How Green is the PIP? Where Do You Live?

Especially when you consider how little incentive it takes to get users to charge off-peak.

Check out the EV Project reports here: The EV Project » EV Project Documents

One can see that across the entire project, most EV charging starts at midnight - because most super-off-peak TOU rates start then.

A great example are the San Diego area data - nearly everyone starts charging at midnight. And in the winter, the cost difference between charging off-peak vs peak is only a couple cents / kWh.

 

yeah well until PG&E offers TOU plans that don't cause my electric bills to go through the roof, i'm going to keep charging my leaf and PIP whenever the heck i need to.

 

problem is, for the cost of the meter installation (~$2k) you can buy a lot of electricity even at the 300% tier E-1 rate. on the order of 5500kwh. which in the leaf is probably about 20,000 miles. which at the rate we're going, would be about 4 years worth of driving.

for a PIP it might make even less sense, depending on your EV/HV mix.

add to this the fact that the E9 rates are "experimental", have changed several times (always more expensive) and could go away at any time. spending $2k in the face of this uncertainty is crazy.

the utilities are not serious about this stuff, or they would make actual incentives for people to charge at night.

 

OK, Volt 85% (high utility factor) added to the chart in post #14.

High utility factor: Volt 85% EV is greener than Prius PHV 50% in regions with electricity emissions lower than 380 gCO2(e)/kWh (32% lower than US average). Prius PHV is greener in all other regions.

 

Only if your criteria for being "green" is CO2 emissions.

While those are important, I feel that there's a number of other reasons that make transport on electricity appealing even in high coal areas such as:

1. Long tailpipe (I like my emissions moved farther away from people - pollution is highly concentrated near vehicles - after all - you wouldn't pipe your exhaust back into your car or even your house!)
2. Domestic energy source - reduces dependency on foreign oil rich countries
3. Diverse energy source - reduces dependency on oil - electricity can be generated from a wide variety of sources

 

1. Agree.
2. Agree.
3. Agree.
Thread is about GHG emissions...

 

To be fair, the subject takes "Green" and assumes it means GHG emissions - and obviously looking at GHG emissions is only part of being "green"!

 

As mentioned before, CO2e figure includes other emissions converted to a number equivalent to CO2.

Domestic or diverse energy source does not translate to being "green". The emission generated to produce consumable power source is the measurement of "greeness".

 

The actual UF came out to 59.6%, per data from OnStar.

 

Here in DC, PEPCO has installed smart meters, but doesn't use them for all they're worth. That is, no rate changes based on load or time. That is very disappointing. So, for now, I'm charging my car whenever I want.

 

'Green' is a topic separate from oil independence.
EVs tend to fail compared to the Prius on CO2, but they fail worse when it comes to mercury, Sox, and Nox.

You also simply cannot avoid talking about money in a discussion of 'greeness,' because all 'greener' alternatives have opportunity costs. Here EV fails dramatically.