Chevy Volt and Gen III Prius discussion about: "green" energy, mileage, etc

This lost the connection as in the orginal thread I think you were aimed at me.
Though I replied privately, I'll share it here again with maybe a bit more detail.
I track my data by hand as well as using voltstats.net.

My "green" energy is from my elecric co-op, which has its own solar and wind units and when that is not enough they buy green energy from Tri-state Electrics. My co-op owns no generation except green, so they have no incentive to provide anything other than what I pay for. Colorado law requires green credits to match those purchased. For a while I was buying pure wind, after discussions with my co-op who was moving away from just blocks of wind and my own desire about putting in my own solar and such I realized I wanted to encourage both so moved to general green energy blocks (so it can be wind or solar). Our coop has both now and are buying the solar from community members now and hopefully this will be encouraging growth of the install base. I'm getting quotes for my own solar but will still be buying the wind because we are wasting it. In 2010 the US Idled (i.e. wasted) 25TW of wind power.. mostly at night. That is we just "turned off" the generators to to about the energy of 700million gallons of gas. So even if I go solar, I'll keep buying the wind too.

My off peak KW charge (including the green energy surcharge) is .052 and my mid-peak is .093 (rates recently went up.. was .049 and .090 for much of the time in my signature). I am on time-of-day use metering.. off peas 10:30-5:30. midpeadk 5:30-noon, off peak noon-4pm, peak 4pm-10:30pm. I charge mostly at night, I don't have it start charging until 10:30 (when off-peak starts here) and it finished between 5:30 and 7:30 depending on how far I went the previous day. I brought home a kill-o-watt meter from work when i started getting into measuring stuff and measured my wall-to-charge which is part of how I track the costs. I computed an average cost-per kWh for a full charge and use that in my spreadsheets.

My commute is 35miles "shortest days" and with errands, lunch or other trips generally 42-48miles. Here is a histogram of my daily driving, green shows EV miles, blue is ICE miles

Some days I (generally unexpected) have longer work-realted side trips taking me to 60 (ICE of 0-20 miles). Trips to denver or the airport are > 100 and when I use gas most offten (> 20 miles ICE).

I've used a pubic charging station exactly once. I've charged at work (running an extension cord out my office window) about 10 times -- on some of those days I knew ahead of time I would need > 55 miles or so. (45 in winter)

My longest trip int he Volt was about 900 miles, (outside dallas to colorado springs). We did it in 2 days, stopped at a motel along the way and charged there. The rest of the trip was on gas.. averaged about 41mpg when I was driving and 39mpg when my wife drove. That trip is why my overall lifetime is only 189MPG, but it still going up. Given my expected long-trip frequency/length I expect my lifetime MPG to stabilize about between 250 and 300mpg.

If almost all your miles are day trips NY to KY (750 or so miles straight), then a Prius would get better fuel economy, on that trip. If you do that r/t trip say 2 times a year, that would be 3000 miles at say 40mpg, needing 75 gallons in a Volt and 60 if you got 50mpg from the Prius. You drove 9000 miles for regular commuting for a yearly total of 12000miles, and your commute was say 40 miles, with a few longer local trips with say a 90% local EV ratio, then you might use similar EV/gas on the daily commute to me give an estimated 26 gallons of gas and 3200kWk of electricity for a total of 101 gallons + 3200kWh for a volt (you can fill in your cost estimates). The prius, assuming 50MPG, would need 240 gallons for the year If you made 4 NYC-KYn trips a year it would be 176 gallons +3200kWh for a volt and 300 for a Prius. 6 Trips, 225gal+3200kWh Volt and 360gal Prius. From that type of data you can estimate the costs.

If you can describe the breakdown of your miles, I can do an estimate for you on expected MPG for a Volt.

 

Good morning,

I have been driving a Volt for close to a year and a half. My lifetime mpg as reported by the car is 98.8 mpg, but that figure does not include in the calculation the amount of electricity consumed (which would either be a combined figure reported as mpge or a kwh/100 mi type figure). Just looking at the gas miles traveled (just over 9700) and the gallons consumed (273) my CS mileage is around 35.5 mpg. With total miles close to 27,000, my electric driving utilization is around 64%.

When talking to any plug-in hybrid owner it is important to understand their usage pattern, because it will greatly impact the results, someone that drives short distances most of the time could use a PHEV (Pip or Volt, etc...) and almost never burn gas; the more they drive beyond their car's electric range the more the gasoline efficiency becomes a bigger factor in overall efficiency.

My commute is just over 40 miles round trip to the office most days, but about once a week I need to run to the adjacent county seats a round trip of about 100-120 miles in either direction. So 4 days of the week I use no gas at all, and on the other I use about 2 gallons (on average). I fill up about every 8 gallons so that is about once a month or once every 1000-1100 miles (barring longer trips on weekends or something that would make me burn more gasoline). In that same month I likely consume more than 300 kwh's of power (my 2011 doesn't have a read out of this information, the newer ones do). My home electric rate is now 9.7 cents per kwh, so if I paid for all of that it would be about $29 worth of electricity.

I charge half of the time at work, and my firm doesn't charge me for it (its not worth the administrative expense to them to track my $15 a month in electricity usage). The grid here isn't particularly green, but 40 some odd percent does come from nuclear, with coal making up the largest portion. Emissions aren't a huge concern of mine, I am more pleased to be using domestic resources instead of foreign oil. At home I have installed a Photovoltaic system on my roof which until last month was generating a surplus of power for me to sell back to the grid, so my home power is about as green as it can be. (this month with heavy AC usage I only made about 80% of my demand with the PV system).

I'd be happy to share any other data I may be able to provide or answer any questions.

I presume some one has pointed out to you by now that you're question about driving from NY to Kentucky is a non-issue. As you can see in my case I could do that run getting about 35.5 mpg for the trip. Charging is not required at all, but of course it is the whole point of the car and intentionally not charging would just be foolish.

 

Yes as GWMort advises you, the Volt is essentially a big battery hybrid with choice of EV and/or gaso. So no range issues. Prius is a "light" hybrid with smaller battery. National avg elec cost is about 12 cent/KWhr. Break-even cost of gaso vs. electron "refill" is around 20-25 cents/Kwhr depending on gaso cost trends. In general elec is cheaper refill energy right now, but of course gaso costs coming down at the moment. And NY may have high elec costs. Not sure where thread is going but will try to keep up.

 

My Ampera is charged at work from the 50kW roof PV.

I live in an apartment block, so I can't have a PV at home, but I have my installation from my home fuse box to the 2nd underground floor garage, where my Vectrix and Ampera are parked. My provider gets me 50% nuclear, 25% coal and 25% of hydro power.

 

On the one hand, I think you are trying to say gaso hybrid like Prius is better than EV right now. On the other hand, you are saying we should move away from fossil fuels. I am a bit of an EV-skeptic and an ethanol-skeptic, and all the points you are making are good ones. Ultimately the pro-EV argument (and pro-Volt argument) is that we must quickly move beyond petroleum and other fossil fuels. In the view of many EV/Volt supporters, the problem with Prius Hybrid is that it relies too heavily on imported oil. I will try to support you if want to support Prius Hybrid over EV. I don't think you hi-jacked the Consumer Reports thread. You were correctly perceiving a pro-EV political bias by both CR and the thread participants and you were trying to react to it. It is of course a Volt forum so some bias is allowed here.

Today we have quite a new energy ballgame emerging as it appears USA is becoming much more energy secure. Therefore we should expect quite a lot of controversy and disagreement as USA struggles to define the correct future energy choices. Likely USA will end up with a mosaic energy policy including all of the above.

 

In the case of ethanol, blame the lobbyists.

As a replacement for MTBE, I don't think the amount of ethanol had much impact on food prices. The stickers say up to 10%, but for replacement purposes, the amount is down around 5%. The ethanol mandate pushed by the producers is the reason why we are looking at 15% levels. Methanol can be made cheaply from natural gas, and fermented directly from cellulistic feedstocks. That's been going on for centuries. Butanol has been fermented for decades. A little company had a process that allowed it to compete with ethanol production, but they were little. Large corporations did work on improving butanol yields in Europe.

Technology isn't the problem. It's politics.

Efficiency just costs more. Take incandescents and fluorescents for example. My condensing boiler cost more than a less efficient model because there is more plumbing made from aluminum or stainless versus plain steel.

Back in the day, the econo cars got better fuel economy than the bigger cars while costing less. This was simply do to the fact they were smaller, lighter, and had smaller engines with lower power. On weight basis, they may not have been more efficient than those larger cars.

It has left us with a legacy of small cars should be cheaper and more fuel efficient. It ignores the fact that small cars are no longer polluting strippers, and having all the safety and emission features and creature comforts of the bigger ones have increased their weight. Acceleration times in the teens are no longer acceptable either. So the higher mpg car also has to give the same performance and features. That's going to cost something.

If you want mpg for less, drive a manual. It will save $800 to $1000 off the cost, trim some weight, and return better real world fuel economy. But it's a compromise most are unwilling to make.

 

A prius is more efficient than a Volt on a long drive (more than a hundred miles) no doubt.

Based on the above comment I still don't think you quite grasp that after the initial charge is depleted the PHEVs operate exactly like any other gaso-hybrid, like the prius. SO you never have to worry driving down the highway about the next spot to plug in or anything. Some people make a game of it and try to maximize their EV with opportunity charges and things, but it is really not a concern. If you never plugged in at all it would still be more efficient than most non-hybrids on the road.

I agree with you on the renewables. I like the fact that most of my daily driving is powered with electricity I generate at home from my PV system. I don't think I am increasing the cost of anything else to anyone else (except maybe demand for silicon?).

 

EPA puts it at 37 mpg in what is known as CS mode (charge sustaining), it is the operational mode once the charge from the plug has been fully depleted (known CD or charge depleting mode). Some users get more, some less YMMV, I find I get a little closer to 40 mpg on just gas.

I haven't looked up a statistic but I feel confident that most non-hybrids get less than 37-40 mpg.

It can charge from regeneration like a prius.

 

FuelEconomy.gov Power Search.

Fuel Economy

Any conventional gasoline, diesel or E85-capable vehicle with combined mileage 35 or greater.

Only one matches or beats 35 city: Scion iQ (36/37/37)
Only one matches 37 combined: Scion iQ has mileage rating
Many match or beat 40 highway:
43: Passat Diesel MT
42: Golf/Jetta Diesels, Audi A3 Diesel, Cruze Eco MT
41: Smart fortwo, Civic HF
40 Passat Diesel AT, Accent, Rio, Elantra, Fiesta SFE, Sonic 1.4 MT
Rio, Veloster MT/(2013)AT, Focus SFE, Mazda 3 DI AT

 

The EPA rrating for CS mode is a combined city/hwy figure, they don't break it down further into gas-city/gas-hwy/EV-city/EV-hwy.

So, based on the information you provided, in CS (gas) mode the Volt is more efficient than all non-hybrids except the Scion iQ, which it is equally efficient as.

Keep in mind though that how often the car runs in CS mode is extremely dependent on use. In my case I use it about one day a week, others with longer commutes might use it everyday, some people could conceivably never drive in that mode, etc...

 

Last month 2% of our miles were gas. Of course, that is something to strive for, we unfortunately don't do that well every month.

 

Slower is better for just about any car. The volt's sweet spot is pure EV. After the EV is used (about 35-40 miles) it operates in either a series mode hybrid or a parallel mode-hybrid -- where much like a prius it has 2 eletric motors and the ICE.. and the ICE Can generate charge for the battery. Below 65mph it will cycle the ICE on/off as it charges the battery enough to run prue EV for a while.

The volt gets an EPA 40MPG on the highway and at lower speeds can do even better.
I've chaged at holes along the way so far all for free. Low-end hotels I staty at don't charge for wifi either..

How much is your eletricty per kWh? How much is gas? How many local miles and How many long trips?

Yep, with a 2010 Prius you should not be looking to trade in any time soon..

(While probably a question of schematics unless you are running a taxi service.. the car does not "pay". it may continue to increase savings compared to other cars and given your recent purchase it still in the early stage with high depreciation).

 

Hey that's pretty cool nat gas power, but I'd rather see New York and especially NYC go to trash-to-stream for energy, rather than making landfills. However, as you alluded to, NY is one of the biggest NIMBY states. Therefore most of the NYC trash comes down to me in Viginia, although I think Ohio may have out-bid us with cheaper landfill offers. Former Buffalonian here, so I'm allowed to criticize. I don't like landfills and I don't like out-of-state trash hauling, but that's just me (having also lived in South Jersey, in the land of landfills). As far as why NY is a NIMBY state, that's another discussion. But let's call it California-East.

 

Nice plant, we've had a smaller 1.6MW plant at the local landfill for 11 years. and two 20MW wood burning power plants near town, one burns scrap wood and the other is at a lumber mill and runs off waste from the mill. Waste heat from that lumber mill plant is used in the lumber drying kilns.