What are you paying for electricity (price per kWh)?

I was paying $0.13 at night and up to $0.55 during the afternoon, but my power utility recently removed the "super off-peak" category, which raised my overnight charging costs 38% overnight. I now pay $0.18 all hours except 4-9 pm, when it's $0.44.

Maybe Toyota has convinced my utility to make electricity more expensive than gasoline to encourage people to oppose any moves to outlaw gasoline vehicles. When you factor in my state's EV tax, driving electric now costs far more than gasoline per mile if you have to charge during the day, or if you don't get my "special" electricity rate for electric vehicle owners.

 

or maybe to push hydrogen

 

In the UK we have a fair amount of wind power but its ups and downs are countered by gas turbine generators hence the problem when the price of gas hits an all time high. Many energy providers have gone bust compounding the problem.

 

Maybe I am out of date with hydrogen but doesn't the infrastructure costs and inefficiencies make hydrogen environmentally unsound not to mention the dangers of a highly explosive gas compressed liquified and transported around?

 

that's one side of the argument, but over here at least, toyota and others have been taking free money from taxpayers and developing hydrogen vehicles, but asking same taxpayers to foot the bill for infrastructure.

 

Thanks, companies will always take free bucks and some governments are desperate to keep the gas station taxation system. It makes you wonder what conditions are attached to those bucks. It is down to a few that are really concerned about the environment. I wouldn't be surprised if the solid state batteries are already there but being supressed.

 

Here in the bay area, the cost to charge the battery from 0 to full is about $2 or so. A gallon of gas is about $4.20 right now. I'm not really saving any money on the fuel side of things. What I am saving is some time from reduced fuel stops, and wear and tear on the engine for sub-30 mile trips. I think with my Prime, I feel comfortable following the 10k oil change schedule.

 

0.0877 here, plus $25 'Basic Fee' on the bill each month. No peak/off-peak to worry about. Last month, before getting the PP:

Detail Of Charges
KWH Charge 1,206 kWh x 0.0877 105.77
Basic Charge 25.00
Total This Meter 130.77

 

I live in Las Vegas and I pay 11¢ per kwh. I figure it costs me about 85¢ to fully charge my car and is therefore cheaper than gasoline for the 25 - 30 miles I get from the charge.

 

great price!

 

Just received the very first electric bill for the year 2022. It is a ~$50 increase from the last bill representing a 90% increase in the supply fee approved by PUC starting Jan. 1st, 2022. The billing period ended on Jan 10, meaning the current bill includes only 10 days' worth of increased fee. The next billing period will fully cover the increased fee. Meaning, it is like ~$150/mo increase.

 

I’m not quite clear on what happened. The supply fee went up by $50, or your whole bill did?
Or is the supply fee have a $/kWh structure? If that is the case could you give us the old and new $/kWh?

 

Our electricity rate is all per/kWh base. No fixed fee. The PUC approved the ~90% increase for the supply portion of the bill for the year 2022 (Jan 1- Dec 31). It is now $0.116840 per kWh from $0.06196 per kWh last year. The supply cost now represents ~50% of the bill. Others are Conservation Charge, Stranded Costs, Transmission, and Distribution all charged per kWh usage base. I just checked my bill and realized that the Transmission charge rate is also increased a little to $0.0418/kWh from $0.04069/kWh. The Distribution rate was increased last Nov from $0.06361/kWh to $0.07475/kWh.

The new supply and transmission rate became in effect for the portion of the bill I just received. The bill I just received covers the billing period from Dec. 8, 2021 to Jan. 10, 2022. The total bill increased ~$50 from our monthly average of $200/mo. If it represents only 10 days with a new rate, the next full month bill with the same usage would cost me ~$150 more or $350/mo.

 

Also, the California CPUC is probably going to vote this month to make solar cost a lot more, probably for new solar customers only, but might shorten the grandfathering period.

 

Greenwood Utilities is my electric, water, garbage, and sewer provider, the electric portion is $0.1473 per kwh

The good news is that from 11/19/21 to12/2021 my usage was 491 kwh compared to 935 kwh last year, before the solar battery install.

 

Wow, do you know anyone that attended the PUC meeting where this was discussed? It seems outrageous.
We have flat charges for ‘Basic service charge’, ‘Affordability Charge’, and ‘Resource adjustment’. Last month those combined to be about 22% of our bill.
Our ‘energy charge’ was about half our bill.

If I divide our total bill by kWh our total comes to $0.123/kWh.

I’d suggest suing your PUC or moving

 

Ouch.

Do you have separate energy and distribution providers? Over here, without separate providers, those various charges are not (yet) broken out separately, but still rolled together into a single per-kWh rate. Though flat connection charges are common or being phased in, so that we net-zero solar customers still must pay something.

Does much of your electric energy come from oil or natural gas? Those prices have spiked as pandemic recovery sort-of progresses, whereas hydro, coal, nuclear, and wind energy prices ought to be more stable.

 

Yeah, the rate hike was well-publicized. Everyone knew it was coming. I don't know who actually sit on the committee for the PUC meeting, but there had to be a public hearing before it was approved. I heard a similar hike in the electricity rate elsewhere in New England. @bisco mentioned similar news.

I am sure some civil group must have filed something by now. I am too close to retirement to think about relocating. I have a plan to build an off-grid tiny house to live in after my retirement. Until then, we will be a revenue source for our utility. No way around it.

Our utility is deregulated, so I can choose a supplier. But transmission and distribution are run by the utility company and I have no choice. I have used a different supplier in the past. But for that one company, I had to sign a construct for 1 year for their variable-rate plan. It was cheaper than the public offering rate by the utility for the first 6 mo, then the variable rate jumped to 3x the rate of the public offering on my seven months and stayed higher. At the end of my 1 year contract, I switched back to the public offering by the utinily, since I did not save. In fact, it cost more than if I would have just stayed with the public utility. I may have to look into the private supplier contract again, but for now, I can't switch. I have community solar subscription, and it requires my account and rate with the utility to caclurate the solar credit.

According to the EIA,

• In 2020, 79% of Maine's electricity net generation came from renewable energy, and hydroelectric power provided the largest share at 34%.

So, I don't know what is the reason behind the huge supply rate hike. In addition to the electric rate hike, we heat our house with oil. The cost of the heating oil has doubled since last year. I am paying close to $500/mo just to heat the house this year.

 

Holy cow. I’d be looking at at a tiny home as well.
I appreciate the details and understand a bit better where you are coming from.

 

EIA state averages are not good indicators for any particular energy supplier. E.g. my state's consumption is a bit over 50% hydro, but here in the main Puget Sound region that varies from 74-86% for the public utility districts in Snohomish / King / Pierce Counties, to just 23% for the private utility (PSE) serving other portions of the same counties. (Public utilities get first pick of the best legacy sources, private utilities get the leftovers and must build other capacity.) Conversely, these public utilities are as carbon-free as they can be, getting <3% fossil energy from a block of "unspecified" from the Bonneville Power Administration (a federal agency), while PSE is 66% fossil, almost evenly split between coal and natural gas. (Chelan County PUD leads at 99.98% hydro, 0.02% wind).

Look up your supplier's annual "fuel mix" disclosure, this should be more useful.