ElectricityCost

In Southern California electricity is tiered making electricity more expensive than gas. There are some options, but they aren’t very good. Edison offers to reimburse the cost to add a sub panel that only powers an outlet for the car. The cost would .13 per kw not including delivery. The issue is that the regulations and rules to add the sub panel are so absurd that no electrician I call I. Will do it...

 

You gotta pay to live in paradise. Go solar!

 

Yeah would be nice to have solar, but its expensive as well :X

Clarity cost the same as a hybrid accord while having other nice features so still a win

 

We got on Edison's TOU-A plan and it has worked out better than I expected. The plan has On Peak, Off Peak and Super Off Peak. The On and Off peak rates are higher than other plans, but for every KWh of the baseline allotment they credit you back 8 cents. The Super Off Peak rate is 13 cents winter and 12 cents summer. With the 8 cent credit back, that means we can charge our Clarity for 4 or 5 cents per KWh. After switching to this plan, although we are using about 30% more total electricity than a year ago (before switching), our bottom line is about 50% less cost.

 

I am with PG&E and just switched to the EVA rate with off peak @ .12811. Their literature says that is a standard rate for the EVA plan so hopefully it's true. I had to wait almost a month for the rate to kick in but it changed for me yesterday. Good luck

 

I was quoting the 2nd tier (of 3) pricing since I'll be in it for most of the month... sadly the EV rate tier pricing for on peak is even more expensive and I'll be using power a lot throughout the day since I work from home.

Going to see how my rates change for the next month or two to get a new "baseline" for the increased power consumption before I swap since you can only swap plans 2 times per year or something.

Off-Peak pricing is only 11pm-7am so I'd be in semi-peak or peak pricing most of the time I'm awake ... basically everything minus the car would be peak pricing.

Even weekends its 3pm-7pm for peak pricing which makes the price pretty high.

Basically boils down to how long I'll end up in the T3 pricing each month, so far I've been able to stay out of it but only had 1 full month with the car charging so far.

Pricing was 21c t1, 29c t2 (most), 44c t3 (haven't hit yet) for my current

EV Tier was 13c off, 26c semi, 48c peak summer and 13c, 21c, 34c winter

I'd also likely want to get a level 2 charger if I could only charge in off peak hours instead of just plugging in all the time, so thats another $600-1k installed or so iirc.

I'd originally though PGE had some EV plans that would actually lower pricing but thats not the case

 

No off-peak residential pricing in Seattle.
"Seattle area households paid an average of 11.1 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity in August 2018"
17 kWh battery capacity X 0.111 = $1.887 per full charge = 47 miles

 

The battery retains a reserve so a full charge is actually about 14.4 kW. Changes the math a bit. Many utilities have a distribution charge that’s separate from the electricity charge. Take your total bill and divide by the number of kWh used to get a true kW cost. In Connecticut our current kWh price is 8.45 cents but the distribution and taxes bring the true cost to over $.21/kWh. at these rates isn’t the cost saver I’d hoped for.


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In MA I'm paying $.23/kwh :-(

 

Ouch! Doesn't your utility company have non-peak rates? Or special rates for EV's? If you don't mind me asking, what utility company is that?
At $.23/kwh thats about $3.31 a EV fill up.

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Hi. It's Eversource. So yeah $3.31 per EV fill up is pretty nuts. I'm trying to figure out if it ends up saving me any money over my previous car - a Camry that averaged approximately 31mpg.

 

I think your still saving money (32mpg vs 42mpg with the Clarity) with your ICE. But considering resale values, you can't get much better than a Camry (my previous car was a 2002 Camry, and loved it), your total cost may be more.

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We also have PGE and came to the same conclusion. We are charging 90+% of the time at my husband’s work for free. (He drives it to work and plugs in, then I pick it up charged on my way to work.) During months that he travels a lot and I charge at home, there’s a big difference in the electricity bill.

 

I’m in MA and have Eversource also. When I did the math, it was (somewhat disappointingly) the same price to drive a mile in the Clarity whether gas or electric. But either saved me money over my old Accord. You’ll save some too, even vs 31 mpg, I expect.

 

I agree. The solar system, minus the car, had a long payback period. Add the Clarity and the solar starts looking like a bargain. We have a couple of months to go to complete a year with solar + car but it's looking like we are saving about $2,500 per year as a combination of electric grid cost and gas for the car.

 

I think that the overall cost of maintenance of the Clarity could be less than your old car. Although it’s not a BEV there seem to still be fewer moving parts.

MA, CA, and CT— some of the highest electric rates in the country. Any guesses why?


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Hah, I work from home so I technically charge at work too , just not for free . Only driving is to / from kid's school.

Renting with potential to buy the house from the owners, so not sure if solar is an option... Know of any good resources for solar programs? I've seen some about PACE in CA but its so hard to find good info out there with lots of scammy companies.

 

Sounds like our economics are similar. I reached my one year anniversary for the solar array 2 weeks ago. Did a detailed analysis and found that I am saving a tad more than $100/mo on house hold electricity (with 3 months of EV charging the Clarity) and saving a bit less than $100/mo on gas. I figured that the savings of EV vs gas took my payback (for the array) from 16 years to 8 years. My payback on the array is probably a bit more than average because of difficult installation conditions and the use of the Sunpower panels (considered a premium panel with great warranty).

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You unfortunate folks who reside in democrat dominated states with heavy regulations and taxes are paying over 4x as much as me based on what I see above. Ohio Edison charges 5.34 cents per kWh. I think I still have PTSD over the ridiculous electric bills and car registrations I paid for in CA while in the military. I also saw in another post that NYC gas stations are $1.75 more a gallon (mostly taxes). I can’t believe there is so much disparity between states.

 

Maybe not quite so simple... Trying to sort the info.
Residential City (RSC)
2018 2019 2020
Base Service Charge per day $ 0.1686 $ 0.1778 $ 0.1824
First Block per kWh* $ 0.0780 $ 0.0902 $ 0.1004
End Block per kWh ** $ 0.1326 $ 0.1326 $ 0.1326
*First 300 kWh monthly Apr-Sept, 480 kWh monthly Oct-Mar