Public Power and Private Profit: calculator and paper.
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Public Power and Private Profit
The federal foundations of the U.S. electric grid, and the case for a DOE-run power authority with legal prices per kWh.
What would you pay under the proposed rates?
Enter your monthly use and what you pay now. The current rates start at the 2025 U.S. averages from EIA. Replace them with the rate on your own bill: total bill ÷ kWh used.
Home
A typical U.S. home uses about 860 kWh a month.
Business up to 5 MW
An office, shop, school or small plant up to 5 MW of peak demand.
Large industry or data center
18,250,000 kWh is a 25 MW load running all month.
“Public cost” is your current rate minus the public-ownership savings set in the model below (default 15%). Bills are energy charges only; taxes and local fees are left out.
If the government owned all U.S. power, could it pay for itself?
This model runs the whole country on the proposed rates. It starts from what customers pay today, about $544 billion a year. It lowers costs by the savings public ownership brings, then charges the new rates and adds up revenue. Move the sliders to test the assumptions.
Assumptions
| Customer group | Billion kWh | Revenue | Cost | Net |
|---|
Data: EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook 2025 sales and average prices (homes 1,527 billion kWh at 17.0¢; commercial 1,467 at 13.3¢; industrial 1,059 at 8.4¢). Data centers are counted inside commercial today and costed at the industrial rate. This is a rough planning model, not a forecast. It leaves out taxes utilities pay to states, growth in other demand, and the cost of new plants beyond today’s spending.
What if we built three AP1000 reactors in every state?
This runs a federal program of Westinghouse AP1000 reactors (1,117 MW each) over their full 80-year lives. Construction starts in 2028, 10 a year, with 7-year builds. Each reactor is financed with a federal loan from the day it comes online. The power is valued at what it would replace, the generation part of today’s retail price. All figures are in today’s dollars.
Assumptions
Cumulative savings: the value of the power minus loan payments, running costs and decommissioning ($1 billion per reactor, an assumption). The dashed line marks the year the last loan is repaid.
What could factories next to the reactors save?
Each 3-reactor site could anchor an industrial park. Plastics and chemical plants would buy the reactors’ steam through a separate, clean loop. Metals plants would buy spare night power at a park rate of about 4¢/kWh and agree to be cut first during grid peaks. Move the sliders to test it.
Assumptions
Steam is compared with a gas boiler at 85% efficiency. CO2 uses EIA’s 52.91 kg per million Btu of natural gas. Steel assumes 450 kWh per ton and aluminum 14,000 kWh per ton. Fifty parks would make far more metal than the U.S. uses, so each park would match its factories to local demand.
Can emergency peakers at substations carry us until the reactors arrive?
Small gas units at overloaded substations would run only in the highest-demand hours of the year. Backup generators that already sit at data centers and hospitals would be enlisted for declared emergencies, as Texas now does. These units are paid to be ready, not to run. Test the cost against what they save.
Assumptions
New peakers are financed with 20-year federal loans at 4.7%, timed to end about when the last reactors come online. Existing diesel backup units may run only in declared emergencies under EPA rules; new units are built to non-emergency standards so they can cover routine peaks.