My/Your best Utility plan choice??

I did the rate switch a year ago from e-1 to e-9a, when I got the PiPa. I only charge at night when rates for e9a are lowest. Also signed up for summer smart rate, which lowers bill if you can avoid usage on a few days PGE tells you usage is high, eg hot days. The other option was E6 time of use.

Since there are so many variables, I suggest downloading the rate tables from pge.com and plugging in your usage pattern for a whole month, for both summer vs. winter months. i save about $30/month on e9a vs e1. Pge only allows rate plan switch once a year.

 

Before installing my solar panels I was almost always on the third tier and hit the fourth in July/August last year. (Its hot in Sacramento) At those rates the PiP wouldn't make much sense.

With 2.8 kW DC panels I saved around $700 in PGE bills March through October while increasing my total electricity consumption by about 600 kWh for the PiP during that time. My actual PGE consumption was about 4000 kWh less than last year for the same time period. My calculations show the rate plan doesn't make a lot of difference in my case where solar is providing much of the electricity. The winter will probably be a different story

For 6 billing periods with solar my calculations for total PGE electricity costs show:
E1 $112 (with solar would have always been in the 1st tier)
E6 $51
E9 $96 the plan I'm on. My spreadsheet came with in $1 of the actual PGE charges.

I should have gone with E6 E9 is going away to be replaced by EV (or something) which would have cost $133 but could be better for full electric vehicles driven on long commutes.

 

You won't actually use 3 hours per day. It takes about 2.5 hrs to get a full charge and the last 15 minutes is at one half the amps. The bottom line is you'll actually consume about 2.6 - 3.0 kw-hrs per charge as measured on the PG&E smart meter. You'll be on the high end if you use all your EV miles, switch the HV and the battery gets drained a bit more. You'll be on the low end if you drive mostly in EV only between charges. I'd just make no PG&E changes for at least a month or two. Keep some accurate record on how many times you charge in the mean time. Consider signing up for the SmartRate plan (for May - Sep you save 3 cents per kwh all the time...but you have to cut back on up to 15 (hot) days from 2-7pm when they notify you.

I stay in tier one every month...but I charge at work M-F and only need to charge at home ~3-4 times per week.

I use ChargePoint everyday at work. It is always 240v whether one or two cars are plugged in...maybe you have different charging stations or we told something misleading. Anyway CP takes 1.5 hrs for full charge and gives you a text and/or email with your precise kw-hrs.

Mike

 

The ~15% loss is in the car's charging system. In other words, from plug on the car to the battery. If you were losing 15% from the meter to the wall outlet, you would be having a serious home wiring issue.

 

PG&E will run an analysis of your last year and tell you what your bill would have been.
The watt meter will tell you how much power you use. The car's EV ratio screen will tell you how much came out of the battery. The difference is your losses (approximately ).
Mike

 

Doesn't the EV ratio include regenerated charge? In which case its relationship to power from the wall is unknown.

 

Lots of varying info from different people. Mine differs as well.

1. My yearly usage prior to the PiP was about ~$60 x 12 months = ~$760. For my home, that's almost all within Tier 1 & 2, 130% usage. Occasionally, I slip into Tier 3.
2. I stayed on E1 rates after my PiP purchase because I didn't know what effect it would have on my bills. Also, once you switch rate plans, you have to stay on it for a year.
3. I averaged between 90 - 100 kWh in tier 3. Conveniently, it's 3 kWh's per charge plus some charge loss x 30 days a month is about ~100 kWh. Although my bill says I pay on average $0.15 / kWh, my PiP actually costs more than that because I know its charge costs are entirely in tier 3. Which at some $0.30 / kWh means it's a buck a day. Indeed, my monthly bill has gone up about $30 averaging $90 a month.
4. A full charge is 11 EV miles. At 50 mpg using gas, $1 per charge is like paying $4.54 per gallon = $1/(11 miles / 50 mpg).
5. So 6 months of this, I decided, I should either stop plugging in until gas prices go up or switch to E9A.
6. I switched to E9A. While it is impossible to calculate what your E9A costs will be from E1 due to different TOU costs. It's a simple calculation to get your E1 costs from E9A. It shows that I am saving about $10 a month by doing the switch. This gives a more favorable $3 per gallon = $0.66/(11 miles / 50 mpg). The switch was made in May which means AC use on hot days still equaled a savings. I have a gas heater so winter should equal more savings.
7. The only change I made to the household in terms of electricity use is wash and dry your clothes on the weekends.



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You made the same decision I made last year and it is what I would recommend to you today: stay on E1 and see what happens before you change anything. My first couple of months usage were pretty low for whatever reason and I thought I was good to go. Then, in January, it spiked to $93 and stayed above $80 every month before I decided to switch to E9A. There's also the new EV-A rates that gets rid of tiers altogether. I get a free charge at work but you've come to the same conclusion as me. It is not worth plugging in to public chargers at the standard cost of $2/hour. $0.15 /kWh is more like it.

Convincing DW to wash clothes on the weekend was an epic battle. I even volunteered to do the chore entirely but she didn't trust my domestic skills. I'll save the hang dry comment for another day.

 

just read that PGE is stopping E9-A at end of 2014, and migrating those of us on it to EV-A. i ran the EV-A rates against my usage data and found that it is significantly (30%!) higher.

 

My results for 7 sunny billing periods (April - October) with 2.8 kW AC solar panels:
E1 calculated $112
E6 calculated $51
E9 calculated and billed $96
EV calculated $133
Now comes Winter

 

PG&E was kind enough to send me a link which compared my bill under the tiered time-of-use EV-9 (which is being phased out) to replacement non-tiered time-of-use plan EV-A.

My bill for the last year under EV-9 was $1042.

Under the new EV-A , it would have been $1344.

Under the generic non-time-of-use tiered E-1, it would have been $1301.

Under the generic tiered time-of-use plan E-6, would have been $1242.

Needless to say, I will not be voluntarily converting to the new plan. The current proposed forced changeover date is December 2014. I think that what is happening is that they got rid of tiers and came up with a flat price somewhere in the middle, but with the minimal charging capacity (3 kWh) of our PiP, many of us are currently only minimally in the much higher cost third tier, and we come out on the short end of this deal. It may well be different for our Volt and Leaf friends.