Chevy stops Volt production (temporarily ...)

The unlimited use of public chargers for $25/6 month in network is a different program. All of the chargers in Austin are 100% renewable, but chargers outside of Austin may put fossil fuel in your car. Most but not all are renewable.

The $0.057/kwh charge is for wind. Non renewable customers pay a fuel charge instead, which is the market price of the coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel used in the plants. All customers pay for maintance of the plants and the grid. When I purchased wind, you were locked in for 10 years. Current plans only lock in rates for 5 years.

Yes, I claim wind, even though the power at any given time is likely not wind. This is the same as most instantaneous solar customers are not using solar energy. The epa says that you can claim the renewable source you pay for.

That seems to make sense to me. When I purchased wind, Austin Energy had already built it. When my portion was sold, Austin Energy paid to build wind turbines for the next set of wind customers. The city council audits the municipal utility to make sure all of the renewable energy purchased is actually built. That is why wind power has grown so quickly. If a batch of wind is not sold, it will be part of the ordinary customer bills, and the utility will stop having new wind built.

Different utilities have different plans, but on the ERCOT grid, the utility must build the wind people buy, but never can direct it to your home.

 

That seems to give you all the information you need. I'm sure some anti-plug in freaks will look at your consumption and get mad it doesn't include the electricity, but you can find it and calculate mpge easy enough.

 

All I'm seeing with that graph is basically the same information that is on the center stack of the Volt. The Volt just represents electricity in the form of a green ball, and gasoline in blue. The more gasoline used, the more the ball turns blue, representing the ratio as a pie chart, and represents that ratio for each individual charge cycle.

With that, I must state that the Prius does include EV miles driven in the trip total for MPG. So, I guess that once again it is not okay for GM to do the exact same thing that Toyota is doing, which is apparently acceptable.

Again the picture taken from my first day of driving to TX:



Example of a more typical day for me - today adding a trip to the vet to make appointments for shots and exams for the dogs:



So, maybe the prius faithful can tell us why GM's information is no good, while John's example is.

 

I can actually answer that.. What John was showing was the Trip Odometer, not just the current drive. It is a little annoying that GM did not include kWh in the trip odometer. (And in 2011's did not include kWh on any internal display). On the other hand its annoying that Toyota did not compute MPG or MPGe, leaving division to the user. (Also not obvious but annoying that the truncate gallons)


I can see why GM did what it did. it wanted the UI to be "comfortable" for normal users and either you are doing day trips, and the center stack works for that, or doing long trips and the amount of kWh is really not varying much. Since any owner will know how many times they charged, and on long trips, that is 10.4kWh used per charge (since its not partial), its not really info the owner needs a display for. The display shows the hard to know stuff, miles, gallons used and overall MPG. Since they know the actual kWh they can (and I do) compute the MPGe with that info.


But with a PiP the EV milage is so small it needs to be accumulated over many trips to see an impact. For the Volt gas is so infrequent its what got the primary place on the "trip" data. But GM makes it up by sending monthly emails with very nice summaries and overall data.
Since in the car "instant" accessible data for long-term is not that critical I think it was a reasonable compromise.

 

...wow heckuva price ...Panasonic says 55st50 plasma 3D is 115 watt avg vs. 82 watt for their new 55ET5 LED 3D so not too bad for the plasma. Still window shopping here...maybe I should rent a Volt

 

MyVolt.com provides a lifetime EV/HV (CS) ratio, along with some environmental calculations for GHG avoided and gasoline avoided. For some reason my lifetime Electric Economy, Combined Economy, etc.. are not being populated today.

 

Going with Plasma, I did not get a smaller TV that requires more expensive fuel to operate. It does not cost 75% more neither.

 

Prius PHV does display all the necessary basic information, onboard.

The cons mpg includes electric miles. Toyota was probably forced to take the gloves off. The difference is, kWh was not hidden so the intend was not to decieve.

Prius PHV cannot calculate and display MPGe onboard because the kWh it has, does not include charging loss. Charging loss differs on the charger brand, voltage, etc.

 

are you still confused about how much your electricity costs? One of your earlier posts pegged your electric rate at something like $0.32/kwh but then you realized that your 4kwh per month was really 4kwh per day.

If you are spending $1.28 per month for 4kwh per day then your cost to drive on electricity would be something like $0.13 for a full charge. If you get 38 miles for $0.13 of electricity versus 50 miles for $4 of gasoline in a Prii.

 

can't claim direct unless those chargers have a transmission lines to the wind generators. If the chargers are connected to the grids, you cannot claim direct, especially when you do not have the REC.

 

Huh ? There are losses in delivering gasoline to the tank as well. Does that get accounted for in the MPG for any vehicle?

How many extra gallons of gasoline are consumed just to purchase gasoline for $0.05 less?

 

I assume most phv drivers charge with the 110 cord and on board charger. Toyota should know about what that takes I don't think either car set up to decieve. But the trip computer on both is very similar calculating mpg traditionally as only gallons of gas.

Volt is a little better. They keep all your information on a web site, but really I think phv drivers will use so little electricity they will hardly notice the rise in electric bills.

I thought the volt did account for charging losses.

 

Making Environmental Claims | Green Power Partnership | US EPA

The utility is not selling my renewable energy credit to anyone. The renewable energy is counted as mine. If you get RECs like in other programs, you can sell them and then you can not claim the energy. The grid is managed by ERCOT. This is no different than someone with solar using electricity at night. The solar energy goes on the grid, the user uses grid power. Austin Energy's policies follow all of the epa rules for green power for wind.

Solar is part of a mandate. Installing solar on your roof in austin, actually counts towards that mandate, so as part of EPAs rules can not be claimed. If you don't install solar, the utility will need to do it by 2020.

 

I'm not sure. I don't really care because I get electric fill-ups from the charging stations. The charging stations usually charge by the hour, not by the kwh, if they charge. Some, like the Plug-In EVerywhere program charge by the month (6 months).

 

I think Austin Energy claims the solar if the homeowner claims the Austin Energy rebates for installing solar. If you don't take the rebates from Austin Energy you can claim the solar for yourself (or business).

 

You seem to be the only person in the world to believe that for a person paying for green energy to claim to be using it, that the energy from the green source has to flow directly to them.

 

I'm sure he is not the only one, maybe the only one with a computer and an internet connection.

 

Nah he is not even the only one on PC. There are other people here that also don't understand that electrons dont actually "flow" far at all in an AC system.. and all eletrons are fungable, so all that matters is where I buy and how much I used. EPA has guidelines for what one can claim, and by them John can claim what he paid for, see Making Environmental Claims | Green Power Partnership | US EPA
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) | Green Power Partnership | US EPA)
I've cited those epa docs to USB before.. but seems he still likes to ignore facts when they don't fit his model of what is better.


Austin the volt's internal display does not account for losses, the onstar reports do (I valided them with a Kill-a-watt).


John .. you must drive fast.. Here's my last 30 days



The lifetime has -- for me as well, I presumed it mine was because I use an OBDII scanner, which I've been told interferes with their scans and because the battery "enhancement" reset the lifetime battery stuff causing the software to have an inconstant state so it shows ---.
My "lifetime" data on that site starts in march, and skips all of july.. (battery enhancement done, and an Onstar problem kept it from connecting).

 

That would be my 21 year old son as the primary driver.

 

There seems to be lots of misinformation out there, and most of it is on purpose. Many that do not like plug-ins or renewable energy want to pretend they are more polluting than they are. We have a number of for profit entities, claiming green power multiple times, which is why the EPA set forth rules.

The bottom line should be, if someone purchases green power, is that green power actually added to the grid. In the case of Austin Energy green choice wind all of it is added, and this is audited. Most programs of this kind work. The bulk of the purchasers are businesses, that get the benefit of not only doing something good for the environment, but also get good pr and the price of power does not fluctate with the price of fossil fuel.

We do have some bad programs where businesses put up solar panels or other renewables then sell the credits for mandates and claim the power.
Granted in the epa guidelines I can't claim, and don't that the wind I bought reduces SO2 or NOx or other harmfull emissions. Those are covered by other programs and do not go up or down with renewables in Texas or most states. I also can't claim no ghg, just lower ghg. The wind or solar may make changes to the grid that cause gas power plants to increase their carbon intensity as they need to cycle. Sometimes renewables actually reduce more ghg than their power would indicate, but unless there is an audit its difficult to tell the ghg reduction. For wind to fully reduce ghg to 0/kwh other changes to the grid need to take place.