Any one else NOT sold on a plug - in?

Ok, thanks for the update. Guess I need to look at my bill more often I used 9c because thats what the Gov't and local utilities seem to use in all their calcs.

APS standard plan is tiered.
Summer:
0-400kWh: 8.57c
400-800 kWh: 12.175c
800+: 14.427c
Winter: 8.3c

This appears to be an incremental rate, meaning If you use 1000 kWh you are charged the tier 1 rate for 400kWh, the tier two rate for the next 400kWh, and the the tier 3 rate for the last 200kWh. If you are already in the top tier, 14.4c/kWh or 3.6c/mile is the number you need to use for summer. If you are in tier 2, and adding the EV takes you over the line it will still be less than this. Going over the line does not appear to drag the rest of your usage up to the higher rate. In winter you will be at 8.3c or 2.1c/mile. Annual average would be 11.35c/kWh or 2.83c/mile. APS Green energy is 1c/kWh, which would bring you to 3.1c/mile.

APS TOU plan is 15.5c peak, 5.1c off in summer, 12.8c peak, 4.9c off peak in winter. Annual average would be 14.2c, or 3.5c/mile peak, and 5c or 1.25c/mile off peak. With APS Green energy that would be 3.8c peak, 1.5c off peak.

We are on a bit of an oddball combined plan. We pay a hefty surcharge for our max demand in kW during peak hours, but then get a very low usage rate. In summer its $11.80/kW peak demand and then 6.5c peak, 3.7c off. In winter its $8.15/kW peak demand, and then 5c peak, and 3.5c peak. Annual average is $9.98/kW peak demand, and 5.75c peak, 3.6c off peak. Assuming we were smart about charging so as not to increase our peak demand, we would pay 1.44c/mile peak, or 0.9c/mile off. With green energy we would pay 1.68c/mile peak, or 1.15c/mile off. I'm surprised more companies don't offer plans like this, it seems to make a lot of sense. Its not the usage that kills the grid, its the peak demand.

Rob

 

Our power is pretty cheap, and pretty low carbon here in Phoenix. Down side is all our rivers are dammed up, and the US's 5th largest city is 20-30 miles down wind from the country's largest nuclear power plant. Not sure its a good trade to be honest.

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you are paying 33c/kWh for power you need to install solar immediately. At 33c with CAs solar incentives your payback time for a small 1kW system is only 4.5-5.8 years. To look at it another way, the net $2800 upfront investment would return between 9.64% (flat electric rates for 20 years), and 18.1% (2% annual rate increase for 25 years) per year for the life of the system (20-25 years). Another down side of our cheap electricity in AZ is its very hard to make a solar install pay off, even though we have better incentives.

Rob

 

I don't know why they can't build an all electric with a small gas or diesel to drive a generator only. This way, you don't drain the batteries period. You could still use plug in mode for shorter trips if the battery didn't activate the gen-set.

 

One HUGE advantage EVs or Plug in hybrids have, (In addition to the inherent efficiency advantage of an electric motor over an ICE) is the ability not only buy power from the grid, but also to SELL power to the grid! At first thought this would be silly, but if you look at it a bit further you realize the genus of the idea. (All the technology currently exists thanks to the PV solar industry!)

Imagine you drive home at 5:00 pm in your ev. You plug in your car to charge for the next day. But if power is expensive, (peak hour demand) you could A: program the car to wait until it got cheaper (typically overnight) and then charge, or B: better yet, sell some of the remaining power in your car, TO THE GRID while it is expensive, and then buy it back when it is cheaper. All the while, making sure the car has enough electricity to get you to work the following day.

Most commuter cars sit 23/7. As such, they can be plugged in to the grid 23/7 doing this buying and selling as the grid needs the peak load. The benefit for you is that your (net) power is cheap, but more importantly, by having a huge number of evs plugged in, you have now created the huge battery bank that would allow solar power to be used 24/7, even though it is only generated ~6-8 hours a day. It would help even out the swings of weather with solar/wind applications. With this large reserve capacity, the idling, spinning capacity of the the grid generating system could be significantly reduced. The idling, spinning capacity is that capacity that MUST be on line and ready to go when the next light gets turned on. Conventional coal/gas or Nuke plants can't just turn on and off when the next light gets switched. It is also, far and away the most polluting (any pollution that comes out of any generator (including hydro). This is because much of it'd power is just plain going to waste!

So by encouraging evs, we would be doing several things at once, that all would be a benefit. We would be able to travel cheaper, we would reduce our petro use, we would reduce CO2 emissions and we would be providing an outlet for solar capacity 24/7.

It is a no brainer, and we should all embrace the technology! Understand that this doesn't all come "free", but non of our energy choices do!

Icarus

 

It may be that some utilities would lower the night time rate if a smart meter were installed. That's what they are talking about doing.

 

Very well said, Icarus. I have a friend that doesn't think we will ever be able to sell power back to the grid from our plug-in vehicles. He doesn't think the masses will go for it because of concerns that they might not have the power available when they need it for an unexpected drive. Do you have a compelling study or reference from a well respected/scholarly individual or organization that makes a detailed case for the feasibility of this idea? You did a good job but I want more....

 

They have installed digital meters in my home and take the reading over the wire. I like the idea of dumping in durring peak demand, if not just to lighten the load (yes it would be nice to get a pay back). I like the idea for the simple fact I could run my furnace (gas, wood) when the power goes out.

Great idea on the exchange rate, but we are talking about big business. I have had rate increases over the last couple of years with little or no notice.

 

This is not my idea,,,I wish I were that smart. I got the idea from hearing a radio program on KUOW Seattle featuring Denis Hayes, one of the founders of Earth Day: Denis Hayes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I confess that I have no compelling study or reference, but here is the deal.

The technology to sell back to the grid is a simple grid-tie inverter, just as we use now for PV solar and wind. Thousands of these are in service today, (hundreds of thousands!) converting dc voltage to sinewave voltage for the grid. The voltages are somewhat different than your typical installation, but higher voltage inverters are available for large UPS installations.

As we know from driving our Prius' that the ECU is pretty smart, and pretty smart in battery management. It would be a very simple matter to add in a set of commands that would tell the car (based on the power rate from the grid) when to buy and when to sell power. It would also be easy to program in a "fail safe" default that says regardless of the price of electricity "I need to go 25kms today before I can plug back in.

So while the technology is readily available, it isn't in every house. As to whether or not we get paid for the power is a function of the political will and the economic system to make it happen. Utilities have finally realized that flat rate metering makes no sense since there are time when their product is in high demand, and times when there is little demand. By going to time of day and demand metering it allows the users and the suppliers to even out the capacity/loads equation so that much less is wasted.

We need to demand of our leaders that they demand our utilities that we begin to move this way, AND, pay for the localized generated power at the same rate they would otherwise pay for it. Electrical rates are complicated. Some of the cost is the generation and some (much) is for the transmission of the power. Allowances must be made to account for this. You wouldn't expect the utility to pay full retail meter rate since some of this rate is for transmission costs.

The other advantage of this system is with a large, disaggregated battery bank, there would (theoretically) be in every neighborhood, reducing transmission losses, making the whole system even more efficient.

As I said, nothing is free, and we will have some costs, but if we drive our cars at the equivilent of ~$1 per gallon, $1000 in infrastructure cost isn't much of a cost.

Icarus

 

This is why I like coming to this site!

I hate the thought of regulation, but I think we (US) shot our selves in the foot when it comes to some dereg. This is one of those areas, electric.

 

Here are some references,,, I haven't read any of them yet however,,,,

V2G: Vehicle to Grid Power
V2Green: Plug-In Vehicle Smart Charging Startup Earth2Tech
Cleantech Blog: Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles
Technology - Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)
V2G: Smart grids meet electric vehicles | Cleantech - A blog about keeping tech clean - CNET News.com


That should keep you all busy for an hour or two!

Icarus

 

Yeah I guess that's a bit of a trade off, plus I mean you live in the middle of a desert no? Ok it's about as much a desert as Las Vegas but you get my point. I probably end up paying less for total power usage than you, simply because as stated no A/C needed (nor installed in this house).

Trust me Rob, if I ever hit that 200% baseline rate solar would be #1 on my agenda of things to consider. However I'm usually just under the normal baseline rate which means I pay $0.12 per kWh. Then again my gas bill fluctuates between winter/summer seasons noticeably.

 

Here's another data point:

Socal Edison in southern California currently has a special EV charging TOU rate that appears to be about half the standard rate.
http://www.sce.com/NR/sc3/tm2/pdf/ce114-12.pdf

Rob

 

Yes, very true.

That depends on if the dam is a "run of the river" dam or has storage. In a run of the river dam, there is no appreciable storage up or downstream. Either the water makes electricity or it's wasted over the spillway.

OTOH, there are dams with storage above and below. A second dam below is important too since they can't go turning rivers on and off for a whole host of reasons. They oversize the powerhouses significantly and then can pick what part of the day the run the water through to make power. During low demand, they don't let any water out at all.

It's cheaper because of two reasons. One is fixed cost - if a plant is there but off, it still costs money. Capital cost, maintenance and upkeep, employees. These costs are the same whether it runs 1 hour a day or 24. If it runs 24 hours a day the fixed costs are spread over more kWhrs. The second is what the fuel is for peaking plants. Peak load is carried by gas turbine plants. They have the lowest fixed cost but highest fuel costs. They're expensive to run. The base load plants make cheaper power. Coal plants don't like being turned up and down so they don't. Nuclear units are 85% fixed cost and 15% variable cost so the best economics are to run it flat out whenever they can.

True again. If the peak and base difference is less, then base load plants over time will become more of the mix.

 

Fact?????

Whoa, that's just plain WRONG!!!!

Gas turbine plants can be turned off in minutes. Simple cycle units can be to full power in 30 minutes. Combined cycle come up slower, but still in under 2 hours.

The only plants that are a pain to shut down quick are supercritical units, pretty much all coal fired. Not "can't," but "don't want to." They have to turn them down slowly to do it without damage, and even then it causes thermal fatigue so it's still hard on the plant.

Nuclear units can go up and down far faster than most people realize. Again, it's a don't want to. 85% of the cost of a nuke is fixed so they run them when they can. 80% of France's electricity comes from nuclear. They turn their plants up and down to match load ever day just fine. That's why their capacity factor numbers are among the worst in the world for nuclear plants. Everyone else does nuclear for base load, France peaks with their nuclear too.

Plain and simply WRONG AGAIN!!!

There are a few exceptions where they may waste power but they are the exception. If the output has to be turned down too fast at a steam plant, they will dump steam to the condenser for a few minutes.

The grid doesn't have any giant power wasters sitting on it that get turned on all night (well, one could argue that's what street lights are).

 

Actually, the battery does get a bit of a workout even when the engine is running.

Our cars don't have a whole lot of electric storage, and that means that the minimum size of the engine is bigger. After all, when you go over a tall mountain pass, the battery gets completely depleted and by the end the engine is doing all the work so it does need to be big enough to keep the speed up.

But go to a serial hybrid (which is what a PHEV is when it's in ICE mode), and the much bigger battery means the ICE can by 1/2 the size of the Prius engine. Not only that, once it's run the battery dead going up, you can regenerate the WHOLE way down the other side.

 

I'd like to raise a factor not dealt with in other posts in this thread. Where is infrastructure to support the nightly recharge in places other than dedicated single-family unit garages. What about large apartment buildings with either surface parking or non-dedicated parking spaces and few electrical outlets? Who will pay to retrofit older units? Is the infrastructure being required in newer units?

At this time, I don't see that many people who live in appropriately dense communities will be able to take advantage of electricity from the grid to power their vehicles.

 

Does anyone know how electric vehicles will be taxed? In the short run, you can charge one on domestic electricity and all will be well. However, if a significant number of people started driving them, there would be a huge fall in tax revenue from fuel duty. What would happen then? Would we get road pricing?

Even homemade biodiesel people have to pay fuel duty in some countries.

 

I'm not sold on them at the moment because I put mega miles on mine every year ( 35000-40000 annually ). The new hybrids probably will be a better fit for me but perfect for my wife and her 20 mi RT commute each day.

But I'll add one other benefit to your list above.

- The money spent to charge the battery of a PHEV or EREV stays here in NA. It doesn't end up in the coffers of Big Oil and it doesn't help support higher oil prices worldwide ( it even helps lower worldwide demand/prices ). Thus it keeps money out of the hands of those that would do us harm. The 9-11 hijackers were brought up and educated then perverted in a system largely fed by our massive oil purchases.

 

That's a good point. Where would the money come from for building and maintaining our roads that currently comes from fuel taxes? When they figure out a way to tax PHEV's to help pay for the infrastructure, making future economic comparisions will have to take this into consideration. Enjoy the free ride while it lasts.

 

It's true that they are an environmental issue, but for existing dams less of an issue than anything else with the exception of direct solar conversion. And IMHO, large solar arrays that generate large amounts of energy to be placed on the grid and used large distances away isn't even the answer. What we need is PVs on every house attached to the grid and the power produced used locally to minimize environmental impact. In addition, passive solar heating should be used when possible. No additional power lines needed, no large energy losses over large distances (hundreds of miles) and rooftops are already taking up space, so there isn't much additional environmental impact.

Dave M.