The Electric Generation

And for people not on a 42" monitor ..

(removed the quote tags since it automatically italicizes everything)
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As some of you know, I’ve been helping the Edison Electric Institute (EEI -an association representing the shareholder-owned electric utilities in the US), plan and launch a community-oriented campaign to generate consumer interest about the benefits of plug-in vehicles and using electricity as a transportation fuel. Over the last several months, I’ve asked for input from you all on various fronts in order to shape the effort in ways that authentically reflect the voices of enthusiasts, and really appreciate everyone who’s participated so far.
The resulting campaign, The Electric Generation, represents the electric utility industry’s commitment to the widespread adoption of electricity as a transportation fuel. It is meant to amplify and add to existing efforts, not to compete with or replace them. So, much of the content is driver or community generated (including articles written by folks in this forum), the faces in the logo and on the site are actual drivers and enthusiasts, etc. We also aim to vary that content - basic information for the “EV curious”, along with tips and information that will appeal to those who already have EVs- recognizing that along the way, the utility industry is learning from all of you as well.
The site has now been up for a couple months, and we’ve been thrilled to see many of you join. If you haven’t yet, you can do so here. Pretty please?
In addition, I’d love your feedback about what you see, and what you’d like to see. How else can this effort help what you all are already doing, and encourage more folks to join our collective choir?
Thanks,
chels.

 

Thanks!

 

Its not quite clear how a Prius Plug-in fits into this. When friends ask about it the first thing I tell them so they won't jump to an incorrect conclusion "Its not an electric car". Then we discuss the properties of HV operation and finally the advantage of the plug-in for short trip operation and the larger battery for some regeneration improvement in some types of long trips. I can see that all electric is on the horizon its just not clear how far away that is.

 

A great incentive for encouraging electricity as vehicle fuel is the application of solar electricity generation. Its cost effective in just reducing your electricity bill and can make charging the batteries quite inexpensive. In California served by PG&E you can charge for as little as $0.04/kWh.

 

I signed up, Chels. And not just because you asked so nicely.

 

It's a nice website. I don't know how much weight you carry with the industry, but I think that if the utilities want to back EV's, they should do so through the vehicle manufacturers and dealers.

Today, the process of installing 240V power and understanding EV-friendly rate plans is too complicated for most consumers -- and way over the heads of most car salespeople. If I want satellite or cable TV, I call the utility and they install my equipment and lease it to me. The utilities should do the same (PS -- equipment leasing is profitable). I don't know if you've ever gone into a Best Buy, but when I go there to look at TV's, there's usually a person right there trying to sign me up for Comcast or DirecTV. From a business perspective, a DirecTV installation is more expensive than an EV installation. When you sell an EV installation with a new EV car sale, you can be very confident that you can sell a three year equipment lease and three years of electricity sales to that consumer, because they are signing up for at least three years of payments.

Providing rate plan and EVSE leasing information at the dealership drives your message straight to the "center of gravity," which is the consumer who's at a car dealership. This program would give consumers an easy way to contact their power company and order both the service and electrical installation that they'll need, and they can know the price of electricity for their car right on the spot. This also gives the utility the opportunity to educate the customer on the value of off-peak charging.

By comparison, if you look at some of the threads here started by new plug-in car owners, many of them are utterly baffled at trying to understand their rate plans, especially in Southern California. This is serious money for utilities. They get to sell off-peak power, which they are dying to sell. My little Prius Plug-in uses about 100 kWh/month of juice. But a full EV, such as a Leaf, can easily use $50/month in electricity. That's $1,800 in added revenue for a utility over a three year period without any added infrastructure costs. At least $1.8 Million in revenue for every 1,000 EV's sold, plus an opportunity to sell a profitable lease. It's amazing that the industry isn't hopping all over this, because it's a gold mine. They are basically taking Exxon's insanely profitable business without any added investment. How often do you get an opportunity like that? They should start discounting first year service and offering incentives of all sorts to jump-start this opportunity.

 

^^ Chelsea Sexton is people who knows people..... and she is cute so that helps!

 

Well... everything's complicated in today's world, isn't it?

As I mentioned, Exxon alone makes $10 to $30 billion PROFIT per quarter. That's plenty of reason for utilities to market their product into this market.

Although rates vary widely, they don't vary at a given car dealership; at most, a dealer's region will cover two power companies. If your group is funded to create dealership-ready materials which are customized by each area's utility, the program can be very effective.

 

Welcome EVChels...I apologize retroactively for any prior posts I might have made on this EEI topic, not knowing the source at the time. Now I follow EVChels on Twitter. Today I am worried about the Hybrid/EV fees hitting us in Virginia as of tonite's final approval.

 

Absolutely. If we can show a utility company $1 billion in additional quarterly profits, they will wake up in a hurry. I do business with large, slow-moving companies. It is amazing how fast they get things done when they decide to.

There are a lot of "green" market changes that utility companies don't like, but electric cars shouldn't be one of them. It's all pure profit. We could analyze these companies individually and present the results to them. If that doesn't work, we could hand out the reports at shareholders meetings.

 

I'm not sure exactly the best way to do this but my municpal utility that works with plug in america, works with dealerships.
Plug-In Partners for Dealers

They also
Special Offers for PEV Owners

And the utility is working with new home construction to make sure that not only is the air conditioning efficient, that solar panels are subsidized, but also that there are outlets in the garage to make it easy to easily plug in electric cars or install charging stations. The subsidies are partially covered by federal and state programs.

 

How much profit is mainly up to the PUC. Often they have rules that screw up this motive. I've seen cases in Connecticut and california where regulations discourage the right thing. Certainly all the utilities in texas see huge profit potential from plug in cars.

The green problem for california regulation is AB32 along with a downed nuclear power plant, and other programs driving up the cost of electricity and causing power plants to be under built. More plug-ins may raise rates unless regulation is fixed for them. The PUC seems to have byzantine rules making it hard for plug-in owners to get good rates. The utilities use these rules to extract extra profits. Under building power plants seem to be the most profitable thing for california utilities, not well serving new demand, and this is part of regulation. A number of organizations want no new power plants, even though lack of plants mean more imported coal electricity and greater chances of black outs. Some environmental groups like this, as high prices seem to mean lower energy use, but high prices and black outs are bad for plug-ins. Better regulation would mean the utilities in california would encourage plug-ins, like the utilities in texas do.

 

This seems like a pretty good rate for Plug-ins if you charge at night and have solar panels to keep your rate within the baseline.

 

CaliforniaBear, those aren't bad at all. The complaints I've heard are more from a large charge to switch to time of use, and from people in a higher tier without solar. I think those are mainly SCE not Palo Alto utilities or PG&E when in the bay area, but I'm not sure. You would think if businesses get discounts to contract for power, that regulators would make it easy for plug-in drivers to not get clipped on rates, especially if they are charging at low demand times.

 

Utilities can serve plug-in cars with off-peak electricity, which requires no additional infrastructure development.

 

Absolutely, to serve expected plug-in demand you only need some grid upgrades not new power plants, but..... will they charge the customers more, because they are not building the infrastructure, and the regulators allow them to charge in this way. The California regulations at least used to be built in a way that shortages meant importing electricity from other states and higher customer charges and profits.

I know that in 2012 some were trying to get regulations changed to build more ccgt in california which would actually reduce coal imported in future california electricity, but groups like nrdc were against it, and I have a suspicion the big utilities didn't like it either. I'm not sure if that has moved forward. Lack of infrastructure and new ccgt in southern california definitely pushes up rates, which if your goal is lower electrical power consumption, instead of lower pollution may be a good thing. I do question the goals though, and higher electrical prices may mean more gasoline and less electricity is used in transportation. If you build the fast cycling ccgt, then later add renewables, you can shut down the less efficient imported power and less efficient natural gas thermal power plants. New fast cycling ccgt is also more compatible with renewables so less efficient peaking ocgt have lower utilization. Having more ccgt might make it uneconomic to ever repair the san onfre nuclear plant. Proper regulation for lower pollution and lower prices creates costs for those that own the less efficient older power plants, and these companies have lobbyists.