MUST READ on future of energy with renewables

[nativewolf]

Bloomberg has another great piece, they really excel in this area. It discusses how renewables are disrupting the power grid, in a good way, and how family could use a service like Griddy to become wholesale power buyers. If I had a Tesla in TX I'd be signing up this weekend. Anyway, look forward to your thoughts

Texas Power: No Country for Old Thinking

 

[TheTalkingMule]

"Average wholesale power prices equated to only about a fifth the cost of electricity for Texas households in 2016"

That's nuts, but not surprising I guess. Blockchain please!

 

[nativewolf]

To me the incredible thing would be that as EV spread this would dramatically dramatically cut the cost of transportation. Because as an EV consumer your total energy bill would just plummet.

 

[Saghost]

To me the incredible thing would be that as EV spread this would dramatically dramatically cut the cost of transportation. Because as an EV consumer your total energy bill would just plummet.

Yeah. Paying ~3.5 cents per kWh means insanely cheap driving (~1 cent per mile for electricity?!?) depending on how much you account for depreciation and the like.

More interestingly, that's apparently the daily average price, and this Griddy app is apparently tracking and billing you in real time based on the real time wholesale rates - which just begs for integration with the Tesla somewhere on the back end - the car could be set to only charge when the rate is less than half that, say, unless it's below some battery level so you always charge on the cheapest nighttime power.

 

[miimura]

The most amazing thing in that article is the claim that consumers only have to pay about $0.015/kWh for transmission and distribution.

 

[SageBrush]

Yeah. Paying ~3.5 cents per kWh means insanely cheap driving

Humbug. My home PV works out to 0.5 cents per mile.

I call that cheap

 

[SageBrush]

The most amazing thing in that article is the claim that consumers only have to pay about $0.015/kWh for transmission and distribution.

Right.

Utilities have a monopoly on the 'last mile' to the home and if they cannot profit on the energy, you can bet the T&D rates are going to carry the extra charges. It will be fascinating to see by how much. I've seen electricity bills from areas of New York state that have deregulated and uncoupled energy from T&D. The bills remain sky high even though the energy costs are low-ish.

 

[miimura]

Right.

Utilities have a monopoly on the 'last mile' to the home and if they cannot profit on the energy, you can bet the T&D rates are going to carry the extra charges. It will be fascinating to see by how much. I've seen electricity bills from areas of New York state that have deregulated and uncoupled energy from T&D. The bills remain sky high even though the energy costs are low-ish.

Right. PG&E Unbundled rates for the EV rate schedule break down as follows:

Transmission & Misc. (all time periods): $0.05418/kWh
Distribution: Peak: ~$0.17/kWh, Part-Peak: ~$0.09/kWh, Off-Peak: $0.012/kWh (~ denotes average of summer/winter)

So, the lowest you can possibly pay without negative generation cost is $0.066/kWh.

When PG&E sells you power on this rate schedule, the Generation charges are at least an additional $0.055/kWh.
Peak Summer is an additional $0.23/kWh

 

[Tex EV]

The wholesale prices look good, then tack on delivery fees and around here you're looking at a best case of $0.05 and worst of $0.12 per kWh. This is still good if you purchase all of your energy. But if you have solar, Griddy doesn't do net metering... yet. I was told that they'd be adding it in the near future, so we'll see. Considering that I purchase ~1,000kWh and put ~700kWh back into the grid each month, the lack of net metering is an absolute dealbreaker. Will definitely revisit when they get it in place though.