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California bans per-minute billing; Tesla Superchargers will need displays

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So once again: the kWh charges to the vendor are proportional to the total energy delivered;
while the demand charges are calculated based on the highest load during any 15 minute period during the month.

Which is, as I said, NOT determined by any single car. You will almost always have the thing running at full tilt for 15 minutes at least once during any given month. Yes, in theory, you might get really lucky once in a while, but in practice, the demand charge for a supercharger in any given month is almost guaranteed to be based on its maximum utilization, +/- a few percent.


What you are failing to understand is that the vendor has demand charges that it has to decide how to apportion. Demand charges vary by location but my experience is $10 - $20 a kW. So that first Model 3 that charged at 200 kW for 15 minutes minutes has added somewhere in the range of $2,500 - $5,000 of cost to the monthly bill. Eight charger stall ? Up to $40,000 of monthly demand charges.

But the next thousand Model 3s during that month add zero additional demand charges. And if that first car charges at a slower rate, the second one will add those same demand charges, which means it doesn't save Tesla money if that one car charges at a slower rate. Demand charges only matter if there are NO cars charging at a higher rate. In other words, it depends almost entirely on the speed of the charger, not on whether some cars come in mostly full or not.

And even if the cost of leasing parking spaces and building the charging equipment were zero, Tesla would still not be able to build enough chargers for everyone to use only the top 20% of their batteries, nor would they be able to convince users to spend that much extra time supercharging even if they could. The whole advantage of the supercharger comes from being able to charge quickly. So there's no feasible universe in which they won't always be paying approximately the maximum demand charge every month in any area where the superchargers get reasonable amounts of use (and in areas where they don't, they also probably are not paying demand charges).


What you are failing to understand is that the vendor has demand charges that it has to decide how to apportion. Demand charges vary by location but my experience is $10 - $20 a kW. So that first Model 3 that charged at 200 kW for 15 minutes minutes has added somewhere in the range of $2,500 - $5,000 of cost to the monthly bill. Eight charger stall ? Up to $40,000 of monthly demand charges.

First of all, it isn't 200 kW per stall. Even at a V3 supercharger, you only have about 125 kW per stall, which is only half again more than a V2 supercharger. The power is just shared across a lot more stalls, so you are much less likely to be limited because of the car next to you. An 8-stall V3 supercharger has a 1000 kVA transformer, so at $20 per kW, that's only half as much peak power as you seem to be expecting.

Second, your demand estimates are way too high, at least when we're talking about industrial quantities of power. Let's take PG&E for a quick example, because it is where several of the most expensive superchargers in the U.S. are located. With a 1000 kVA transformer, an 8-stall supercharger is almost guaranteed to be on PG&E's E-20 service, with a primary feed. So their demand charge is only $5.55 per kW — about a fourth of your estimate — at least as of the Jan. 1., 2020 rate plan.

So with real numbers, that comes to only about $5,550 in demand charges.

And those superchargers often see 80% occupancy from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. If we assume an average of 60 kW per car over the charging interval (best guess) at 80% occupancy, even if you assume that they are completely idle the rest of the time, that translates to about 5,760 kWh of power consumption per day, or 172,800 kWh in a 30-day month. If we divide $5,550 by 172,800, that means they're probably paying only about 3.2 cents per kWh because of demand charges.

Demand charges are a big deal for small charging stations with low utilization. For superchargers, they really don't matter, because the utilization is so high.


It should not be too difficult for you to grasp that the 50 kW car owner would find these time based demand charges exorbitant since it would work out to well over $1/kWh for them. And yet you want to charge the slower charging car *more* because it might get in your way.

The 50 kW Tesla car owner doesn't exist. What you have are cars that, entirely by fluke of being at a particular state of charge, happen to draw less power. Tesla cars (ignoring throttling) support a peak charge rate of 120 kW on the 60D, and even higher on all the others, AFAIK.

And the reason I want to charge the slower-charging car more is because those demand charges won't go down merely because one particular car charges more slowly, but the amount that Tesla spends on maintaining that charger while that car charges more slowly are higher for that car than for a car charging at a faster rate.

That said, I'd be perfectly fine with Tesla charging an extra 1.5 cents per kWh in demand charges for using the V3 superchargers. I'm not sure anybody will care about that relatively tiny cost difference, and it probably isn't worth the extra hassle to make their billing system handle it, but I'd be fine with them doing that. :)
 
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First of all, it isn't 200 kW per stall. Even at a V3 supercharger, you only have about 125 kW per stall, which is only half again more than a V2 supercharger. The power is just shared across a lot more stalls, so you are much less likely to be limited because of the car next to you. An 8-stall V3 supercharger has a 1000 kVA transformer, so at $20 per kW, that's only half as much peak power as you seem to be expecting.
You are misinformed. The 1 MW transformer supplies 4 stations.

PG&E's E-20 service, with a primary feed. So their demand charge is only $5.55 per kW
You are misinformed. Look at the peak rate

What you have are cars that, entirely by fluke of being at a particular state of charge, happen to draw less power
Look up the charging speeds for the different Tesla cars at SoC of 50 - 75%

I do not know Supercharger utilization numbers but I'm willing to estimate 10-50% fleet wide. Tesla attempts to simplify billing by not charging different amounts for each location. This means you have to take weighted average Supercharger usage.

Last, your estimate of demand charges is no where near realistic.
At $20/kw, 200 kW load is $4,000 a month
10% capacity usage is 73 hours a month = $55 an hour demand charges
30% capacity usage is 219 hours a month = $18.25 an hour demand charges
50% capacity usage is 365 hours a month = $11 an hour demand charges
 
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Indeed, and it matters.
Differences in power is the main determinant of the vendor's cost to deliver a charge to your car. When you ignore that fact, the value of your opinions suffer because they ignore reality. I understand your POV as a consumer who wants unfettered access to charging but try to understand the other sides to this matter.

Absolutely. The greatest fear for any utility customer is getting thrown into a Demand Metering tier. The cost per kWh can be brutal if you have brief heavy demands. Which is sort of silly since the grid averages itself out. ie - not everybody peaks at the same exact 15 minutes. But it's approved by the government in many states, so you voted for it.
 
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Absolutely. The greatest fear for any utility customer is getting thrown into a Demand Metering tier. The cost per kWh can be brutal if you have brief heavy demands. Which is sort of silly since the grid averages itself out. ie - not everybody peaks at the same exact 15 minutes. But it's approved by the government in many states, so you voted for it.
Pretty much, although the 'averaging out' argument is not quite right. The demand charges are meant to recoup infrasturcture costs by the utility. So as one example, if your home requires a 1 MW transformer to supply 1 MW for 15 minutes a month, the utility is going to charge you a lot for that 15 minutes every month to recoup the cost of the transformer it installed just for you.

The reality is a lot more complicated, and I agree that utilities abuse the demand tariff structure but the general notion is reasonable. From a certain POV the demand charges are an amortization of the infrastructure costs. The abuse mostly centers around the utility's outrageous estimates of the infrastructure costs, and particularly the O&M.
 
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You are misinformed. The 1 MW transformer supplies 4 stations.
I don't know if you're talking about a V3 Supercharger Cabinet or an actual transformer. In any case, 4 stalls cannot pull 1MW from the utility. At the most, 4 stalls on the same cabinet can pull 350 x 0.90 + 575 = 890kW. I guess if you want to count the charger efficiency, it is pretty close to 1MVA. In order to reach that level, there has to be more than one other V3 cabinet that is way under-utilized so that it can pass some of its rectified DC power to the cabinet that is heavily used.

scv3_label_scotts_valley-jpg.499548

You will notice that the max AC input (from the utility) is 350kVA per V3 cabinet. On the DC Input, it can take in up to 575kW from other cabinets. Each of the 4 outputs can send up to 250kW to a single vehicle.

So, a V3 site can only pull 350kVA per cabinet from the utility. This is how a site like LV Linq can have 24 V3 stalls on a 2500kVA transformer.
 
Not good news for the EU and UK... IONITY to increase electric vehicle charging prices 500% - Electrek

IONITY, a European EV charging network owned by BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and VW Group (with Audi and Porsche) has announced that prices will be going up over 500% starting January 31 as they transition to a pay-per-kWh system. Starting next month, however, IONITY will be charging users a whopping €0.79 per kWh. (PDF press release). The Audi e-Tron battery is 95 kWh, so if you “filled it up” with 80 kWh, that’s €63.20 to travel probably about 160 miles, give or take. Terribly expensive

If IONITY’s owners want to make driving electric as unappealing as possible, keep it up. One positive thing we can say at least: Thanks to the UK regulations and the subsequent pricing per kWh, it’s abundantly transparent what a terrible deal it is. Conversely in the United States, Electrify America still hides its terrible pricing behind per-minute billing, although we expect that to change as California’s ban on pricing by the minute comes into effect at DCFC stations in 2023.
 
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You are misinformed. The 1 MW transformer supplies 4 stations.

No, I'm not. And no, it doesn't. Go look at one. The 8-stall V3 superchargers have a single 1000 kVA transformer.


You are misinformed. Look at the peak rate

Ah. You're correct that my numbers were wrong. PG&E publishes multiple spreadsheets, and one of them was grossly misleading. Mea culpa.

E-20 rates: Industrial (JAN 1, 2020 - Present)

So the worst-case rate is $22.42 per kW. Either way, regardless of whether the demand fees cost 3 cents per kWh or 12 cents per kWh, the fact remains that the first car drawing the higher rate causes the supercharger to incur that cost for an entire month, and the other cars charging for the entire rest of that month don't matter. So either way, what matters is still the amount of power that the supercharger can draw, not whether any single individual car draws more or less power, statistically speaking.

In other words, encouraging cars to charge more slowly won't help unless you force all cars to charge more slowly, because there will always be some that don't.


Last, your estimate of demand charges is no where near realistic.
At $20/kw, 200 kW load is $4,000 a month
10% capacity usage is 73 hours a month = $55 an hour demand charges
30% capacity usage is 219 hours a month = $18.25 an hour demand charges
50% capacity usage is 365 hours a month = $11 an hour demand charges

Sure. Let's go with those numbers. So it costs $11 to run the stall for an hour. It costs that whether the car charging is drawing 200 kW or 30 kW. So in terms of how much Tesla has to charge per kW, if the stall puts out an average of 60 kW over that hour, then 60 kWh costs $11, or 18.3¢ per kWh. If the stall puts out 30 kW, averaged over that hour, then 30 kWh costs $11, or 36.7¢ per kWh. No matter what the numbers you pick for the demand charges, it will still always be true that spreading that fixed monthly cost over more kWh results in a lower cost per kWh.

Fortunately, 50% usage is probably on the low end usage-wise for stations that pay $20/kW. Also, a lot of the Tesla superchargers I've seen (e.g. Gilroy) have giant battery packs to let them reduce their peak grid draw, and let them buy power when it is cheaper and sell it back when it is more expensive. This probably significantly messes with your estimates.
 
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Not good news for the EU and UK... IONITY to increase electric vehicle charging prices 500% - Electrek

IONITY, a European EV charging network owned by BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and VW Group (with Audi and Porsche) has announced that prices will be going up over 500% starting January 31 as they transition to a pay-per-kWh system. Starting next month, however, IONITY will be charging users a whopping €0.79 per kWh. (PDF press release). The Audi e-Tron battery is 95 kWh, so if you “filled it up” with 80 kWh, that’s €63.20 to travel probably about 160 miles, give or take. Terribly expensive

If IONITY’s owners want to make driving electric as unappealing as possible, keep it up. One positive thing we can say at least: Thanks to the UK regulations and the subsequent pricing per kWh, it’s abundantly transparent what a terrible deal it is. Conversely in the United States, Electrify America still hides its terrible pricing behind per-minute billing, although we expect that to change as California’s ban on pricing by the minute comes into effect at DCFC stations in 2023.

The PDF says that owners of cars from manufacturers with Ionity contracts get preferred pricing although that amount was not disclosed. At first reading this seems to exclude Tesla and the Koreans for now. Honestly, the situation until now regarding Tesla in Europe was ridiculous since Tesla cars could charge at both Superchargers and the Ionity network while the competitors were limited to the Ionity network. And if that was not enough, Tesla gained the extra network advantage for free while excluding non Tesla cars from the Supercharger network.

Just as Tesla in the US has in general invited other manufacturers to participate in the Supercharger network if they participate in the costs of the network, Ionity can be said to be doing the same. We'll have to await more details to see whether Ionity is is being even-handed with the manufacturers.
 
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Not good news for the EU and UK... IONITY to increase electric vehicle charging prices 500% - Electrek

IONITY, a European EV charging network owned by BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and VW Group (with Audi and Porsche) has announced that prices will be going up over 500% starting January 31 as they transition to a pay-per-kWh system. Starting next month, however, IONITY will be charging users a whopping €0.79 per kWh. (PDF press release). The Audi e-Tron battery is 95 kWh, so if you “filled it up” with 80 kWh, that’s €63.20 to travel probably about 160 miles, give or take. Terribly expensive

If IONITY’s owners want to make driving electric as unappealing as possible, keep it up. One positive thing we can say at least: Thanks to the UK regulations and the subsequent pricing per kWh, it’s abundantly transparent what a terrible deal it is. Conversely in the United States, Electrify America still hides its terrible pricing behind per-minute billing, although we expect that to change as California’s ban on pricing by the minute comes into effect at DCFC stations in 2023.

It isn't as bad as it seems since they have a subscription plan that brings the prices way down, and is pretty good if you will use them a fair bit:

 
Sure. Let's go with those numbers. So it costs $11 to run the stall for an hour.
You are cherry picking the 50% capacity usage scenario.
However, Miimura has clarified that that each cabinet (which supplies 4 plugs) is limited to 350 kW draw from the utility.

Just keep in mind that I have shown you how demand charges are billed; I am not advocating or implying that the demand charges must be spread evenly across every car owner on a time used basis. That is your schtick but it smacks of unfair billing since it forces the lower power users to subsidize the higher power users. And of course you take it further by wanting to pile on even more charges to penalize the lower power users for occupying a stall (theoretically but not a given) for a longer time.

To my mind a fairer take on this is that a low power user may degrade the Supercharger experience at certain peak times of the day at busy locations, but is not the cause of high demand charges. The owner type we can agree on as being unfavorable is one who both is a high power draw AND charges to a high SoC.

As EA demonstrates so well, trying to equitably bill high power users is no easy task but I for one do not disagree with their intent.
 
It isn't as bad as it seems since they have a subscription plan that brings the prices way down, and is pretty good if you will use them a fair bit:
The subscription plans are only available directly from the manufacturers. Tesla owners with CCS equipped Model 3 cars in Europe are not eligible for those plans as far as I can tell. Ionity also does not sell a subscription plan themselves.

I have come to the conclusion that this is an exclusionary tactic by the traditional automaker partners in Ionity so as to make disproportionate revenue from owners of non-partner cars and infrequent users who don't want to pay for a monthly plan with a full year commitment. That said, it would still be worthwhile to use Ionity on the infrequent road trip to save the charging time and make the trip more tolerable. Of course, if you were stopping for a meal and had more time, you could use a cheaper 50kW charger on those stops.
 
Just keep in mind that I have shown you how demand charges are billed; I am not advocating or implying that the demand charges must be spread evenly across every car owner on a time used basis. That is your schtick but it smacks of unfair billing since it forces the lower power users to subsidize the higher power users. And of course you take it further by wanting to pile on even more charges to penalize the lower power users for occupying a stall (theoretically but not a given) for a longer time.

What lower-power users? The 60D series of Model S and X are the only Supercharger-compatible cars that Tesla has ever built that are unable to draw at least as much instantaneous power as the total power output of a V3 station's transformer divided by the number of stalls that they support (or at least get within a single-digit percentage of doing so). And if that 350 kW number is right (I think that number is probably a bit too low), then even the 60D can.

Either way, Tesla stopped manufacturing the 60D series in October of 2016, and gave unlimited supercharging through the end of 2016. So 100% of 60D Tesla cars have unlimited supercharging.

In other words, literally every car that Tesla has ever made, either A. can't be connected to a supercharger at all, B. can charge at a rate that could, if cars all arrived at the same time, max out the supercharger's capacity, or C. has transferable free charging for the life of the vehicle. The people you're arguing are subsidizing the higher-power users quite literally don't exist.

So everyone benefits from the chargers being able to draw as much power as they do. And anybody just sipping at the top of their battery is taking up charging slots that could be used by someone else, and wasting their own time as well (not to mention wearing out their batteries faster), without actually lowering the cost of providing power for anyone. Thus, it makes sense to encourage people, whenever possible, to use the middle or bottom of their batteries, rather than the top, no matter how you run the numbers.
 
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What lower-power users? The 60D series of Model S and X are the only Supercharger-compatible cars that Tesla has ever built that are unable to draw at least as much instantaneous power as the total power output of a V3 station's transformer divided by the number of stalls that they support (or at least get within a single-digit percentage of doing so). And if that 350 kW number is right (I think that number is probably a bit too low), then even the 60D can.
You are cherry picking again.
It takes ~ two 250 kW enabled cars to saturate a V3 cabinet but four lower power cars.

As an aside, I re-calculated the Tesla Supercharger wide fleet demand costs using the Miimura provided information and the following assumptions:
350 kW per 4 plugs peak load
$23/kW demand charges

It works out to
30 cents per kWh at 10% average capacity usage
20 cents per kWh at 20% average capacity usage
10 cents per kWh at 30% average capacity usage

This is my point to you: ignoring demand charges and using only volumetric charges is a gross distortion of Tesla operational costs of the Supercharger network. See why it helps to understand and correctly distinguish energy from power ?

Lastly, stop cherry picking Gilroy unless you would like to exclude Gilroy users from the rest of the network.
 
The subscription plans are only available directly from the manufacturers. Tesla owners with CCS equipped Model 3 cars in Europe are not eligible for those plans as far as I can tell. Ionity also does not sell a subscription plan themselves.
This is my understanding also but the Ionity press release says that other manufacturers are welcome to join the club and then presumably also be able to offer discounted subscription plans. The manufacturer membership fee has not been disclosed. Until it is I have no opinion whether Ionity is being even handed.
 
You are cherry picking again.
It takes ~ two 250 kW enabled cars to saturate a V3 cabinet but four lower power cars.

I would argue that you are cherry-picking. Unless a site is almost never fully occupied, it will almost certainly hit peak usage at least once during any given, regardless of the mix of cars. That's just being realistic.


It works out to
30 cents per kWh at 10% average capacity usage
20 cents per kWh at 20% average capacity usage
10 cents per kWh at 30% average capacity usage

Notice how they keep choosing lower and lower usage numbers as their argument becomes weaker and weaker?

Superchargers with $20 per kW demand charges are mostly running close to 100% usage all day (during the day) every day, including weekends, and probably 10% even from midnight to 6 A.M. Superchargers with 10% usage are likely paying a fraction of that, assuming that Tesla is not using batteries or solar generation to flatten out the demand charges entirely.


This is my point to you: ignoring demand charges and using only volumetric charges is a gross distortion of Tesla operational costs of the Supercharger network. See why it helps to understand and correctly distinguish energy from power ?

Here we go with that crap again. Yes, I used the wrong word. Once. And it was obvious from context what I meant. Get over yourself.

No, the error was not because I don't understand the difference between kW and kWh. I've worked at major electronics companies for over two decades, and started designing rudimentary electronic circuits almost a decade before that.

The fact is that demand charges at a supercharger do NOT dominate the operating costs. If they did, Tesla would not be charging less per kWh in California than you claim that the demand charges ALONE should be.

Your numbers are wrong. They cannot possibly be correct.


Lastly, stop cherry picking Gilroy unless you would like to exclude Gilroy users from the rest of the network.

I'm not cherry-picking Gilroy. I'm using it to prove my point, precisely because it is a lot more similar to the rest of the network than any other Bay Area Superchargers. What makes Gilroy unique among Bay Area Superchargers is that it is outside of a dense population area, and thus has lower average utilization. Its usage is a lot more bursty. Tesla solved the problem of high demand charges at that Supercharger by adding batteries, making the demand charges entirely moot. Other stations in other areas have done the same thing with solar panels, for the same reason.

Please use some common sense. If demand charges were a real problem, then Tesla would solve it, because that problem is entirely 100% solvable using things that Tesla is really, really good at building in bulk.