Is Tesla really a green company?

[SageBrush]

Zoinks! Up to 50 cents a kWh during peak hours?

Yeah, that caught my attention too ;-)

You do have to know fixed costs also though to get the real flavor. E.g., I gather that utility bills in Germany have very low fixed costs whereas mine in the coal state of Colorado are over $30 USD a month. Since I consume about 150 kWh a month the unit rate works out to around 30 cents a kWh even though the marginal cost is 9 cents a kWh.

 

[MrBoylan]

Yeah, that caught my attention too ;-)

You do have to know fixed costs also though to get the real flavor. E.g., I gather that utility bills in Germany have very low fixed costs whereas mine in the coal state of Colorado are over $30 USD a month. Since I consume about 150 kWh a month the unit rate works out to around 30 cents a kWh even though the marginal cost is 9 cents a kWh.

Good point, but fixed costs, being fixed, are the same independent of usage. So I did not include them in my cost per kWh calculations. In NYC, they do charge a larger monthly service fee for TOU vs. flat rates, which eats into the overall savings from going with the TOU plan in the first place. Our monthly fixed fees are also around $30. I believe the monthly fee was about $10/month cheaper when we were on the flat rate plan.

Is there anything more inefficient and convoluted than a utility, particularly when it comes to billing? I once asked ConEd a question about how the rates were being calculated (I suspected an error). When I finally got the response, I saw that the e-mail had been forwarded six different times to finally get it to the person who could answer the question.

 

[liuping]

Zoinks! Up to 50 cents a kWh during peak hours? I thought we had it bad in New York City! When I got my solar panels, I switched over to the TOU billing plan on ConEd (which has since changed, but I'm grandfathered into the earlier TOU schedules). Rates vary from month to month, and they charge a much heavier peak premium during the peak summer months (June-September), but for reference, I paid (including tax and fees):

I rechecked the latest SDG&E rates (they seem to change every 6 months or so), for non-TOU, the top tier rate is "only" $.40 per kWh, but that is 24 hours a day, with no break for off peak, etc. It's absolutely terrible for EV users.

For EV owners there is a EV-TOU2 rate which is much better at night, though the gouge during the day at $.45796per kWh. Thankfully, with solar we don't use any electricity during the peak rate hours.

 

[SageBrush]

Hard to imagine living without PV in San Diego. Just from arbitrage it looks like every kWh of energy generated during the day is worth two at night.

 

[EinSV]

To my mind, the proposed Solar City merger brings everything together for Tesla's long-term plan to accelerate the transition to a clean energy future.

Solar power, EV transportation and battery storage can effectively eliminate GHG emissions from the major sources of that pollution, while drastically reducing other forms of air pollution, which have been estimated to cause over 5,000,000 deaths per year by some researchers. Polluted air causes 5.5 million deaths a year new research says - BBC News

Tesla is creating a workable and economical solution to the world's climate change problem, while also helping to reduce the worst other forms of air pollution. With compelling, integrated products and significant cost reductions for both batteries and solar panels, the availability of solutions for a transition to a clean future is quite literally right around the corner and will become more economical and appealing every year.

 

[N5329K]

I wrote a book about how one corporation moved deliberately and profitably in the direction of zero environmental footprint. Find it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-...492?ie=UTF8&n=283155&ref_=dp_return_2&s=books
You'll read that the job is way bigger than just the product being shipped out the door. So "solar panel" vs "car" is less significant than "how am I building these solar panels and cars?" As one example, the carbon tail of a solar PV system is weighted heavily in the materials and fabrication phase. Building a car, on the other hand- even an electric car- shifts a great deal of that tail to the operational side (driving and charging).
The task is huge but it can be broken down into distinct, achievable and profitable parts: identifying inefficiencies, changing materials, improving methods, increasing reuse, switching energy inputs, eliminating waste. Right now "take-make-waste" still rules most businesses. It's a one-way conveyor belt that presumes infinite energy, infinite materials and infinite places to throw waste away.
What Ray did was bend that conveyor belt around into a circle, and by doing so restructure his very oil-intensive business into a big and profitable green enterprise. It's a good story, and one Tesla might want to emulate.
Robin