I'm still ramping things up but I paid $550 last month, I'm going to see that double before the buildout's finished, for sure.
Gotta spend money to make money, so the saying goes.
In answer to the question, 'why is electricity so much?', I would say, follow the electron and see what it takes to generate that power you're using so freely!
Coal fired power plants are cheap to build but the coal adds up- and that's some of the cheapest power anywhere, and here In Colorado and Woming we're sitting on hundreds of years worth of coal. Not sure how much longer we'll be able to breathe, though... Natural Gas fired plants are almost as cheap and their power is even cheaper- and cleaner... until you add fracking to the tab.
And then there's nuclear... I used to be a nuclear power advocate, but Fukushima changed my mind. The Japanese are at least as organized and efficient as anyone and if they can't keep nuclear stations from melting down and poisoning the landscape then I'd say it's probably not a viable approach. Beware, General Electric is ramping up their lobbying arm to sucker Congress into letting them build more of these, including in your backyard. This power poisons FOREVER- it's time to put a permanent stop to it.
Renewables like water (hydro, dude!), wind and solar make up a tiny fraction of total power production but they are the fastest growing. This is also the easiest to install on a distributed system, that is, in your own yard and on your own roof. Think about it- that's power no one can take away from you, and they'll pay you top dollar for it. This is the future of electrical power, sooner- or later, after we've dug everything else up.
Biomass is a potential source of power, but at base it's still... solar, we're just using plants as collectors and then processing them for the energy. Processing, by the way, with plenty of electricity and diesel fuel from the established power system, so the net gain is questionable. It can be done a lot better than it currently is in this country (look at Brazil), but let no one be under any illusions that this power source has 'arrived' in any significant sense.
Lots of people are going to talk about hydrogen- but that's not a source, it's a medium. Something gets converted into hydrogen, and then the hydrogen can generate electricity. The question always becomes what's being used to make the hydrogen? So we're back to a quest for sources.
Fusion is a pipe dream. If any breakthroughs are made in our lifetime, it's likely to be dirty, dangerous and/or fiendishly costly, and therefore not any kind of a magic bullet.
The question I ask when I see my electric bill is not, 'wow why so high??', it's more like, 'wow, how much longer can I get it for so CHEAP?'
