Electricity Plan

Although look before you leap and sign up for one of these plans to make sure that it is right for you. The 55% discount is on the electric rate itself not including the myriad taxes and tariffs that are added onto that. I am not as familiar with SCE but if it is like most regions many of the tariffs are based on kWh and thus are not reduced, meaning your overall discount will likely be less than 55%. Also you have to factor in that with the TOU-D-PRIME plan you will be paying much higher than standard rates from 4:00pm to 9:00pm and that will cut into your savings especially during summer.

I have a similar plan in Georgia and the only way that it works for me is to shift most of my AC usage to the middle of the night when the rate is the cheapest and I do not run AC at all during the peak period hours when the rate is prohibitively high. It actually works out okay for me, the house gets chilled down colder than I normally would during the night, but this sucks enough heat out of the house that during the day even without AC running and it's 90 degrees outside the indoor temperature only gets up to about 78 degrees by the end of peak period when I can turn on AC again. But a lot of people prefer a steady temperature in their house, in that case they will be paying heavily for AC use during peak period.

You can try and calculate all of this out ahead of time and estimate what your actual savings (if any) would be, but it can be confusing and time consuming to calculate. SCE has an online calculator and if that includes all taxes and tariffs then that will be helpful.

 

I took a look at the two alternative plans for the utility in our area in NC, but I couldn't really figure out if it would benefit me or not. I have been informed that we will be getting a smart meter in the next few weeks that will allow me to track electrical use by hours, days or months, and I'm hoping I will be able to glean enough actual data on our usage, especially during the summer months, to estimate what I could expect to save, or spend on each of the options.

I'm not really very optimistic it will work for us though, since I won't be willing to cook our house during the peak hours, when we need the AC most.

 

Yeah, I recently signed up for a free nights program but the day rates go up a lot to compensate so one does have to decide if it works out overall. As a family, we have made a consolidated effort to move as much usage as we can to the "free" hours and it's work better than I expected with everyone getting on board with it (plus teenagers would rather do things later anyways! ).

Bottom line, the more free we use, the less we use of the punitive rate and the lower our real overall rate becomes. So far our summer rate is around a (real world includes taxes, pass-thru charges, etc) of 8 cents/kwh while during the cooler spring we enjoyed as low as 4 cents (haven't done a winter yet). On my former plan, I paid a real world rate of 13.5 cents with an advertised base rate of 11.5 cents.

 

It might be a case of running AC more outside of peak and less during peak, not necessarily cooking the house. But the TOU rate plan might make more sense for someone with a BEV who drives say 100 miles a day, the savings in charging during the night would likely offset higher AC cost during peak periods. But for a PHEV you may not save enough from charging during off peak to make up for higher AC cost during peak. Unless you do what I do as I mentioned in my previous post.

To give more details, I used to keep my summer thermostat at 78 which is a pretty standard recommendation. What I do now since I have the plug-in time of use rate is I set the thermostat to 71 degrees overnight during the cheapest rates, then to 74 in the morning when rates go up a little but are still decent. On a hot day the AC may come on a few times during late morning and early afternoon, but it has no problem maintaining 74 even when it is over 90 degrees outside. Then at 2:00 pm I shut if off completely and "coast" until 8:00 pm, by late afternoon the indoor temperature rises to about 78 then seems to hold there as the sun starts getting lower in the sky. Then at 8:00 pm when peak ends I set it at 78 which it has no problem holding 78 for the rest of the evening, then back to 71 after midnight. I don't consider my house all that energy efficient so I'm guessing this would work for anyone.

One more detail, when I say I "shut off" AC in the afternoon, what I actually do is set it to 82. It never gets anywhere close to that so effectively AC is shut off. But if outdoor temperatures got really high, at least AC would come on at 82. I am thinking of setting it to 80 since it now seems so rare that it will even get to 82, and that way on a really hot day the house won't get any hotter than 80, and at 8:00 pm it can bring it down to 78.

And to state what I assumed is obvious I'm using a programmable thermostat, no way this works with a single temperature thermostat or you would spend all day and night adjusting the temperature.

If someone thinks these temperatures are too extreme for them, I won't argue I'm just giving some examples what you can do, you can use the same method but maybe different temperatures, like maybe 74 overnight and max 79 on the very hottest days or something like that, probably will not save as much but will still be cheaper. I'm the opposite when driving, I hear of people keeping the temperature higher in order to reduce AC use and save electricity, not me I set the AC at what I want and accept whatever it does to my EV range.

 

Thanks for your detailed clarification on your AC power use arrangement @2002. I think you made a very good point with your comment that the potential savings would most benefit the driver with a BEV 100 travelling miles a day, and your daily scheduling for AC use makes sense to me.

We also have a programmable thermostat setup which would make it possible for us also, but our electrical power use on the Clarity is pretty low, with us driving about 17.2 miles per day on average, and 5-800 miles per month. Our Clarity charging portion of our electrical use runs between 7% (summer) to 20% (winter) of our monthly electrical usage. Unfortunately, those months with higher mileage generally correlate to longer drives, and more use of the ICE, which makes for a variable that is hard to factor into the mix.

Based on that, I think it will be unlikely that amount of use could give us a net savings, but I hope to be able to collect enough data from our anticipated Smart Meter, so that I can make a reasonable decision whether to use an alternative plan.

 

Yes I can see that now, SCE has a subsidized rate which requires proof of ownership. Of course, it's California! I don't think you can lose with that rate. Other parts of the country where it's not subsidized like Georgia, the Time of Use - Plug-In Electric Vehicle rate as it's called does not require proof of ownership, but because of the high rates during peak period it only makes sense for someone who will be charging a car during the night. And as discussed in those areas you have to factor in the higher cost of electricity during peak period and hopefully find ways to avoid it.