How fast is electricity?

Are you asking how fast the actual electron or the electric field is moving? 
 
Speed of electron
The average speed an electron is drifting 1 down a conductor is agonizingly slow, less than an inch per hour. 
 
Speed of electric field
The speed that the electric force field moves down the wire is close to the speed of light. 
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The picture above of the tube and marbles shows why this force moves fast but the electron does not.  If you put a marble (electron) in a tube (wire) the effect of one marble knocking onto the next happens at the speed of light.  This will happen until you stop inserting marbles or there is nowhere to go.  Its energy is transferred to the end quickly even if it takes a long time for the actual marble to make its way to the end.  This same property is what allows for landline telephone’s and other signals to transfer information almost instantly.  This property is also why customers don’t have to wait years for their electrons to be delivered. 
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The story of Bud the electron who could
Bud the electron lives inside of a of piece of aluminum wire with all of his closest electron friends.  All day long, even when there is no electricity flowing, Bud and his friends are actively moving around in different random directions depending on their mood.  One sunny morning Bud was awoken to find all of his friends slowly making their way in more or less the same direction.  Some of his friends weren’t going with the flow but darting up and down and back and forth but everyone was basically drifting in one direction. Little did they know they were being acted on by a generators electromagnetic field and far away someone had just turned on a switch.  Bud traveled about .00001 inches which was a long way to travel for a little electron in a big world.  Just when Bud was getting used to traveling in that direction he noticed that everyone was starting to go the opposite direction.  Wanting to fit in with his cool friends he went along with the crowed and traveled another .00001 inches back to where he started from.  1/60th of a second into the morning and he had already traveled .00002 inches! 2  Just when Bud though his little legs couldn’t take it anymore his friends behind him started pushing, crowding and knocking him to do it all over again… and again.  When Bud decided to follow his friends that morning and start walking up the conductor he became part of a long chain reaction like a relay race.  The influence of the chain reaction traveled close to the speed of light towards the switch that set it off.  Unfortunately neither Bud the electron nor any of his friends actually ever even made it very far in the end. 
 
Moral of the story:
1.Electron peer pressure travels at the speed of light.
2.Little did Bud know that he was just playing one small part in a much larger and quicker plan.
3.DC (direct current) electrons continuously move down a wire.  However, electrons in our AC (alternating current) system only travel down a conductor a thousandths of an inch before they are pulled back to where they started 60 times every second.  AC electrons don’t see very much of the world.
4.Just like DC power their energy (effect on each other) still moves close to the speed of light. 

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