CA drivers using PG&E's EV rates?

[joebiker25]

I called PG&E to switch to their EV-A rate plan to take advantage of their off peak rates to charge my MS. There is a significant difference in the rates and the switch will have zero to little effect on our overall household usage patterns other than the MS set to charge between 11 PM and 7 AM. They need to do a load evaluation test and if all is well as it should be, my new plan will commence from Nov 1st. Any insight from CA folks using this plan would be appreciated.
here is the PG&E info:
Making sense of the rates

 

[FlatSix911]

I called PG&E to switch to their EV-A rate plan to take advantage of their off peak rates to charge my MS. There is a significant difference in the rates and the switch will have zero to little effect on our overall household usage patterns other than the MS set to charge between 11 PM and 7 AM. They need to do a load evaluation test and if all is well as it should be, my new plan will commence from Nov 1st. Any insight from CA folks using this plan would be appreciated.
here is the PG&E info: Making sense of the rates

Best to compare the actual rates for both the EV-A and EV-B rate plans. I found that for a solar system the E-6 plan was best

 

[gregd]

According to their website, the PG&E "E6" rate plan is no longer being offered (existing customers grandfathered until 2022).

According to a couple of Solar company representatives I talked to this weekend, we'll all be pushed to a Time of Use plan within a year or so. If so (haven't verified it with PG&E rep yet), I'm not looking forward to that. A big part of my summer energy usage is the air conditioner, and I can't time-shift that. So I think I'll stick with the E1 plan, unless they come up with something better.

 

[mblakele]

I'm on EV-A, and I charge about 30 kWh nightly. If you don't have solar and can avoid using a lot of power during peak periods, it's a clear winner. According to the opower rate comparison tool EV-A saves me four or five hundred dollars annually vs other options.

When I signed up for EV-A, I noticed that PG&E required staying on that plan for at least a year.

 

[jlk]

I'm on EV-A and I typically charge 25 kWh every night starting at 11pm.

We have a gas dryer and no air conditioning, so our electricity use is pretty limited to begin with.

When we first had the car and the default rate plan, our bill was a little outrageous at roughly $260 for the electricity. Now it's roughly $130.

 

[miimura]

If you have run the numbers through an analysis like the PG&E Toolkit app on iOS and you really do come out cheaper on E-1 than EV, then you should keep your eyes open for the submeter pilot programs. That will really save you a lot of money. Charging on E-1 is REALLY expensive. You have to use quite a lot of energy during the day, like A/C in the East Bay or Central Valley, to offset how much cheaper charging your car is during Off-Peak on the EV rate.

I have a spreadsheet that I created for studying PG&E rates with downloaded SmartMeter data, but I haven't updated it in a while. I haven't entered the current rates and I have not added the new E-TOU schedules.

 

[royewest]

The interesting thing about EV-A if you have solar with PG&E, is that ideally you can contribute to the grid for credit at $0.44/kWh during the day/afternoon and then charge your car after 11p at c. $0.12/kWh. Of course, that's the most extreme example, but it's still worth considering. "Prime" extends to 7, so if you like to run your electric dryer and like to electric-broil things in the afternoon and early evening, ymmv... I posted the schedule of rates on our refrigerator in a vain attempt at family social engineering. We may add more solar capacity, but will wait a few months until we get a better grasp of how EV-A works for our particular situation.

 

[miimura]

The Peak time period on EV-A is 2pm-9pm M-F, 3pm-7pm Sa/Su/Holidays. My solar is pretty much done at 5pm, so my negative kWh is very small due to all my household evening usage consuming most of my Peak solar generation. For example, my July 2016 billing period was:
Peak: -75kWh
Part-Peak: -149kWh
Off-Peak: 572kWh
Total Energy: 348kWh
Energy Charge: -$3.60

 

[AndreSF]

I use this plan, and as others mentioned, it's a decent way to get lower rate for car charging. It does require to be a bit more attentive to typical uses that fall to peak times. Often, those are easy to shift to off peak/weekend, but running A/C or other similar appliances might affect the bill significantly.
Tier based ("regular") plan with the amount of Kwh cars needs for a typical commuter, does not make much sense IMO.

 

[JPP]

We have 16kW of Solar and are on the EV-A plan. We use lots of AC. If it wasn't for solar, we would be screwed. At that, as noted above, the solar 'peak' does not match PG&E's 'peak'. Yes, lots of social (re)engineering. FWIW, our panels are oriented east-west, so we actually might get a bit of a benefit in the afternoon.

 

[FlatSix911]

For comparison, here are the other rate options available

Time e-of-Use Rate Plan E-6, now closed to new customers effective May 31, 2016

Time-of-Use Rate Plan 3-8 p.m. (ETOU-A)

Time-of-Use Rate Plan 4-9 p.m. (ETOU-B)

 

[zedkyuu]

I'm on EV-A but I do a lot of charging at work where I get free charging, so my home charging winds up being weekend usage. Still, in the last billing month, it looks like it added in the neighbourhood of 150 kWh to my electric bill. ChargePoint tells me I've charged about 300 kWh at work, and I have no idea how much I've done at superchargers. So my feeling that if I charged at home all the time, my electric consumption would double appears to be pretty valid.

Which works out -- I'm looking at getting a 5.8 kW solar panel system put in, which they estimate will produce up to 850 kWh in the summer months. Which will probably cancel out the Tesla charging even after I allow for increased usage. (I tend to insist on minimizing lights and AC these days. :3)

 

[hyper]

I was pretty frustrated trying to understand the picture on the PG&E site & the actual rates listed in the pdf. So, I created this for my family...

 

[FlatSix911]

Well done.
Care to take a shot at the other rate schedules?... I think PG&E intentionally makes it difficult

I was pretty frustrated trying to understand the picture on the PG&E site & the actual rates listed in the pdf.
So, I created this for my family...

 

[Boatguy]

I have PG&E EV-B on a separate meter and charge two cars. They both charge during the off-peak period at night. All up with every fee that PG&E throws at me it comes to about $0.14 / kW which I think is obscene when my brother-in-law in PA pays about half that irrespective of his time of use.

 

[hyper]

Well done.
Care to take a shot at the other rate schedules?... I think PG&E intentionally makes it difficult

Yes, PG&E makes is really hard to get a clear picture of what they charge...customers shouldn't have to reverse engineer the plans/times/etc.

I forgot one piece for weekends:

NOTE: Weekends and holidays only include Peak (3-7 p.m.) and Off-Peak (all other hours) periods.

 

[Boatguy]

Yes, PG&E makes is really hard to get a clear picture of what they charge...customers shouldn't have to reverse engineer the plans/times/etc.

I forgot one piece for weekends:

NOTE: Weekends and holidays only include Peak (3-7 p.m.) and Off-Peak (all other hours) periods.

It can be simplified to: charge between 11pm and 7am.

 

[Lloyd]

I was pretty frustrated trying to understand the picture on the PG&E site & the actual rates listed in the pdf. So, I created this for my family...

This graph should be changed to show the proper height of the Off-Peak rate. The off peak should be ~1/4 of the height of the peak, and the Partial peak should be ~1/2 the height of the Peak. The graph is misleading.

 

[ApauloThirteen]

Hi,

I charge a Volt every night at 11 pm (PG&E EV-A plan), shifted the dishwasher to nights and laundry to weekends. I don't really see a big diff in the normal/baseline PG&E bill other than being vaguely aware to defer said washer machines/etc to night use. My bill went up about $30/mo overall, mostly due to the EV charging, while the gasoline bill went to zero.

I suspect PG&E figured out everyone's base electric use and figured out the peak/partial/non peak rates from there so there's little benefit other than for the EV increased use. Don't overthink it too much - it'll drive you batty (I did and long term it really doesn't amount to that much).

Think the benefits increase with the EV rate if you drive more and/or have 2 EVs.

 

[jeffb]

Im running solar + EV-A + Telsa, and it really works out great in our situation.....in the central valley so we use lots of AC in the summer We just make a little attempt to avoid running the dryer during peak time. And we of course charge the car after 11pm. Other than that we did not change much and don't think much about our usage...

According to PG&E toolkit app:

Year to date net power usage: 3137kwh

YTD balance with PGE: -$92.53


In contrast, E-1 for the same time period would have cost $571......a difference of $663