Equivalent $/kwh to $/gal for Clarity?

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Ah.... Thx for the info. I thought it was weird when I read the PG&E's document saying the average rate is $0.03 for net surplus
 
There have been some great points in this thread regarding additional costs for electricity, as well as the efficiency of L2 chargers - thank you all for your input!

I've revised my calculations to factor in the following:
- Electrical transmission fee of $0.0121/kWh.
- "Variable and other charges" fee ( :rolleyes: ) of $0.0093/kWh
- Regulatory fee of $0.0039/kWh
- A provincial rebate of 8%.
- As I am calculating the amount of electricity used based on what the L2 charger reports, I'll ignore any electrical efficiency penalties.
- Other charges on my electric bill are being ignored, as they are fixed and I pay them regardless of consumption.

So with that in mind, the math is something like:
- ChargePoint Home charger reports 82.573 kWh have been used for charging so far.
- (82.573 kWh) * (($0.065 + $0.0121 + $0.0093 + $0.0039) / kWh) =~ $7.46
- Subtract provincial rebate: $7.46 - ($7.46 * 0.08) =~ $6.86 spent so far
- ($6.86 / 501km) * 100 =~ $1.37 per 100km.

So, maybe not as big of a miracle as I originally calculated, but I can still live with this number!
 
For us metrically challenged Yanks, that works out to less than $0.02US/mile, which in my opinion is definitely a miracle, especially considering your high price for gas.
(if I got my math and exchange rates right)
 
Numbernine said:
There have been some great points in this thread regarding additional costs for electricity, as well as the efficiency of L2 chargers - thank you all for your input!

I've revised my calculations to factor in the following:
- Electrical transmission fee of $0.0121/kWh.
- "Variable and other charges" fee ( :rolleyes: ) of $0.0093/kWh
- Regulatory fee of $0.0039/kWh
- A provincial rebate of 8%.
- As I am calculating the amount of electricity used based on what the L2 charger reports, I'll ignore any electrical efficiency penalties.
- Other charges on my electric bill are being ignored, as they are fixed and I pay them regardless of consumption.

So with that in mind, the math is something like:
- ChargePoint Home charger reports 82.573 kWh have been used for charging so far.
- (82.573 kWh) * (($0.065 + $0.0121 + $0.0093 + $0.0039) / kWh) =~ $7.46
- Subtract provincial rebate: $7.46 - ($7.46 * 0.08) =~ $6.86 spent so far
- ($6.86 / 501km) * 100 =~ $1.37 per 100km.

So, maybe not as big of a miracle as I originally calculated, but I can still live with this number!
Click to expand...
I have been getting my Clarity charged at home on a level 2 charger at night for .14 per kWh on a TOU time of use program which is including both the juice and delivery. During peak hours my delivery rate jumps from .05 to .10 per kWh which makes my cost per mile jump from .04 per mile to over .055 per mile it is almost a wash with gas at 2.40 per gallon there is a really good energy calculator by the US dept of energy that you plug in your cost for gas and eletric and it gives you the cost per mile I will put the link here when I find it again
 
Patdown45 said:
I have been getting my Clarity charged at home on a level 2 charger at night for .14 per kWh on a TOU time of use program which is including both the juice and delivery. During peak hours my delivery rate jumps from .05 to .10 per kWh which makes my cost per mile jump from .04 per mile to over .055 per mile it is almost a wash with gas at 2.40 per gallon there is a really good energy calculator by the US dept of energy that you plug in your cost for gas and eletric and it gives you the cost per mile I will put the link here when I find it again
Click to expand...
 
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Honda Clarity Plug-in Hybrid
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I just look at the bottom line. Is it $30 for 300kWh? That’s $.10/kWh. With a tiered pricing plan or TOU pricing it can be more complicated. If you have to charge at a peak rate for some reason, the formula gets altered. If some of the kWH’s are Tier 2, how many of those kWh’s were used to charge the car? In that case I’d just figure an annual average and call it a day.

There’s a kWH price, then there’s a delivery charge, a monthly service fee, a surcharge for this, that and the other thing, a half dozen additional taxes and a few more fees, just because. That’s how much the electricity costs.

If your getting 55-60 miles per charge, that’s roughly 4 miles per kW. Getting 25-30? That’s 2 miles per kW. Or just figure an average of 3 miles per kWh. Do the math for electricity and do the math for gas, at say 42mpg. There are some folks on this forum who are driving on gas and using HV charge to charge the batteries with gas because it is less costly than electricity.
 
Landshark said:
There’s a kWH price, then there’s a delivery charge, a monthly service fee, a surcharge for this, that and the other thing, a half dozen additional taxes and a few more fees, just because. That’s how much the electricity costs.
Click to expand...

Yes, If you look at the breakdown of charges on your electric bill, there are some fixed fees (independent of usage), and there are some fees that are proportional to the number of kWh that you use. If I want to ponder the 'cost of electricity' for the Clarity, I use only the costs that are proportional to usage. The reason is that I would be paying all of the fixed costs anyway (regardless of whether I had a Clarity).

For example, my latest electric bill was $152.03, and I used 1314 kWh.
Simplistically, this would appear to be 11.57 cents/kWh.
A more careful look at the breakdown however...

Electric Supply $94.45
BGE 1314 kWh x .07188 $94.45​

Electric Delivery $56.26
Customer Charge $7.90
EmPower MD Chg 1314 kWh x .00736 $9.67
Distribution Chg 1314 kWh x .0292 $38.37
ERI Incentive Chg 1314 kWh x .00024 $0.32​

Taxes and Fees $1.32
MD Universal Svs Prog $0.31
Envir Schg 1314 kWh x .000143 $0.19
Franchise Tax 1314 kWh x .00062 $0.19
​
Total $152.03

Fixed charges in BLUE

My Electric Company would cite a rate of 7.188 cents per kWh.
If you look at the grand total (total bill divided by usage), it is 11.57 cents per kWh
To me, however, the 'incremental cost' for the Clarity should not include the fixed costs... That works out to 10.95 cents per kWh (and is what I use).

In my case, this subtlety doesn't amount to much (10.95 cents vs. 11.57 cents), but it might be a bigger difference for some. Also, this can change seasonally. Some may include tiered usage (rates change as usage goes up). Time of day metering obviously affects this too. For my case, it is pretty simple. It will be much more complicated for some.

Those who have solar... Another totally different scenario (free energy?), well, only if you are entirely off-grid and are naive enough to not amortize the high acquisition cost in some way !
 
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MrFixit said:
If I want to ponder the 'cost of electricity' for the Clarity, I use only the costs that are proportional to usage. The reason is that I would be paying all of the fixed costs anyway (regardless of whether I had a Clarity).
Click to expand...

That’s one way to do it, however, you are allocating all of the fixed costs to the house and none to the car. If you used 328kWH’s to charge the car then 25% of the fixed costs should be allocated to the car.

Your fixed costs will also have either more or less impact on the actual cost per kWH, depending on the amount of usage. So you will need to do a calculation each month.
 
Landshark said:
That’s one way to do it, however, you are allocating all of the fixed costs to the house and none to the car.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is exactly my intent. Since those fixed costs are there regardless of whether I own a Clarity, they are not 'Clarity-related'. To me, this means that all of the fixed costs are allocated to the house and none to the car.

This seems like the most sensible way to consider the cost associated with the Clarity. It also eliminates the extra complexity that you mentioned at the end (needing to do a new cost calculation each month because of usage-dependencies).

I'm not saying my way is 'correct', and your way is 'wrong'. There is more than one way to look at this to be sure.
 
Here is how I do it.
Running in HV mode my Clarity gets about 45 miles/gallon. Driving on just electric I get around 3.5 miles/kWh (April - October) and 2.5 miles/kWh (November-March).

{here's where I need a white board}

Doing some dimensional analysis (which my students hate) we get that 1 gallon of gas is equivalent to 12.86 kWh (warm) or 18 kWh (cold).
In the warm months our electricity costs $0.1172/kWh and in cold months it is $0.09733/kWh which means translating electric costs to gas costs driving on electricity is equivalent to driving on just gas if gas cost $1.51 (warm) or $1.75 (cold). Gas at Costco here is currently $2.59 so I am saving a goodly amount.

I also use this to determine if it is worth it to use public charring stations where you pay for the electricity. The cheapest I have found is $0.24/kWh so that is equivalent to gas costing $3.09 (warm) or $4.32 (cold).

These are guidelines as there are way too many variables effecting the miles/kWh number to make a really accurate measure.
 
Free chargers are always a bonus! I have found several in my area and will find places to do activities while the car is charging up ie at the library the charger is free so catch up on some reading. Also the local brew house has a free charger.....however I typically will spend way more than the dollars worth of free juice I can get in 2 hours......beverages consumed during a similar time period will be much higher lol.
 
markc said:
Driving on just electric I get around 3.5 miles/kWh (April - October) and 2.5 miles/kWh (November-March).
Click to expand...
My numbers are closer to 3.3 Summer and 2.1 Winter, without preconditioning KwH. (14 KwH per charge, 47 EV miles summer, 30 EV miles winter).
 
ClarityBill said:
My numbers are closer to 3.3 Summer and 2.1 Winter, without preconditioning KwH. (14 KwH per charge, 47 EV miles summer, 30 EV miles winter).
Click to expand...

I’m getting 55 summer, 45 winter up here in Michigan, however, with preconditioning. These are actual since I lost my ability to charge at work, I can run it down to empty. Hopefully, I’ll get my new charging stations installed at work next month to curb my gas usage.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Groves Cooke said:
"Doing some dimensional analysis (which my students hate) we get that 1 gallon of gas is equivalent to 12.86 kWh (warm) or 18 kWh (cold)."

According to this site on gal of gas is equal to 33 kwh of electricity.

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf
Click to expand...

My numbers are solely based on my experience. With an average of 45 mpg in HV mode and knowing (on average) how many miles I can go on 1 kWh I got those numbers. The government number is looking at energy content from a strictly chemical standpoint, it does not take into account the rather small (I've read it's around 20%) of the energy from gas that actually becomes kinetic energy of the car.
 
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