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9FingerFury

Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2018
Messages
6
I bought a used 2014 SL with 40,0xx miles on it, and 11 bars on the battery about a week ago.

I just did the math on the cost of driving my Nissan LEAF, and I am amazed. Over this last week, doing normal driving (commuting to and from work, picking kids up from daycare, trips to the gym, grocery store, and church), I averaged 4.3 miles per kWh.

Puget Sound Energy charges $.09/kWh for the first 600 kWh, and $0.10/kWh after, each month. Right now we average just over 600 kWh/mo. So with the added expense of charging my vehicle, I'm guessing it will add to the $0.10/kWh rate on my bill.

At 4.3 kWh/mi, this means it will cost me about $0.023 or $0.024 per mile to drive my LEAF. With gas being (conservatively) $3.00/gal right now, for me to get down to $0.024/mi in cost (that's 2.4 cents per mile), I would need to get around 125mpg with a gasoline engine.

Compared to the 11mpg truck I was driving ($0.2727/mi in gas), at about 10,000mi/yr ($2,727/yr in gas vs $240/yr in electricity), I’m saving about $2,300 in gas alone!

TLDR: I'm getting the equivalent of 125mpg in my electric car based on current electricity rates and fuel costs in my area.
 
9FingerFury said:
I bought a used 2014 SL with 40,0xx miles on it, and 11 bars on the battery about a week ago......
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Enjoy at-home fueling with USA electrons. Tell everyone that you know. One at a time, we will conquer the oil devil.
 
This looks like a good place to offer some thoughts on the cost of electricity, etc.. Let me know if I should have or should start a new thread. It's not like I have anything momentous to say, but maybe the content ought to be titled differently. I'm curious about the EV-related cost of electricity elsewhere and for others.

(Liberally edited a few days later:)
In my area, a fairly expensive one for electricity, I think, for this household electricity cost is at $0.1169/kWh delivered with tax (with fixed, non-variable hourly rates - change to that is in progress). The cost of trickle charge is no more than $0.17* (not $0.13) per hour. An overnight replenishment charge for what I typically use in a day (~20%) should cost no more than $1.25* (not $0.96). I do not necessarily charge every day, and I have taken advantage of NCTC public L2 charging stations fairly often (and even DCFC on occasion), but if I always charged at home for all ordinary charging needs, I think that would be $30.00 max (24 days of 7.33 hour overnight charges replenishing ~20%, or 176 total hours of L1 charging one way or the other).

Aside: When my landlord/roommate saw the first post-EV electricity bill, I think that the jump he saw and the timing of the billing period - start of colder weather - gave a false and hard to overcome impression that the Leaf just gobbles up electricity. Fact is that the bill only included two weeks of the EV and 7 charges - more of the increase was from a space heater, same as other late falls and winters. I expect skepticism every time I will now point out that charging is a 17* (not 13) cent per hour proposition max.

*From an estimate of 1.1 kWh per hour being delivered to the battery.
*Edit, a fews day later: So now I know about the loss factor. Whatever is delivering to the battery is less than I'm paying for. OK. Should have known that the home charging wasn't "maybe a bit slower than expected, sometimes."

The Leaf's varying display of efficiency history has ranged from 3.1 miles per kWh to 3.6 (the most recent summary). If I go with the most common overall, 3.4 miles, then the fuel cost per 100 miles is $3.44. Gasoline seems fairly cheap right now at $2.19/gallon. That gallon would take me 35 miles in my old Saturn SL2, for a fuel cost of $6.26 per 100 miles. So just at the moment, the Leaf isn't looking that fuel-efficient. As compared with the Saturn, the Leaf is "only" a 64 MPG car. More of a really good hybrid than all-electric. That is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Electricity is expensive here, and gasoline prices are variable and typically lower at this time of year, if I'm not mistaken. But seriously, fuel cost savings were not the selling point for me - that is for the SUV owners and very heavy drivers. I was averaging in recent years no more than 9,000 miles per year in a rather fuel-efficient ICE. Unless I start driving a lot more, over a three-year lease the fuel cost savings with a Leaf are not going to be impressive. Not to me, anyway. Even though $25-$35 monthly should impress me, maybe. Could be that gasoline seems irrelevant now. It's all about optimizing electricity.

Hourly pricing (taking advantage of off-peak rates) is estimated to reduce an electric bill by up to 15%. How much of a specific reduction to charging cost there will be remains to be seen. However, something I am also asking the landlord to consider is something that would actually increase cost. That, of course, is specifying the source of electricity as all wind/solar through the local utility. Current offer: 33% more. So the cost of electricity would become $0.1555/kWh less whatever off-peak discount could be had. Being able to say my "clean" Leaf is not 31% coal-powered (to say nothing of natural gas) stands to cost me a premium of 13%, probably.

How about you?
 
NoReleaf said:
This looks like a good place to offer some thoughts on the cost of electricity, etc.. Let me know if I should have or should start a new thread. It's not like I have anything momentous to say, but maybe the content ought to be titled differently. I'm curious about the EV-related cost of electricity elsewhere and for others.

In my area, a fairly expensive one for electricity, I think, for this household electricity cost is at $0.1169/kWh delivered with tax (with fixed, non-variable hourly rates - change to that is in progress).
...
So the cost of electricity would become $0.1555/kWh less whatever off-peak discount could be had. Being able to say my "clean" Leaf is not 31% coal-powered (to say nothing of natural gas) stands to cost me a premium of 13%, probably.
Hahaha. You don't have expensive electricity.

See my posts at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=531393#p531393. I don't have time to re-write it all.

I've attached the electric portion of my most recent bill at https://imgur.com/a/GE9ikQx w/PII blocked out. Luckily, I stayed within tier 1 and it's not "summer". I've also attached my most expensive (for the electric portion) bill for the year, so far at https://imgur.com/a/Z8nq2uB. That was during "summer", so the rates are different and so are the time/day bands, in addition to having a 3rd band: peak.

OP lives in the Pacific NW which has cheap electricity (I lived up there for about 9 years).
 
Hahaha. You don't have expensive electricity.

Your rates may be bad, but your usage is phenomenal. How do you do it? Candles for lighting and cooking with a wood stove? :D Same billing period here, over 1,200 kWh. Unusually cold early winter temps.

Is all of California this bad? Or worse? Lots of still-expensive solar? That would give you bragging rights over the coal-burning Leafs to your east...
 
OP lives in the Pacific NW which has cheap electricity (I lived up there for about 9 years).

The OP's reported rates were actually higher than I expected for Hydroelectric Washington by a lot. If that is low for the US as a whole, yeah, I really shouldn't be complaining.
 
NoReleaf said:
Hahaha. You don't have expensive electricity.

Your rates may be bad, but your usage is phenomenal. How do you do it? Candles for lighting and cooking with a wood stove? :D Same billing period here, over 1,200 kWh. Unusually cold early winter temps.

Is all of California this bad? Or worse? Lots of still-expensive solar? That would give you bragging rights over the coal-burning Leafs to your east...
Hahaha. It's not nearly as cold here as IL.

My usage is a bit atypical. I live alone and am at work most of the day on weekdays. I don't really cook. My furnace is nat gas (not turned up real high, so RonDawg says I live like an eskimo.... I'm turning it up a bit higher now, sometimes to 61 F) and my water heater is nat gas. My stove and dryer are electric though. Lighting for when I'm in a room is usually 2 LED bulbs (10 watts a piece) up to a few CFLs and LEDs (maybe <120 watts total). I have no solar as I don't own this house.

I've seen in CA some usages WAY higher than mine and some even lower than mine.

As I posted at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=379033#p379033 (which I just realized has a typo), I mentioned I was given a backhanded insult for using 310 kWh and 32 therms of nat gas in a month (this is all prior to me having a Leaf). That person now exists here on MNL.

A fair bit of CA is this bad in terms of rates. I think San Diego Gas & Electric is pretty expensive but http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/for-residents/rates (for city of Santa Clara only) is cheap. I think SMUD is cheaper than PG&E.

I also almost never charge my EV at home. Most of it is from free charging at work and a bit is from free public L2 charging. I'd estimate that of the kWh that gets added to my Leaf, <5% in an entire year is from charging at home.

My usage would be lower if I didn't have a NVR camera system running 24/7, some exterior lights that are turned on/off via photocell, and some interior lights on timers, for security reasons. House was broken into Jan 2015 (first time ever for this house, even though it was built 1979 and first time I've EVER had my residence broken into) when I had none of that. If I didn't have that and didn't have a TiVo running 24/7 + 2 Dropcams and some networking equipment that needs to stay on, my usage would be even lower.

I'm sure if I could bring my electricity usage lower if I swapped out my 2008 era DLP RPTV (lit by 3 LEDs) w/a modern LED-lit LCD TV and switched to using my laptop more and iPad more (no thanks). And, if I'd built the PC I'm typing on using a mobile processor i7 or a lower power version (https://ark.intel.com/products/129948) instead of an i7-8700, a fairly high power consumption desktop chip. And, both the LCDs I use are pretty old and pretty high power consumption vs. some newer stuff I've seen and used.

BTW, for that bill ending 12/11/18 w/$52.52 in electric charges (264.599 kWh used), I had $63.53 in nat gas charges. I used 43 therms but still was well within tier 1. So, my total PG&E bill that month was $116.05.
 
I also almost never charge my EV at home. Most of it is from free charging at work

Free charging at work would be nice. I don't know if that is really much of a thing yet in the Chicago suburbs. I would only guess that it is not. Yet. But I really don't know how that works, anywhere. Workplace charging stations could be private, employee-only, no? Probably are. I do see some private place-of-business charging stations that show up as public on EZ-Charge, etc., though. Notably, Exelon (they own the local utility ComEd) has recently popped up as having 8 L2 charging stations all of a sudden, and right on my way to/from work if I want to go that way. Too bad I don't just work there or close - that's the way to go, charging at work. Very few local public charging stations are anywhere I could practically park for a couple hours while waiting. Even the ones near restaurants... I can't stretch a meal to two hours. Maybe one hour. While I wouldn't mind stopping for a meal and a free charge five days a week, this obviously wouldn't save me any money.
 
NoReleaf said:
I also almost never charge my EV at home. Most of it is from free charging at work
Free charging at work would be nice...
Yet. But I really don't know how that works, anywhere. Workplace charging stations could be private, employee-only, no? Probably are. I do see some private place-of-business charging stations that show up as public on EZ-Charge, etc., though. Notably, Exelon (they own the local utility ComEd) has recently popped up as having 8 L2 charging stations all of a sudden...
Yes. Mine at work are set to restricted. Only those who have been approved by our work's Chargepoint admin can use the stations. They (user's account) have to be added to our private group. Everyone else will get denied.

I've seen this sort of setup and restriction at many other workplaces around Silicon Valley.

The free public L2 charging I'm using right now has some http://www.libertyplugins.com/ keypads for the 8 Clipper Creek L2 EVSEs. Until a month or two ago, all 8 had the codes right on them and everyone (public and the employees of this place) could use them. Now, only 2 are for public use (w/codes affixed of them) and the other 6, we don't know the codes for. The employees do.

I've seen a parking lot for a building w/mostly medical related businesses have https://store.clippercreek.com/accessories/chargeguard-access-control-evse on their Clipper Creek EVSE(s?). I plugged in and couldn't get any power but saw the key hole. I'm assuming the authorized users have keys.

We also have some Tesla wall connectors (https://shop.tesla.com/us/en/product/vehicle-accessories/model-s_x_3-wall-connector.html?sku=1050067-00-E.html) but they unfortunately have no provisions for access control. The hardware can't do it.
 
^^^

Any conflicts about use where you work, sharing arrangements necessary? I would guess that not enough people have EVs yet for that to be a factor, but I do not know how things are everywhere (or even here). I think I am the only person with an EV among the 100 or so employees where I work.
 
cwerdna said:
NoReleaf said:
Is all of California this bad? Or worse? Lots of still-expensive solar? That would give you bragging rights over the coal-burning Leafs to your east...

Hahaha. It's not nearly as cold here as IL.

My furnace is nat gas (not turned up real high, so RonDawg says I live like an eskimo.... I'm turning it up a bit higher now, sometimes to 61 F)

Ooh 61 degrees F...you must be sweltering :lol:

To address NoReleaf, yes electricity tends to be expensive in California. I’m paying 17 cents per kWH to my municipal power utility, which is reasonable by California standards particularly those who have to suffer with the investor owned utilities like PG&E (“Pacific Gouge & Extort”), SoCalEdison, etc. That’s why there are few all-electric homes in this state; ones that were originally built that way in the 50’s and 60’s were mostly converted over to gas heating/cooking/water heating (I once lived in such a house, built in 1954).

Governor Moonbeam just passed a bill allowing PG&E to transfer any judgments/penalties as a result of fires caused by their equipment to ratepayers: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article218803990.html So PG&E customers are truly going to get screwed in the future.
 
cwerdna said:
NoReleaf said:
This looks like a good place to offer some thoughts on the cost of electricity, etc.. Let me know if I should have or should start a new thread. It's not like I have anything momentous to say, but maybe the content ought to be titled differently. I'm curious about the EV-related cost of electricity elsewhere and for others.

In my area, a fairly expensive one for electricity, I think, for this household electricity cost is at $0.1169/kWh delivered with tax (with fixed, non-variable hourly rates - change to that is in progress).
...
So the cost of electricity would become $0.1555/kWh less whatever off-peak discount could be had. Being able to say my "clean" Leaf is not 31% coal-powered (to say nothing of natural gas) stands to cost me a premium of 13%, probably.
Hahaha. You don't have expensive electricity.

See my posts at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=531393#p531393. I don't have time to re-write it all.

I've attached the electric portion of my most recent bill at https://imgur.com/a/GE9ikQx w/PII blocked out. Luckily, I stayed within tier 1 and it's not "summer". I've also attached my most expensive (for the electric portion) bill for the year, so far at https://imgur.com/a/Z8nq2uB. That was during "summer", so the rates are different and so are the time/day bands, in addition to having a 3rd band: peak.
BTW, I realized that I posted some outdated links w/o old rates.

These are current:
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf - see page 1
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-6.pdf - see page 2. I'm on this plan.
 
NoReleaf said:
Any conflicts about use where you work, sharing arrangements necessary? I would guess that not enough people have EVs yet for that to be a factor, but I do not know how things are everywhere (or even here). I think I am the only person with an EV among the 100 or so employees where I work.
There are some. We have over 70 J1772 handles on Chargepoint for the buildings we occupy. We also have 10 Tesla wall connectors. There are over 500 vehicles in our internal EV/PHEV registry (and over 100 of those are Teslas) but not all of them show up each to charge each day or require charging each day. (The joke is that Teslas are always 200 miles away from home.) Some folks have multiple PEVs. Unfortunately, there are also some mystery cars (not in the registry). :(

There are definitely some issues w/courtesy. Some Tesla folks complain about other Tesla drivers' usage patterns. I mentioned there are 10 WCs. There are also unfortunately only 10 spaces for them. Some folks w/short commutes simple charge too much and then block spots when done because they can't get to their cars quickly enough (due to meetings or whatever). Teslas have huge battery packs. If someone plugs in and finishes in 1.5 hours (esp. if the car only has 48 amp OBC) but yet still is occupying it for who knows how long, did they really need to charge? In almost every case, they can space out/stagger their charging and have a lower odds of affecting someone waiting.

Imagine if someone charged for 1.5 hours then blocked the spot for 1 hour each time afterward? Repeat this every day. Instead, it'd be better to charge for 4.5 hours and block for only 1 by spacing it out. Or, only charge on days when you can promptly move your car.

I don't have access to our Chargepoint admin dashboard (since I'm not an admin) but I'd guess that on the busiest day (Monday), probably 110+ sessions get started on Chargepoints and the Tesla wall connectors might have 20-30ish vehicles cycling thru them.
 
To address NoReleaf, yes electricity tends to be expensive in California

Why is electricity expensive in California? Simple supply and demand, or is there a hand on the scale? (Well, there's always a hand on the scale, anywhere, but is this more so in CA?).

I was going to go into the realm of speculation, but maybe I should just read up. Here's the first thing I found:

https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/

I figure the cost of residential electricity here to be $0.1169/kWh (delivered, with taxes), although this source has Illinois as a state to be @ $0.1219. Prior to the Leaf, this household was using an average of 634 kWh per month. Charging only at home would add 250 kWh to that, more if I drove more than the current average of 21 miles per day.
 
There are over 500 vehicles in our internal EV/PHEV registry (and over 100 of those are Teslas)

Wow. I had no idea. I've never seen more than two EVs in one place, myself. Ha! So is all of this actively administered or is it a big free for all?
 
NoReleaf said:
To address NoReleaf, yes electricity tends to be expensive in California

Why is electricity expensive in California? Simple supply and demand, or is there a hand on the scale? (Well, there's always a hand on the scale, anywhere, but is this more so in CA?).
I honestly don't know but I suspect more on the latter. I took a class on energy efficiency on commercial buildings more than 5.5 years ago and there was a mention of a Rosenfeld curve with how per-capita electricity demand in CA has basically remained level whereas it's not in most other states. And, that this has allowed CA to avoid building numerous new power plants.

I haven't read this but have seen the 1st two graphs like the ones at https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sierra-martinez/california-making-history-eliminating-its-growth-peak-demand and https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sierra-martinez/california-leads-nation-energy-efficiency-part-2-myth-busting-naysayers years before I'd even heard of these pages.

So, it might be partially policy. Also, I thought I recall someone here on MNL alleging that the baselines are set favorably for where the CPUC (http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/, the "regulatior") regulators live, so that they don't feel or understand the pain.

There's been plenty of belly-aching about the CPUC and PG&E in threads like http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17109 (e.g. see posts by srl99, who oddly hasn't been active since 2016).
NoReleaf said:
There are over 500 vehicles in our internal EV/PHEV registry (and over 100 of those are Teslas)

Wow. I had no idea. I've never seen more than two EVs in one place, myself. Ha! So is all of this actively administered or is it a big free for all?
It's somewhere in between. My company isn't really big on having rules and policies (except for essential ones like no harassment, no discrimination, no stealing, financials must be correct, etc.) I'd say the Teslas WCs are a semi-free for all.

We do have some internal mailing lists and Slack channels for discussion/coordination. The registry helps (w/model, plate # and driver's name) except for mystery cars. It seems like new Model 3's show up every week.

I've posted about how many EVs and PHEVs (even Leafs) there are in CA at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=542161#p542161. At home, besides the two Bolts near me (1 right next door, another 2 houses away), on my street there's at least 1 or 2 e-Golfs. There was an e-Golf on the driveway of a house visible from my street but I don't know if they still have it. Have seen a Honda Clarity (not sure which version: EV, PHEV, FCEV) on its driveway recently. There's a gen 2Volt down the street and a BMW i3 (not sure if it's a REx or BEV) across from it.

As I mentioned in that post, I participated in the parade at https://insideevs.com/official-new-guinness-record-ev-parade-set-507-vehicles-pics-video/ in 2014. Check out the 2nd and 3rd video on that page to get of how many pure EVs participated.

Come by the Bay Area... If you pass by my work on a weekday before 3 pm, I'll point out all the EVs and PHEVs. :) I'm sure Google has WAY more. (I believe their charging is free.) It sounds like Facebook has a lot, as well. IIRC, Apple also has free charging for their employees. At last check, Oracle charges $ for workplace charging. I think HP does, as well.
 
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