Standardized per kWh quotes on this forum

With PRIME using EPA rated ~50 mpg and ~25 miles EV range. The rule of the thumb is electric rate ($/kWH) x 6.5 kWh for full EV range. If this is more than half of current gas price, then gas is cheaper.

For me. $0.2/kWh x 6.5 kwh = $1.30 for 25 miles. Thus, if gas price/gal is twice as much, or >$2.60, EV becomes more economical. Our gas price just got above this break-even-point last week! WOO WOO!

 

does that include losses from the wall to the charger?

 

So many improvements available for nuclear designs, but our plants seem stuck with 1960-70s tech ...

Scientific American, May 2019 (hardcopy p. 72, don't see it online yet):
Reactor Redo
Advanced fuels could improve the safety and economics of nuclear power plants
In Brief: Fuel for nuclear reactors has remained virtually the same worldwide for decades. Four new designs could make reactor cores safe and more efficient. Companies are testing novel materials, and regulators are considering rules for use.

"Engineers are redesigning the uranium fuel used in almost all nuclear reactors worldwide to reduce both the chance of a hydrogen explosion and the release of radiation during an accident -- with is what happened in the 2011 at Japan's Fukishima Daiichi power plant. The new fuels, which must still be perfected, are already being tested."

This is a separate track from the modern improved reactor designs that we are not actually building, a track that can be retrofitted into existing reactors. During accidents, the zirconium cladding of existing fuel rods catalyzes the creation of hydrogen gas when overheated. Ignition of this hydrogen is what blew the tops off the Japanese plants. Zirconium was originally used because it was more permeable to neutrons than other materials, and neutrons were originally too precious to be lost. But the science of arranging reactor cores has matured considerably, and can now tolerate neutron-lossy materials that don't catalyze hydrogen production.

These new fuel rod designs use a mixture of covering or eliminating the zirconium cladding, and re-doing the rods for better heat transfer so that they operate at lower temperatures, while tolerating higher accident temperatures without failing. If testing is successful, they can be fit into existing reactors.

 

With the Prime, probably the same for gas and 25 miles per charge (conservative). I see 20-ish in winter and 30+ summer on electric only.

 

Yes, but why? They advertise that wind and solar don't cost more, but then they ask you to contribute for them. So, it should be built into the rate structure. This was part of the pitch for buying shares of a new solar farm:

"If the cost of the solar farm is met and the solar energy market rate is below the standard energy rate, participants will see an energy credit on their bills. As a participant, you won’t see immediate savings, but enrolling in the program early secures your place for potential savings down the road."

 

what are they doing with spent fuel?

 

Whomever wrote that article, which makes it seem so simple, must not be the one to actually design it, manufacture it, get it licensed by the NRC and other worldwide regulators, retrofit existing plant systems for fuel handling & storage, re-do all the existing plant accident analyses, off-site dose calculations, etc.

 

What is who doing with spent fuel? For every site in the US, the spent fuel stays on site (funded by DOE, since they didn't provide the long term storage that was paid for by the nuclear industry). Most is in the spent fuel pool during the life of the plant, but when a plant decommissions it transitions into dry cask storage on site. And there it will sit until the Federal government builds the storage facility they committed to build.

In France, they reprocess their fuel.

 

Those are negligible. Anything lost between the wall and charger would be dissipated as heat, and if you feel the charging cord and controller they barely get warm.

 

that's part of the nuculer problem, until they follow up commitments

 

These were commitments made by the government (DOE in particular), not by the industry.

It's "nuclear", not "nuculer"...

 

right. but to win public confidence, everyone needs to step up

 

Since this is a PriusChat forum, I'll drop out of the nuclear discussion.

 

yeah, i was thinking the same. i wonder if we have a nuculer thread that hasn't gone nuculer

 

For me that would be excellent

I use VERY little electricity but pay about $50 a month in fixed fees

 

My number 6.5kWh is measured at the wall by a kill-a-watt meter. So it is the actual amount of electricity I pay to charge the traction battery. It varies a little bit day to day from 6.3 to 6.8 kWh, but the average is ~6.5 kWh.

 

do you have solar?

 

Rent, just use very little electricity, ready for offgrid

 

amazing. we can't consume enough

 

Another major issue in most NE states is that the utilities are guaranteed a certain percentage of profits on their investments. So the more they build the more profits they make. Instead of having an incentive structure that rewards reliability, availability, etc that would cause the utilities to find the most economical way to meet their mandates.

This results in such ridiculous things as my utility's distribution rate: 14+ cents/kWh plus a monthly service fee. All legally approved by the PUC because the utility "proved" that it needed to make the grid investment. There is no way to avoid this except to go off the grid. The supply rates are then added on top of that for a total of 27+ cents/kWh all in cost.

So yes, supply/demand comes into play for the supply portion, but having a distribution rate that is near the national average for all in rate puts us in NE behind from the start.