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bearjaws • yesterday at 3:37 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Problem is for most of USA utility scale = utility profit for share holders.

For example Duke is for profit here in Florida, and charges about 25% more per KWH than OUC that is a public utility.

This leads to pricing where on one street your power bill is $250, but one street over its $200, often coming from the exact same power plant.


Replies

clownstrikelol • yesterday at 11:09 PM

Duke is just excessively expensive.

FPL is also for profit, and is cheaper than OUC.

1st 1000kwh with FPL are $0.11461/kwh Above that is $0.13461/kwh with a base customer charge of $10.52

1st 1000kwh with OUC are $0.1155/kwh Above that is $0.1405 with a base customer charge of $18.50/mo

Total cost with FPL for 1000kwh for the month before state and local tax is $125.13

With OUC it would be $134.

https://www.ouc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2025_10-OUC-E...

https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fplgp/us/en/rates/pdf/reside...

The biggest factor Id say is FPL has significant amounts of solar and nuclear generation.

https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fplgp/us/en/news/2025/fpl-ne...

18.8% Nuclear and 8.4% solar (more than double the national average!)

OUC on the other hand has less than 3% Nuclear (generated / purchased from FPLs plant on Hutchinson Islans!) and <6% solar, with a massive 24% still being generated by coal! (FPL demolished their last coal plant ~8 years ago in Indiantown, I watched it live!)

https://www.floridapsc.com/pscfiles/website-files/PDF/Utilit...

So while FPL is technically for profit and OUC is not... FPL is cheaper and greener than OUC.

I say this as a long time Florida resident who remembers when FPL truly sucked in many ways. They’ve, demonstrably, put in effort to make electricity greener and cheaper here in FL. (Even with all of their efforts against home solar).