Prius Prime 2017 - Comparing Electric vs Gas cost

Thank you, yes

 

David, it is difficult to tell who you are disagreeing with. Could you quote the person you disagree with or define exactly what you mean by 'fixed costs'?

If you disagree with my statements, I would like to better understand where you are coming from.

In my case, part of my bill is a fixed cost, other parts are not.
For example, I pay a flat rate of $15.50/month for service. I don't count this as I would be paying the same amount regardless of how much I charged, even if I charged zero. Do you believe I should?

 

Start with ~ 6.2 kWh from the meter, sent to an empty battery
End with ~ 5.5 kWh in the battery
Use those ~ 5.5 kWh in the battery to travel 25 EPA miles

 

Be careful with ChargePoint stations. I've been through some where they go to half power within about 5 minutes this greatly increases the charge time and hence you may be paying more for a given amount of charge. Some charge by the kWh; some give you a flat rate fee/charge-event; some charge you by the amount of time you spend. When you are charging the car, wait around a little bit and verify that the charge rate is indeed about 3.1 or 3.3 kWh.
A reduction in this rate would explain the excessive amount of time you are taking to charge your car. My fully depleted car will charge in about 2 hours on a ChargePoint station. I'm in SoCal and ChargePoint rates are all over the map; the best ones are free. You just have to shop around. I use the ChargePoint app and enter my destination; I then browse around that destination on the chargepoint app to find stations that would be appropriate for my trip. It's a lot of work!!

Most of the ChargePoint stations I've used in Socal are charging $0.30/kWh.

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AChoiredTaste.com

 

Thanks for doing the arithmetic!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

I'm not exactly sure what you think you're getting at here, but maybe this will help:



your last payment of $58.62 received on april 27, 2018

 

You must live in a state or country that is actually forward-looking.

I live in Arizona, where we have about 350 days a year of non-stop sunshine.

The regulators here are owned by the Corporations, primarily the two dominant utility companies (SRP and APS), and they've invested so much into fossil fuel power generation as well as nuclear that they have a long way to go before their useful life expires. So they have actually implemented DIS-INCENTIVES for renewables.

You can NOT "use the grid as a battery" here because they charge you for it. They charge you to put power ONTO the grid, and then they charge you to consume power FROM the grid. And they even have a law that says if you try to bypass the grid entirely, you STILL owe them money!

Like Nevada, who did the same stupid thing. Solar City completely shut down business in Nevada, because their politicians made it MORE EXPENSIVE to use solar + a battery than not to use anything. And they took away the subsidies.

If they had done that BEFORE Tesla had chosen to locate their GigaFactory there, Tesla would have gone elsewhere. (A big reason why they didn't go to Texas was supposedly that Texas prohibits Tesla from selling their vehicles there.)

Folks here need to realize we're dealing with people who live in locations with vastly different political climates, and many are on opposite ends of the economic spectrum in terms of how local and federal governments are treating a shift to renewable energy sources.

So arguing about what other's say from your own unique perspective might be totally off-base. It might not make sense to YOU, but a lot of states here in America are being run by idiots who want to roll things back 100 years and think that things will be much better if we just pretend nothing new has happened since 1900. Sad but true.

 

I'm asking a question.

What would your bill have been if you had consumed 261 kWh rather than 260 kWh ?

 

This is not accurate.
You are paid for every kWh you send to the grid.
You pay for every kWh you take from the grid.

As of now, these two amounts for each kWh are not equal for new PV owners. So for them it is only correct to say that storing a kWh for later use has a cost. I'm not completely sure what the storage cost is but 3-4 cents a kWh is probably ballpark.

This is certainly more expensive than most other parts of the country but depending on the cost of residential PV it may still be cheaper than buying the much dirtier utility product. E.g,

Say it costs $2 a watt to install after tax credit
1.666 kWh a year per watt installation
30 year generation, so 50 kWh generation over array lifteime
50% of generation stored for later use at a cost of 3.5 cents a kwh
Then:
Storage costs: 0.5 * 50 * 3.5 = 87.5 cents
PV cost: 200 cents
Cost per kWh: 287.5/50 = 5.75 cents a kWh

It is probably worth saying that a kWh produced at home and used directly is not subject to either tariff.

 

Digloo2, thank you for the additional information.
Your OP was confusing, not because of where you are, but because you didn’t provide the details.
When it comes to solar energy treatment, most states are more progressive than what you describe. And I am sorry to hear it is so difficult in Az.

Please keep in mind when posting that not everyone lives in your state, and most have different experiences that what you describe.

You asked how people are getting 4c/kWh. People have told you. There is no reason for you to get hostile.

 

Sorry, I wasn't sure what you were asking. I honestly have no idea. There's a page that says my "electricity charge" for most of April (up to the 26th, perhaps) was $35.50. That's $0.136 / kWH. That doesn't mean that one more kWH will add 14 cents to my bill.

My lowest bill in the past year was in November (for Oct) and it was $37.29 for 188 kWH. It looks like $22 of that was actually for electricity. That works out to $0.117 / kWH, which might be pretty close given that it's one of the two lowest-use months of the year.

 

Sorry, I'm still not clear. And I'm sorry if I sound "hostile'. It's just that a lot of what people are saying here makes very little sense on a strictly financial basis.

 

I can understand that. And I, and many others, would be happy to help clear up any questions you have.

What all of us know best, is our own situation. So if you ask me how I get electricity at less than 2c/kWh I can tell you.
What I can’t tell you is how your cost could be that low, because obviously you are operating under a different set of rules.

I am still not sure what exactly you are looking for clarification on. However, this information about net metering policies may help?
http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/net-metering-policy-overview-and-state-legislative-updates.aspx

 

I'll hazard a guess that the extra kWh cost 13.65 cents + tax, but you could post the bill itemization to be sure.

Here is what mine looks like, as an example:



I paid 24.63+1.83 = $26.46 for 229 kWh before tax, 26.49*1.033 = $27.36 inclusive.
That works out to 2736/229 = 11.95 cents a kWh

My connection charge is 32*1.033 = $33.05 a month.
If I use one kWh my bill will be 33.05+0.1195 = $33.17.
If I use 1000 kWh my bill will be 33.05 + 119.5 = $152.55

In either case, if I use one more kWh that month my bill will be 11.95 cents more.

 

Texas, and some other states, have laws bought by their auto dealership lobby that prohibit direct sales from auto manufacturers to consumers. Tesla insists on selling directly to the consumer, and thus they cannot sell in those states.

 

Yes I'm aware of that. And it apparently cost them the GigaFactory. Texas auto dealers may have won a battle, but their state lost a war that was theirs for the taking.

Nevada had similar restrictions, but the NV lawmakers held a special session and wrote up a bunch of stuff to clear the path so Tesla would find things more acceptable. It all happened in a single weekend.

It probably helped that the Storey County Commissioner happened to be one of the partners who owned the industrial park that sold the land to Tesla, and was also the person responsible for approving all of their building plans -- which took all of about a week.

 

Ok,

I found a way to measure the battery power output by driving to battery empty:

• 27.3 mi / 5.0 mi/kWh = 5.46 kWh

So now we have an actual metric although I did nothing about the early heating, ~5%. So if we take away 5% lost to the heater from the miles/kWh, we get ~4.8 miles/kWh:

• 27.3 / 4.8 mi/kWh = 5.69 kWh

So I ran a second test in 70-75F temperatures so I didn't have to run the HVAC:

• 32.0 mi / 5.6 mi/kWh = 5.71 kWh

Bob Wilson

 

Yep, I use this display the same way although I'll tell you up front that it can be inaccurate to as much as 10%
I know this from trips to work that are 43 miles distant I am sometimes able to reach on 0-14% less than a single full charge, yet the display usually reports ~ 7.5 miles a kWh on those occasions.

I'll add a photo later from a commute last week that ended with SoC at 8%

 

I was mostly curious about the methodology that appears to give reproducible results. Just it isn't clear how this helps our understanding of electric costs that are measured and charged at the J1772. For cost, I'm sticking with what I've measured, 6.4 kWh.

Understand that mi/kWh measured in the car should not use the raw, local utility rate that is metered at the J1772 without a calibration factor.

Bob Wilson