from a solar farm a couple of hundred miles away toward my bill.
Southern Company also owns Alabama Power.
Could us Alabamians see a reduction???
Yeah, so the Demand Charge is more opaque here with Edison. All they tell me is, similar to Alabama Power, the Demand Charge is based on the highest 15 minute period of usage. But there is no way to calculate it - I mean, there is no formula that they provide. They do offer (if you go to the website and download it) a chart of daily usage so I can see how much I use each day. I have a spreadsheet for the last 3 years. We were not running at full capacity pulling apx 1700KwH a month for a few months, or well under 100 per day on average - but the demand charge was about $700 because we really only had a day or two where we pulled large power. Then we expanded and that went up to 3500KwH and the Demand charges started creeping up to around $1250. Now we are running at near 100% capacity (we are making as much as we possibly can, essentially) and pulling 10,000KwH, sometimes 600Kw ever other day - of course our electric bill reflects that usage but the demand charge only went up to around $1450 - about 15% more than when we just sporadically ran big productions. That is what is so maddening to me about it. And we share a meter with another tenant which makes for disputes every month. I am actively looking to move because, honestly, we have outgrown this space and could grow the business with more space. But that’s another story. I would love to leave California but my #1 worker is too good to risk losing, he won’t leave California. So maybe in 3 years give or take.
Officially, I don't have a business, so for most years I was charged residential rates, which don't have demand charges. The same for the first few years I had decentralized solar. That was because I didn't sell power to the grid. As far as the power utility was concerned, I was just a normal residential customer except I didn't pull as much power from the grid as I used to.
But I looked at selling power to the grid, along with the various charges I'd pay. One of the power sell agreement options is to change my rate plan to that of a business. Because my solar inverters record great telemetry every 5 minutes, I exported over a year's worth of that data and imported it into a homemade SQL Server database on my laptop and queried the stew out of that data. (The easy part, because those skills are what I used in my career.) I wound up making a C# program to calculate what my prior 12 power statements would have been under all of the possible rate plans, including the ones that I could sell power to the grid (and get paid a very low rate relative to what I pay when I need power) and the extra fees that come with it. Including what the demand would be.
Thus, I went with the rate plan that had low fixed extra costs + the demand fee (because most months I have little demand). In the end, over a year's time I make $100 selling power after net fees. My power bills average $70/month, but if I wasn't selling power it'd be closer to $78/month. Which ain't bad for an all-electric house and charging our EV for 1,500 miles per month.
Thanks. Glad you have the skill to write C#. Nowadays, I just have ChatGPT do it for me or write me a python script or spreadsheet calculations. Anyway, we don’t have to go on this topic I’m just getting it off my chest. I was gonna write more but no need. Just venting. Thanks for replying and for your feedback. Always learn something from people on this forum.
I agree. FR is IMHO the best forum that’s not sector specific (i.e. IT forum, investing forum, etc.)
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