When I was at CoinSummit a few months ago I met an energy investor who told me that there are certain areas in the Texas panhandle that have so much excess power generation that they will pay you to take energy off the grid during low consumption periods. While I have not been able to independently verify that assertion, it's not far-fetched. In the United States there are three separate energy grids. The breakdown is basically:

• East of the Mississippi River
• West of the Mississippi River
• Texas

That's right, Texas has it's own energy grid. While Californians were suffering from rolling blackouts due to artificial power shortages produced by Enron back in 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis), Texas was actually pumping excess power directly into the ground because the power grids are independent. Texas could have provided the west coast power grid with additional resources, but they had no reason to: The shortage was artificial and who's got the incentive to pay Texas to relieve an artificial power shortage? Certainly not Enron.

I also met the CEO of CloudHashing and he confirmed that the impetus behind building one of his mining farms in Texas was the strength of the power grid and the price of electricity.

In general, in the US, the closer you are to the center of a major metropolitan area, the higher the price will be for electricity. Rates vary according to demand though. In the middle of summer when everybody has their A/C cranked, electricity is far more expensive than in the dead of winter. In Indianapolis I pay between USD 0.07 and 0.11 per kWh depending on the demand. This is coal country...something like 80% of my power comes from blasting the tops off of Appalachian mountains and burning the coal inside. But it's okay, according AES it's "clean coal."