If I plan on charging ~120kW at home/month, am I better off on EVA or E1?

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bigbluebear

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2016
Messages
10
Hello!

I'm going to make the move to EVA plan next month and compare it with my current usage this month to see which plan is better for me. We typically use approx 400kW / month prior to purchasing the Leaf and now I plan on adding ~120kW of usage on top (charge the car at work mon-friday but charge at home on weekends).

For those of you that are more familiar with PG&E, which plan do you think I would be better on? I'm going to try it for a month to see for myself but I figured it'd be interesting to see what others think since a search on the topic didn't turn up anything recent. I know during xmas time, I probably will be better on EVA plan since we like to run our xmas lights all season long. :) PS. I don't have solar.
 
It's kWh, not kW.

kW and kWh are very different metrics. It's the same as confusing gallons with horsepower. Think of kW = horsepower, kWh = gallons.

If one charges at 1 kW (or 1000 watts) for 6 hours, 6 kWh came out of the wall. If it's at 6 kW for 1 hour, it's also 6 kWh. If it's 1 watt for 6000 hours, it's also 6 kWh.

(BTW, 1 hp = ~0.746 kW and 1 gallon of gasoline=33.7 kWh.)

I'm on E-6, but I believe it's closed to new enrollments. I hardly ever charge my Leaf or any EV/PHEV at home. Their estimator tool claims that E6 Smart is the cheapest for me ($650/year) and E6 ($675/year) is the next cheapest (although I've seen this flip flip bunch of items before). The worst for me is ETOU-B ($895/year) then EVA ($750/year) then E1 ($720/year).

I almost never pass tier 1 for my electric portion.

https://www.pge.com/en/pevcalculator/PEV/index.page may help but I've not used it.

It's also difficult to compare, assuming you're on E-1 now which is NOT time-of-use based. EV-A is TOU-based per https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page and per https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV.pdf. If your usage is high during the day and you don't charge during off-peak (see page 4 of the latter URL), EV-A would really suck for you.
 
It's too bad PG&E must talk softly and carry a big stick and a tiny carrot. Instead of sending a clear signal, which would seem to be the POINT of TOU pricing, the customer is left wondering if they might actually save money, or be clobbered with punitive charges. And so TOU users are few and far between and the overall benefit is miniscule.
 
I, too, am on E-6. I haven't checked to see if you can get on it, but I think it's the best deal if you can. 62% of my usage is off peak, 19% part peak. I charge only at home, since I'm retired and don't drive much. I don't have solar and I don't have air conditioning. My summer bills are lower than my winter ones by quite a bit, never over $100 even though we're home almost all day on most days (family of 2).
 
Thanks everyone for your responses. I'm now on the EV plan since the E6 plan is no longer available. From reviewing the PG&E site, it looks like many of the plans we are on now are going to be phased out by 2017 and replaced with fewer options, including a two-tier plan (to replace the current 3 tier plan).
 
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