EV Economics

just curious Bob, any inclination on adding PV to your home? Haven't yet heard of a single complaint from folks who buy outright (unless it's due to a slimy installer - ie; didn't do enough homework on that company) - but some of the finance arrangements are less than desirable. It is an investment that pays way better than ira's, or t-bills or hard money just languishing in a savings account.
Of course that feature would really mess up your cool chart above.


We count our (roughly) 10kWh's / day used towards charging towards the 50 miles that it yields for errands & work commute. The 50 miles in an average car works out to 2 gallons of gas (presuming a 25mpg auto) and gas in our area currently runs ~ $3/gallon (but we're keeping a running average on the wife's hybrid suv, which get's 25mpg coincidentally).
Her averaging 12,500 miles / 25mpg requires 500 gallons of gas/year - thus costing us $1,500 /yr for gas. Here's where we get creative -
At 6 years, the gas savings alone required us to earn over $12,000.00 ($9,000.00 plus state/fed tax, fica etc - just so we have $9,000 after taxes). Our average HOME ELECTRICITY bill prior to PV was $225 month over the prior 2 years (not even counting taxes here, that we'd have to actually EARN, in order to have the $225 month left over.
BAM - our system - commissioned January 2009, paid for itself.
Nothing better than having free electricity for home use AND transportation, as we enter our non-income earning retirement years !!
Zero cost is my FAVORITE predictable cost.
Another cool feature - the utility company keeps giving itself raises & passes 'costs' onto customers (ostensibly for buying new transformers etc, when in reality the CEO's get more raises than their customers get transformers.) Since we're credited for solar at the same cost per kWh that the utility charges - our PV value just keeps going up & up! Pretty nice during retirement years.

(no - i'm not a PV installer, nor do I own stock in Sunpower Inc ... but I have gotten a few hundred for referrals ... but I'd have referred folks to PV anyway - the cash just makes it sweeter)
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I chose "0% - all charging at home using utility power" here as it was the closest to describing our charging habits.

With our PIP, about 98% of charging is at home and the rest is at paid charging stations at $0.30/kWh.

For our Leaf, about 97-98% of charging is at home and the rest is at "no-charge-to-charge" DC fast charging. Yet it's not exactly free since the cost of this would have been built into the purchase/lease price of the vehicle.

 

i used to have 'not free, free' charging at work. i owned the building and paid the electric bill. but at least it was a write off. retired now, so it's 100% at home at twenty something cents / kWh. not sure why it fluctuates so much.
the only other charger i know of is the local whole foods. it's free, but i rarely use it.

 

Leaf gets charged at home for free with a PV array through L1, at work attached to a streetlamp utility outlet through L1, or at various dealerships with free L3 CHAdeMO charging. I have paid once for a charge because the L3 at the Nissan dealership was down while I was 80% charge away from home.

 

I voted 0%, since I recently lost the ability to charge at work and there is virtually no EV charging around this area. No biggie, since I was expecting losing the charging and was surprised I was able to charge at work for the past four years. In the meantime, I've be cutting electricity consumption at home all along and have the furnace and a/c system next on the list to update.

 

+1
our ancient central AC works - but highly inefficient. But it'll be a HUGE cost / unusual install dynamics ... so as long as it runs ... we eat the nearly 8kW's that it normally pulls.

Unlike the PV, our new ac can't pay for itself in our lifetime - unless we outlive everyone we know

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I have a natural gas furnace, water heater, stove and oven, so that cuts down on my electric bill. For example, the amount I paid for the last 12 months of electricity is $1141 and gas is $557. Changing the 28 year old forced air furnace and A/C, besides being more efficient in its use of gas and electricity, is also a matter of safety. I've thought of PV, but maybe if I hit the lottery.

 

i thought pv was free?

 

The free systems - You Don't Own. And those kinds of programs are all over the board.
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is that a bad thing?

 

YMMV
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There used to be many free public charging stations around the San Francisco Bat Area installed with partial public grant money. Now, most of those have switched to pay-as-you-go. Now I only get free charging for maybe 5-6 kWh out of 100+ kWh per week, at best.

 

Generally they seem to be $1 an hour although sometimes $1.50 or $2. It is legal for station owners to charge per kWh in California but few seem to do it. Most PHEVs charge at a max of "3.3 kW" (16A@240V) so this is an area where the BMW i3 REx excels since it can charge at twice that rate and therefore cost 1/2 the $$ per kWh at stations that have a per-hour rather than a per-kWh pricing structure.