Electroshock therapy

Instead of current frying your brain, it is currency.

Euros, and quite a few of them.

In Germany, the last quarter of each calendar year is price hike announcement quarter.

In that quaint, old Europe style, prices for power, insurance premiums, water and trash fees, train tickets and other items increase on 1 January.

The fine art of spreading hikes throughout the year will be discussed in another post. The present one is dedicated to electricity prices.

Sticker shock doesn't describe it -- there is no known way to pin a price tag or a bar code on an electron -- so, we use the well-discredited term electroshock to describe the feeling experienced when we saw the rate hikes for 2013.

Our utility informed us that, starting 1 March 2013, our kwh price is going to be 28.98 euro cents per kilowatthour, or just under 40 dollar cents.

The utility made us a generous offer: sign a new contract and pay 1 cent less for power used, but pay a little more for the usage independent base (meter) rate.

And in the fine print, they say that "government mandated pricing components" may affect the rates.

Which really means, you ain't getting anything because those government components have been the price drivers for years. The cash handed out to alternative energy producers, the part set aside for grid maintenance and expansion, and the steep-issimio rebates and total exemption for the most energy intensive industries -- they  form the cocktail that has made prices go up and will continue to do so in the future.

Energy efficient light bulbs are great, but last time we checked our stove did not use energy efficient light bulbs to heat food.

The K-landers will go photovoltaic to some extent this year.

The good news is that the prices for photovoltaic installations have dropped around 20 % per kwp.

One more thing:
We did the math and found that the price drop just about makes up for the reduction in subsidies to folks who get a new photovoltaic installation. The visible hand of the semi-free market continues to keep photovoltaics just profitable enough for the homeowner.