Gas or Electric: Which one is cheaper for the Prius Prime!

Some people hate the smart meters and some love them. I used their online tool to cut our baseline electricity usage in half. I thought that our old central heating / ac were to blames for the high bills. The tool showed that my power use was pretty steady all day long. I run a bunch of computers and video equipment 24/7 so in 2014 my lowest use was 1.75 kw per hour in the middle of the night. Now it's down to 450. Eventually we'll get rid of the extra TIVos and that should drop it by another 200 watts or so.

Dan

 

I don't know my lowest overnight use or baseload. But before conservation efforts started (fifteen years ago), my all-electric house (direct electric resistance heat and hot water too, back then) in a heating-dominated climate had a round-the-clock year-round average of just under 1250 watts. Still all-electric, it was down to 600 watts average pre-pandemic, 'ballooning' to 680 under the pandemic Stay Home orders.

No Tivo or video bank, just an old XP laptop running Windows Media Center. No computers on overnight.

 

That highest spike with two bars was laundry. (High efficiency washer and a regular electric drier.) I wish we'd had this thing while my mother-in-law was here so we could compare. We had quite a bit of "cold" weather" and ran the heat much warmer than normal (heat pump) so the 90-year-old wouldn't freeze.

 

Old people have less cold tolerance, so they need the heat turned up.

And that was one of the factors driving me towards improving the house's energy efficiency. I knew that as we got older, we'd need to be turning the house temperature up, which would be energy intensive and expensive with the electric resistance heat.

Now we are noticeably moving up that old age temperature curve, and have thermostats 4 to 5 degrees higher than 30 years ago. The high efficiency heat pump lets us keep the temperatures higher while still being cheaper. Building envelope improvements reduced heat loss and eliminated drafts, so temperatures are more even.

These improvements also greatly reduced the value of setting back thermostats at night, so we have ceased doing that, making it more comfortable when we get up in the morning. This also helps with heat pump efficiency, as they are better when running steadily at a low level than when trying to 'catch up' during a morning warmup. This also slashes our contribution to the morning surge in utility demand, as we shift a block of heating load to their overnight baseload lull.

 

We spend much more on cooling than heating. In Roatán we kept the t-stat at 81. We've grown soft here and usually have it at 78. That's mostly because on of my wife's medicines broke her internal thermostat and most of what I hear from here these days is, "I'm sweating!" I used to be the one always saying that.

 

Wow! How many "extra" Tivos do you have?
The older ones were about 40w standby and 50w during playback, IIRC.
I complained to them on numerous surveys about this and they finally fixed it about 5-6 years ago.
Standby is just a couple of watts now.

Mike

 

They don't need any medicines to break their internal thermostats, nature can do it for them.

... I'm still remembering a meal, just after working a major event, where half the table was experiencing simultaneous 'personal summer'. Everyone was within that special age bracket.

 

At the time, we had 5. 1 was the original model, won from TiVo in a contest and graded several ways. Tivo declared those as being obsolete (end of life) a couple years back, giving me a $50 gift card to compensate for the loss of the $400 "lifetime service plan". Now we have only 2 TiVos recording 10 streams.

The electricity use adds up when you include the switched routers, the UPSes, etc. As a former consulting firm, I also had multiple Web servers, DNS servers and Mail servers as well as Sendmail gateways, firewalls, etc. I used the systems in my home a lab to test my customer's upgrades and improvements.

Dan

 

For the record in my new 2021 Prime LE. I'm getting 70-80 MPG over a 150-250 mile daily commute. This is on one charge per day basis. Which in my opinion beats the comparison in earlier mentions. Because this just compares rates and not actual mog combined which is way better and a no brainer.

 

The MPG while on electric doesn't count in my opinion, the cost of the charge hasn't been factored in. As discussed before, in my area charging cost $$$. FWIW I have begun charging as gas prices have climbed, I do like the way the car drives on electric.

 

In this case I have factored in total cost of being about $10.00and getting about 190 MI.. this is total cost of charging price and total amount of gas gallons used. This is one charge per day

 

Gas here is currently
~$2.70 and I get ~50 mpg in colder weather so $.054 / mile x 190 = $10.26 for me on gas.

Electric is ~23 miles per charge right now. 5.7 kwh / charge x $23 = $1.31
8.26 charges (for 190 miles) x $1.31 = $10.82.

Given my location and driving habits, gas and electric are nearly the same cost.
In the warmer weather without snow tires this increases to ~60 mpg gas and up to 35 miles on a charge.

 

In California, gas prices are averaging $3.90, so that would be $14.82 for gas.
With Time of Use, ideally I can get the same 0.23/kWh, or $10.82 for electricity.

So charging is much cheaper for me (even cheaper because I can often charge for free).

 

So charging is much cheaper for me (even cheaper because I can often charge for free).
That's my favorite kind of charging (free!)

 

I'm assuming your talking about free chargepoint stations or you got a hack...lol

 

At my work they have Chargepoint stations that charge very little (for employees). For some reason one of those stations never charged me (even though Chargepoint recorded the hours it was in use). I thought they'd get around to fixing it, but one year later and I still don't get charged at that station. Eventually I asked another Prius Prime owner about it, and he said "What do you mean it doesn't charge you? I use that station all the time and it charges me."

So I don't know why I can get a free charge at that station. Maybe someone in the company likes me and exempted my car. But why just that one station? Because of the pandemic not many people actually go into work, so I have my pick of charging stations, and you know which one I pick.

 

That's awesome! There are a fan r amount of free charging stations. But not right next to work tho. Enjoy!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Free charging stations are my favorite kind of charging stations

 

Figured I'd chime in on this topic with my own experiences. First, I have solar panels, and that was an investment, but when I am charging during the day, the energy comes from what I am producing. So from that angle, electric is cheaper. Second, my electric rate from the power company is also pretty low in comparison, so again, electric wins. From my calculations, electric (without consideration of solar) is 1/3rd the cost of the gas equivalent in my area.

But here's where I wanted to add some value add to this conversation. When considering the cost of electric, you probably also want to consider the public charger rates. For some systems like EVGo or Chargepoint, they charge you based on time. This is where you will get "ripped off". Prius Primes are capped at 4 kw/h charge rate on a level two charger. A level 2 charger can go up to 6.6 or 7.2 kw/h. This means you're charging at 2/3rds the rate of a car with a better inverter. And you're still paying the same price. If you do the math here, your cost for electricity can be much higher.

I try to strike a balance by finding the free charge stations in my area and to ensure I'm doing business with those businesses willing to provide that service.