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Just got my first EV Power bill

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leshore

leshore

Member
Mar 30, 2014
71
3
Southern California
#1
The bill covers April 19th through May 2nd...I took delivery of my MS on the 19th. I drove approx. 600 miles during that time span. My electric bill (separate meter, charging on my HPWC after midnight) came to $29.00. If I had driven 600 miles in the car I replaced, I would have been sending $141 to Chevron.
 
#8
I do not have such precise measure as I do not have a separate meter for the charger, but on average over the 20 months of use my i-Miev has increased my electricity bill by about $10/month, of course it is a much smaller pack than the Tesla and my nightly electricity cost is also much lower, about 6 cents / kWh. I drove about 20 thousand kms, so roughly 1000 km per month.
 
#12
that's the problem in California... it's easy to exceed the generation capacity (I'm going to do it despite my solar array)

I'm also getting a raft of crap about a second meter on my place - they want to trench! (ugh) so I think I'm going to just have to go with the regular tiered pricing from PG&E. Fortunately I have L2 charging at work and at the airport (where I spend way too much of my time) so I actually think home charging will be kind of limited.
 
#13
leshore said:
I installed 33 solar panels on my roof about 5 years ago. I still use more power than I generate. Thus the separate metering for the EV.
Click to expand...
I just had 33 panels installed on my roof, but I have not yet gotten my first electric bill. From my calculations it should provide between 90 to 110% of my needs. Yesterday I generated 55 kWh. Everyone can join in singing with me if you'd like. It's an old John Denver song: "Sunshine on my solar makes me happy..."
 
#14
bryenz said:
that's the problem in California... it's easy to exceed the generation capacity (I'm going to do it despite my solar array)

I'm also getting a raft of crap about a second meter on my place - they want to trench! (ugh) so I think I'm going to just have to go with the regular tiered pricing from PG&E.
Click to expand...


My electrician was planning to pull wiring from my existing panel to run to the separate meter. It would have cost about $400. Edison, however, required that he put in a second pull box and panel, which required him to cut through the stucco wall. The $400 job became a $1500 job, but worth it considering I work from my home and charge here most of the time.
 
#16
leshore said:
My electrician was planning to pull wiring from my existing panel to run to the separate meter. It would have cost about $400. Edison, however, required that he put in a second pull box and panel, which required him to cut through the stucco wall. The $400 job became a $1500 job, but worth it considering I work from my home and charge here most of the time.
Click to expand...

That's helpful to know. I have Edison as well and am considering a second meter. Does Edison provide the second meter or so they charge for that?
 
#17
EdA said:
Then you are living the dream!

Always home charged in those 600 miles?
No superchargers?
Click to expand...

I did one short Supercharger visit just to say I tried it. Didn't take on much juice.

- - - Updated - - -

DaveT said:
That's helpful to know. I have Edison as well and am considering a second meter. Does Edison provide the second meter or so they charge for that?
Click to expand...

Edison does provide the meter. They will meet with your electrician at your home to map out placement of the meter, and to discuss optimum install procedure. They don't charge for the meter. But they can impact what you will pay for installation as I illustrated in my earlier post.
 
#18
leshore said:
My electrician was planning to pull wiring from my existing panel to run to the separate meter. It would have cost about $400. Edison, however, required that he put in a second pull box and panel, which required him to cut through the stucco wall. The $400 job became a $1500 job, but worth it considering I work from my home and charge here most of the time.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. PG&E got picky about the service in the house. For some reason they wanted 2x200 amp service even though I was only installing a 14-50. Of course the line up from the street wasn't robust enough to support 400 amps so out came the trenching diagrams etc. at that point I said "nope" and went to plan B.

For what it's worth I have crunched the numbers between E-1 and EV-A and -1 beats it because of the insane 9pm peak thing in summer. We live in east contra costa where it regularly gets in the 95+ range in the summer so that peak period would kill me.
 
#19
bryenz said:
Exactly this. PG&E got picky about the service in the house. For some reason they wanted 2x200 amp service even though I was only installing a 14-50. Of course the line up from the street wasn't robust enough to support 400 amps so out came the trenching diagrams etc. at that point I said "nope" and went to plan B.

For what it's worth I have crunched the numbers between E-1 and EV-A and -1 beats it because of the insane 9pm peak thing in summer. We live in east contra costa where it regularly gets in the 95+ range in the summer so that peak period would kill me.
Click to expand...
I have heard that PG&E will subsidize feedline upgrades up to $2,000 when installed for EV charging upgrades like you've described. Did you look into that? When I was planning the service for my new home construction, the planning engineer went over the two-meter connection options. Basically, you can install a single panel with two meter sockets or you can put a junction before the meters, one side feeding the main house panel and one just a socket that feeds a sub-panel in the garage that is marked "EV Charging Only". Since I don't use A/C nearly as much as you do in the East Bay, I wanted the solar to be able to offset the car charging - so I went with a single 400A panel instead of the dual meter setup.

I really wish the CPUC would force PG&E to implement SmartMeter based sub-metering. That way the normal wiring for a sub-panel or even a single 50A circuit could feed a meter socket before the EVSE and have that usage automatically subtracted from the main meter and billed at EV rates. They forced the SmartMeters on us, so why not let them benefit us too? The installation cost for a revenue grade sub-meter will always be far less than a second meter at the point of entry. I know the CPUC gets lots of ridiculous proposals for third party billing of EV charging that lack even revenue grade metering, but this is really a no-brainer to me. Well, I guess I underestimate utility foot-dragging.

I don't know how you crunched your numbers, but I published an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate PG&E energy charges on all the residential rate schedules based on your actual SmartMeter data. It is in the forum thread here.
 
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