That's just what they say in order to scare people into upgrading to Vista.
Really? I got a PC with Windows NT 4.0 in 1997 brand new. By 2000 Microsoft stopped supporting it. Heck, when I ran Windows Update, the MS update website notified me it no longer supported Windows Update for my Windows version. What really gets me about this is that NT4 is the most stable Windows OS I've used. It is the only one that did not freeze on me or show me the Blue Screen of Death.
Mining itself causes zero CO2 to be released, it's the burning that is in question.
But CO2 isn't the only problem with coal. Mining, especially the Mountain Top removal I mentioned earlier, plays havoc with the environment where it's mined. CO2 isn't the only pollution.
If you don't like mountain top removal or other coal mining operations, drink more bottled spring water. This will create an economic incentive to preserving a natural state.
Most bottled water isn't spring water. Some of it is ground water and some comes from the tap. But even with true water, the more the demand increases the greater the pressure on the source of that spring water. As it is now aquifers throughout the world are being drained. Water is being pumped out faster than it can be replenished. Take the Ogallala Aquifer in the central US. It is one of the largest aquifers in the world yet it's being drained too fast in some locations. In India water is being pumped from aquifers to irrigate farms unsustainably. Coca-Cola plant in India shuttered over water use. The same is happening elsewhere.
Or just forget about storing it and accept the fact that it has nothing to do with climate change.
So more than 1000 scientists are wrong? What's your education and training that has you knowing more than those who have their degrees in climatology or related fields?
I modified liberal with "classical", and provided a link to what it means, because the meaning of "liberal" has been distorted from what it used to mean in the US. Other countries use it to mean different things as well. Though I'm not sure I think maybe it has remained the closest to the older meaning in France. Then again idea of liberalism comes from the Age of Enlightenment which though spread throughout Europe had a strong presence in France, unfortunately it was overtaken by the Reign of Terror. Anyway the liberalism of France influenced Thomas Jefferson among other Americans.
If in your condition you go to the effort to read the economist every week, you probably are wider read than I am. If you have anything you would like to share, I'm interested in new reading material.
I don't really read the "Economist" weekly, I may not even see it for 2 or 3 weeks. When I do see it though I'll quickly scan the cover and table of contents to see if there's something of interest to me. As for any other reading material that has something to do with economics, I really don't read anything else. Now I do read magazines with politics as the subject matter; left, right, and center (in the US). Mostly though I read magazines about computers, science, photography, and renewable energy. I read as much as I do because I'm disabled and don't work, though I'm hoping I can start working in 2008.
I use NeoOffice, a native Mac port of Open Office. No X11 needed.
The fact of the matter is that if you are using Macs you will likely have compatibility issues every once in a while.
In the 5 months of using my MacBook Pro I have not had a problem with NeoOffice. While I haven't created or edited any docs with it yet, NeoOffice has opened Office 2007.doc and.docx files I've downloaded from the net without a problem.
Microsoft could very well decide in the near future that it no longer wants to support MS Office on the Mac.
Though MS can threaten Apple to withdraw the Mac version of MS Office, I think MS would have to think long and hard before actually doing so. Courts, in the EU and US, may look at it as another example of how MS uses it's majority market position as a noncompetitive monopolistic practice.
Older versions of IE have been made especially for the Mac
Ah but the Mac and Windows versions of IE weren't exactly compatible. A person going to the same website in both Mac and Windows versions of IE would not see the same thing. Then again this could be true of an browser that is cross platform.
anyone who uses a mac shouldn't freak out when suddenly something doesn't work on it.
Because I had it the opposite way I switched. After suffering through crashes with MS Windows, and not wanting to be treated like a criminal, I replaced my Windows PC with a Mac.
Well, yes, but MN also has not only regular "weather" (snow, clouds, rain), but often extreme weather (SNOW, hair, uber cold temps, very hot temps) which is hard on most materials (like, say, bridges or solar panels).
Though not much there is some solar energy in MN. MN is however great for wind. As are North and South Dakota to the west and Wisconsin to the east. However my post you replied to was specifically aimed at the statement "17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!" CA's energy costs are high for the US so to use CA's energy costs as a basis for the US is bad. In MN I pay something like 10 cents per KWH, maybe a couple of pennies higher after taxes are added. And there are a few of those I pay, there's city, county, and state taxes on the energy I use.
And this is where you stop getting taken seriously. Our energy consumption is only going to go up. What is needed is better ways to generate electricity, e.g.: nuclear power.
It's you who isn't serious. Conservative can work. But as you say energy consumption is going up. That's because more and more people are getting more and more energy inefficient appliances. People buy more and more because they think it will make them happier, however they never really are. A lot of people say they can't get by with only one job, but if they cut their consumption they don't need as much money. However that doesn't take into consideration other energy sources.
For instance right now, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details areas of the US that are good sites for wind farms. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the 48 continuous states. And there are a number of other good wind sites. When California had those rolling blackouts several years ago, a wind farm in southern CA capable of generating several megawatts of power sat idle when it have been supplying electricity to the grid. Why was it idle? Because Con Edison nor anyone else would lay the power lines to the farm. NAMBYs, so called environmentalists, in the northeast and midatlantic are trying to prevent wind farms from being erected offshore. From Massachusetts to North Carolina there are good sites for wind farms offshore. Then from southern CA east through AZ and NM to Texas, besides wind, it's good for solar power. Florida is also good.
Also there's something not many have thought of, waste heat. Gigawatts of lost energy goes up smokestacks everyday. "About twelve megawatts' worth of potential electricity is going up the stack" of a "Maxwell House coffee roaster in Duval County", Florida plant. With tens of 1,000s smokestacks in the US that's a lot of energy lost.
Let's say you have two fuels on the market, one wildly successful (let's call it gasoline), and an alternative not so much (call it diesel). People decide for whatever reason we diesel is better and needs to be used more. Efforts are therefore made to artificially reduced the price of diesel down from it's natural price of $10 a gallon to it's artificial price of $0.01 a gallon by charging the difference to gasoline consumers. In the start when 5% of the fuel market is diesel and 95% of the fuel market is gasoline, this works.
You're right, it's made up. While biodiesel is being subsidized with farm subsidies, so is gas which is made from petro and the US is spending billions of dollars daily in Iraq to subsidize petro. If only alternative energy sources got as much subsidies though I'd really prefer all subsidies to be eliminated.
* In the real world, subsidies are often intended to be a temporary measure as a way of hopefully outsmarting the general marketplace.
Not really. Big agribusinesses have gotten billions of dollars in subsidies yearly for many years. So does military and aerospace contractors. Oil get more subsidies in the US, as does mining operations. The US General Mining Act of 1872 allows mining companies to mine public lands for less than pennies on the dollar. That law is more than 100 years old and it's still being used. I wouldn't exactly call that temporary. Farm subsidies are probably as old. But at least the US does not give out as much in subsidies as does the EU and Japan. That's a big reason the World Trade Organization talks failed. Brazil, India, South Africa and many other nations refused to budge on anything else unless the EU, Japan, and US agreed to cut dramatically farm subsidies. The Opium Wars through 1839 to 1860s the British fought in China. To get rid of the trade imbalance the British had with India, they imported tonnes of tea from India, they exported opium from south and southeast Asia into China and were able to make money doing so. So they were able to finance trade in tea. However the Chinese Empress made opium illegal, and the British didn't like that. Fact is is subsidies have distorted trade for hundreds of years.
The Economist (popular mainstream economics magazine) has an economics dictionary, here it doesn't describe _why_ a subsidy isn't sustainable
Though I don't subscribe to the "Economist", I'm on disability and don't work so I can't afford to, I buy an issue every several weeks. I'll go to a book store and will read it in the cafe and if I like it I'll buy it. Oh, the "Economist" isn't so much mainstream as it is Classical Liberal.
You're not one of them, and you haven't performed any calculations.
Wow! You know everything about me and what I've done. NOT!!! Actually I did do the calculation, back in the '90s. I took my electrical usage back then, sized a solar system for that usage and calculated the price. Then I took the price of the energy I used and the payback period was about 15 years. Since then things have only improved. Energy efficiency has increased and prices has come down a lot. Adding all of the rebates and tax credits and the price should be a lot lower. First thing, and most efficient, is to cut energy usage. I paid around $15 for the first Compact Florescent Light bulb I bought. Last year I bought a 3 pack of CFLs for less than $10, and I have CFLs in all light fixtures but one and I rarely use that one. With the exception of my clock radio and my juicer all of the electrical appliances I have now use less energy than the appliance the new ones replaced, yes I look at labels and look on the net for energy usage stats for appliances. So my energy usage is now lower than it was. Next, because of the web I was able to find out that at least some utilities offer credit for energy efficiency measures. For instance some of them will credit or refund part of the costs of adding insulation. On top of that some states now have net metering, in which the person is paid for the energy they put into the system. Next, the feds and some states offer incentives such as tax credits for improving energy efficiency. DSIRE, Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Effiency is a database of what each state offers in incentives. Just click on the state. For instance Minnesota, the state I live in now, will pay $2/watt DC (which goes up to $2.25/watt DC after July 1, 2008) for a solar system up to $20,000.
With increased efficiency, reduced costs, as well as the rebates and tax credits I'm sure that 15 years I calculated years ago can be dropped to a 10 year payback period if not even lower with inflation.
So, while I haven't done a calculation lately I have, unlike what you say, done a rough calculation.
The people who build off grid either build because the grid isn't near by, or they simply like the idea of being off grid, and don't care particularly about the time value of money.
Care to prove all of those who build off the grid have money to burn?
You should have heeded the other poster, and tried some calculations.
Those who have built off the grid have already done the calculations.
The main problem with solar power technology so far has been cost-efficiency; it's cost more to manufacture them than they produce, both in terms of money and in terms of energy. Last time I checked, the technology for that to change was still a good decade or two off.
If you want to make a real big difference find ways to provide base power. The only real option left in the USA is nuclear. It's cleaner than solar, provides base power, and what waste it does have is actualy pretty easy to contain and dispose of, as opposed to spraying it out the smoke stack.
Nobody has convinced me nuclear power is clean but you can try. Not only is using nuclear fuel dirty but the mining for it is dirty as would any storage of it be.
Considering that (in most countries) more power is consumed during the winter months to keep warm, the power output from solar power is at it's lowest so more cells are needed than would be the case to generate the same amount of power during the summer.
I don't know about you but I've used AC much more than I have heating. Whereas I've used heating a couple of months a year, I've used AC 4 months or more a year.
With subsidies of course, then solar power (ignoring the macro picture) is economical and in a spreadsheet any payback time you like then becomes possible. Of course, in reality this isn't sustainable, all you're doing is shifting the energy cost around, giving you an especially inefficient coal-burning panel instead.
A solar panel may generate the energy it took to make it in 6 years, but it may be two or three times that amount of time to generate the amount of electricity to monetarily pay for itself.
I've heard of monetary payback periods of 7 years though I'd think 10 years would be more accurate for many applications.
Assuming the current price of electricity is $0.10/kWh it will pay for itself in ~1.14 years. However, that does not include the cost of installation, a rectifier, or batteries/controller.
With intertie, other than the panels all you really need is an inverter. You only need batteries and the rest if you're Off the Grid.
Their sample bill shows a bill for $300.09 for said energy usage (delivery, tax, production, etc) so you're paying ~20cents a KWh. In the UK after shopping around (a lot) I'm paying ~0.09 pence per Khw (17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!).
There's a problem with your conclusion on cost. The sample bill you're using is for California and CA has one of the highest energy prices in the US from what I've heard. I live in Minnesota and I pay about 10 cents per kwh.
Slashdot Mirror
And I am fairly sure that Grand Theft Autos happen no more often that once every three months per state.
Wrong. Auto theft statistics as FBI's Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report shows, more than 1 million vehicles are stolen each year. Using 1 million, if the same number are stolen in each state that's 20,000 per state, that's more than 1000 a month. The odds of a vehicle being stolen were 1 in 190.
FalconHad you made an intelligent comment instead of some flame then perhaps you might have learned something.
Like saying "it's obvious you don't read slashdot" was intelligent.
FalconThat's just what they say in order to scare people into upgrading to Vista.
Really? I got a PC with Windows NT 4.0 in 1997 brand new. By 2000 Microsoft stopped supporting it. Heck, when I ran Windows Update, the MS update website notified me it no longer supported Windows Update for my Windows version. What really gets me about this is that NT4 is the most stable Windows OS I've used. It is the only one that did not freeze on me or show me the Blue Screen of Death.
FalconMining itself causes zero CO2 to be released, it's the burning that is in question.
But CO2 isn't the only problem with coal. Mining, especially the Mountain Top removal I mentioned earlier, plays havoc with the environment where it's mined. CO2 isn't the only pollution.
If you don't like mountain top removal or other coal mining operations, drink more bottled spring water. This will create an economic incentive to preserving a natural state.
Most bottled water isn't spring water. Some of it is ground water and some comes from the tap. But even with true water, the more the demand increases the greater the pressure on the source of that spring water. As it is now aquifers throughout the world are being drained. Water is being pumped out faster than it can be replenished. Take the Ogallala Aquifer in the central US. It is one of the largest aquifers in the world yet it's being drained too fast in some locations. In India water is being pumped from aquifers to irrigate farms unsustainably. Coca-Cola plant in India shuttered over water use. The same is happening elsewhere.
Or just forget about storing it and accept the fact that it has nothing to do with climate change.
So more than 1000 scientists are wrong? What's your education and training that has you knowing more than those who have their degrees in climatology or related fields?
FalconI modified liberal with "classical", and provided a link to what it means, because the meaning of "liberal" has been distorted from what it used to mean in the US. Other countries use it to mean different things as well. Though I'm not sure I think maybe it has remained the closest to the older meaning in France. Then again idea of liberalism comes from the Age of Enlightenment which though spread throughout Europe had a strong presence in France, unfortunately it was overtaken by the Reign of Terror. Anyway the liberalism of France influenced Thomas Jefferson among other Americans.
If in your condition you go to the effort to read the economist every week, you probably are wider read than I am. If you have anything you would like to share, I'm interested in new reading material.
I don't really read the "Economist" weekly, I may not even see it for 2 or 3 weeks. When I do see it though I'll quickly scan the cover and table of contents to see if there's something of interest to me. As for any other reading material that has something to do with economics, I really don't read anything else. Now I do read magazines with politics as the subject matter; left, right, and center (in the US). Mostly though I read magazines about computers, science, photography, and renewable energy. I read as much as I do because I'm disabled and don't work, though I'm hoping I can start working in 2008.
FalconI did in the native port of Open Office for Macs, NeoOffice, without a problem. As for whether it can handle Office macros good I don't know.
FalconWinXP is far far more compatible with any exiting Windows based application one would be REQUIRED to run in their business/government.
Because XP is being EOLed, End Of Life(ed). "And it's mainstream supports will last until 2009."
Falconfor the Mac
I use NeoOffice, a native Mac port of Open Office. No X11 needed.
The fact of the matter is that if you are using Macs you will likely have compatibility issues every once in a while.
In the 5 months of using my MacBook Pro I have not had a problem with NeoOffice. While I haven't created or edited any docs with it yet, NeoOffice has opened Office 2007 .doc and .docx files I've downloaded from the net without a problem.
Microsoft could very well decide in the near future that it no longer wants to support MS Office on the Mac.
Though MS can threaten Apple to withdraw the Mac version of MS Office, I think MS would have to think long and hard before actually doing so. Courts, in the EU and US, may look at it as another example of how MS uses it's majority market position as a noncompetitive monopolistic practice.
FalconOlder versions of IE have been made especially for the Mac
Ah but the Mac and Windows versions of IE weren't exactly compatible. A person going to the same website in both Mac and Windows versions of IE would not see the same thing. Then again this could be true of an browser that is cross platform.
Falconanyone who uses a mac shouldn't freak out when suddenly something doesn't work on it.
Because I had it the opposite way I switched. After suffering through crashes with MS Windows, and not wanting to be treated like a criminal, I replaced my Windows PC with a Mac.
Falconit's obvious you don't read slashdot
WOW. An other /.er who reads minds and know exactly what I do. NOT!!!
FalconNo matter what you keep insisting, like you can read my mind and know everything I do, I did do the calculations.
NOW GET OUT OF MY MIND!!!
FalconWell, yes, but MN also has not only regular "weather" (snow, clouds, rain), but often extreme weather (SNOW, hair, uber cold temps, very hot temps) which is hard on most materials (like, say, bridges or solar panels).
Though not much there is some solar energy in MN. MN is however great for wind. As are North and South Dakota to the west and Wisconsin to the east. However my post you replied to was specifically aimed at the statement "17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!" CA's energy costs are high for the US so to use CA's energy costs as a basis for the US is bad. In MN I pay something like 10 cents per KWH, maybe a couple of pennies higher after taxes are added. And there are a few of those I pay, there's city, county, and state taxes on the energy I use.
FalconAnd this is where you stop getting taken seriously. Our energy consumption is only going to go up. What is needed is better ways to generate electricity, e.g.: nuclear power.
It's you who isn't serious. Conservative can work. But as you say energy consumption is going up. That's because more and more people are getting more and more energy inefficient appliances. People buy more and more because they think it will make them happier, however they never really are. A lot of people say they can't get by with only one job, but if they cut their consumption they don't need as much money. However that doesn't take into consideration other energy sources.
For instance right now, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details areas of the US that are good sites for wind farms. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the 48 continuous states. And there are a number of other good wind sites. When California had those rolling blackouts several years ago, a wind farm in southern CA capable of generating several megawatts of power sat idle when it have been supplying electricity to the grid. Why was it idle? Because Con Edison nor anyone else would lay the power lines to the farm. NAMBYs, so called environmentalists, in the northeast and midatlantic are trying to prevent wind farms from being erected offshore. From Massachusetts to North Carolina there are good sites for wind farms offshore. Then from southern CA east through AZ and NM to Texas, besides wind, it's good for solar power. Florida is also good.
Also there's something not many have thought of, waste heat. Gigawatts of lost energy goes up smokestacks everyday. "About twelve megawatts' worth of potential electricity is going up the stack" of a "Maxwell House coffee roaster in Duval County", Florida plant. With tens of 1,000s smokestacks in the US that's a lot of energy lost.
Quite simply nuclear power is not needed.
FalconLet's say you have two fuels on the market, one wildly successful (let's call it gasoline), and an alternative not so much (call it diesel). People decide for whatever reason we diesel is better and needs to be used more. Efforts are therefore made to artificially reduced the price of diesel down from it's natural price of $10 a gallon to it's artificial price of $0.01 a gallon by charging the difference to gasoline consumers. In the start when 5% of the fuel market is diesel and 95% of the fuel market is gasoline, this works.
You're right, it's made up. While biodiesel is being subsidized with farm subsidies, so is gas which is made from petro and the US is spending billions of dollars daily in Iraq to subsidize petro. If only alternative energy sources got as much subsidies though I'd really prefer all subsidies to be eliminated.
* In the real world, subsidies are often intended to be a temporary measure as a way of hopefully outsmarting the general marketplace.
Not really. Big agribusinesses have gotten billions of dollars in subsidies yearly for many years. So does military and aerospace contractors. Oil get more subsidies in the US, as does mining operations. The US General Mining Act of 1872 allows mining companies to mine public lands for less than pennies on the dollar. That law is more than 100 years old and it's still being used. I wouldn't exactly call that temporary. Farm subsidies are probably as old. But at least the US does not give out as much in subsidies as does the EU and Japan. That's a big reason the World Trade Organization talks failed. Brazil, India, South Africa and many other nations refused to budge on anything else unless the EU, Japan, and US agreed to cut dramatically farm subsidies. The Opium Wars through 1839 to 1860s the British fought in China. To get rid of the trade imbalance the British had with India, they imported tonnes of tea from India, they exported opium from south and southeast Asia into China and were able to make money doing so. So they were able to finance trade in tea. However the Chinese Empress made opium illegal, and the British didn't like that. Fact is is subsidies have distorted trade for hundreds of years.
The Economist (popular mainstream economics magazine) has an economics dictionary, here it doesn't describe _why_ a subsidy isn't sustainable
Though I don't subscribe to the "Economist", I'm on disability and don't work so I can't afford to, I buy an issue every several weeks. I'll go to a book store and will read it in the cafe and if I like it I'll buy it. Oh, the "Economist" isn't so much mainstream as it is Classical Liberal.
FalconYou're not one of them, and you haven't performed any calculations.
Wow! You know everything about me and what I've done. NOT!!! Actually I did do the calculation, back in the '90s. I took my electrical usage back then, sized a solar system for that usage and calculated the price. Then I took the price of the energy I used and the payback period was about 15 years. Since then things have only improved. Energy efficiency has increased and prices has come down a lot. Adding all of the rebates and tax credits and the price should be a lot lower. First thing, and most efficient, is to cut energy usage. I paid around $15 for the first Compact Florescent Light bulb I bought. Last year I bought a 3 pack of CFLs for less than $10, and I have CFLs in all light fixtures but one and I rarely use that one. With the exception of my clock radio and my juicer all of the electrical appliances I have now use less energy than the appliance the new ones replaced, yes I look at labels and look on the net for energy usage stats for appliances. So my energy usage is now lower than it was. Next, because of the web I was able to find out that at least some utilities offer credit for energy efficiency measures. For instance some of them will credit or refund part of the costs of adding insulation. On top of that some states now have net metering, in which the person is paid for the energy they put into the system. Next, the feds and some states offer incentives such as tax credits for improving energy efficiency. DSIRE, Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Effiency is a database of what each state offers in incentives. Just click on the state. For instance Minnesota, the state I live in now, will pay $2/watt DC (which goes up to $2.25/watt DC after July 1, 2008) for a solar system up to $20,000.
With increased efficiency, reduced costs, as well as the rebates and tax credits I'm sure that 15 years I calculated years ago can be dropped to a 10 year payback period if not even lower with inflation.
So, while I haven't done a calculation lately I have, unlike what you say, done a rough calculation.
FalconSo long as we keep adding people, conservation must increase until it is onerous and limiting of freedom.
I whole heartily agree.
FalconThe people who build off grid either build because the grid isn't near by, or they simply like the idea of being off grid, and don't care particularly about the time value of money.
Care to prove all of those who build off the grid have money to burn?
You should have heeded the other poster, and tried some calculations.
Those who have built off the grid have already done the calculations.
FalconThe main problem with solar power technology so far has been cost-efficiency; it's cost more to manufacture them than they produce, both in terms of money and in terms of energy. Last time I checked, the technology for that to change was still a good decade or two off.
Check this out, Alioth posted it above in the thread: NET ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY PRODUCTION FROM SILICON BASED SOLAR CELLS. It says the payback period for the energy used to produce it is from 1 to 5 years depending on the location, ie it takes 1 to 5 years of energy production before it produces as much energy as was used to make it.
FalconIf you want to make a real big difference find ways to provide base power. The only real option left in the USA is nuclear. It's cleaner than solar, provides base power, and what waste it does have is actualy pretty easy to contain and dispose of, as opposed to spraying it out the smoke stack.
Nobody has convinced me nuclear power is clean but you can try. Not only is using nuclear fuel dirty but the mining for it is dirty as would any storage of it be.
FalconConsidering that (in most countries) more power is consumed during the winter months to keep warm, the power output from solar power is at it's lowest so more cells are needed than would be the case to generate the same amount of power during the summer.
I don't know about you but I've used AC much more than I have heating. Whereas I've used heating a couple of months a year, I've used AC 4 months or more a year.
FalconWith subsidies of course, then solar power (ignoring the macro picture) is economical and in a spreadsheet any payback time you like then becomes possible. Of course, in reality this isn't sustainable, all you're doing is shifting the energy cost around, giving you an especially inefficient coal-burning panel instead.
In what way isn't it sustainable?
FalconA solar panel may generate the energy it took to make it in 6 years, but it may be two or three times that amount of time to generate the amount of electricity to monetarily pay for itself.
I've heard of monetary payback periods of 7 years though I'd think 10 years would be more accurate for many applications.
FalconAssuming the current price of electricity is $0.10/kWh it will pay for itself in ~1.14 years. However, that does not include the cost of installation, a rectifier, or batteries/controller.
With intertie, other than the panels all you really need is an inverter. You only need batteries and the rest if you're Off the Grid.
FslconTheir sample bill shows a bill for $300.09 for said energy usage (delivery, tax, production, etc) so you're paying ~20cents a KWh. In the UK after shopping around (a lot) I'm paying ~0.09 pence per Khw (17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!).
There's a problem with your conclusion on cost. The sample bill you're using is for California and CA has one of the highest energy prices in the US from what I've heard. I live in Minnesota and I pay about 10 cents per kwh.
Falcon