$675 for 2250kWh of electricity? They're doing something wrong.
That's 30 cents per kwh of heat. Even if you just use resistive heating you beat that in every state, and probably most of the rest of the world.
But it's better than that, because that's heat not electricity. 4 watts of heat transfer for 1 watt of electricity is reasonable with a heat pump, so it's $1.20, or if you consider that co-efficient of performance (COP) is typically measured for cooling and we should be counting the electrical waste heat here a COP of 5, which makes their number $1.50 per kwh.
However, even that can't be compared, because in NZ, electricity charges include all distribution costs. Americans typically only look at the generator charge per kwh, ignoring transmission, lines and any daily charges.
The breakdown works out approximately [1]:
30% - generator
10% - national transmission network
26% - local lines operator
20% - retailer
13% - sales tax
New Zealand has split transmission, generation, retail, and the local lines operator into separate companies. There are generators without retail and at one time there were retailers without generation (I think they were all killed by the wholesale market). The government runs long-distance transmission (through a crown corporation) while local lines operators can be private.
The amazing thing is that in a country of <5 million people, there are 22 retailers.
> The amazing thing is that in a country of <5 million people, there are 22 retailers.
On one hand it's amazing bit on the other it shows a certain level of inefficiency. In my view one of NZ's biggest problems when it comes to productivity is the need to duplicate effort in so many areas.
They do, but cost of electricity is relatively consistent because cost of production is (or at least upper bounded, some places have particularly cheap electricity because of geography). In this case the trick is that 30nzd=20usd and they didn't feel the need to clarify the currency.
It's a New Zealand website on a New Zealand TLD that specifically qualifies, "for a typical Kiwi house", but you thought it wasn't clear that they would be dealing with NZ dollars?
That's 30 cents per kwh of heat. Even if you just use resistive heating you beat that in every state, and probably most of the rest of the world.
But it's better than that, because that's heat not electricity. 4 watts of heat transfer for 1 watt of electricity is reasonable with a heat pump, so it's $1.20, or if you consider that co-efficient of performance (COP) is typically measured for cooling and we should be counting the electrical waste heat here a COP of 5, which makes their number $1.50 per kwh.