PG&E Bill Increase

[Levelheadsteve]

Hi all. I just took delivery of my MY LR AWD on July 3. I do not have solar on my house. I’ve been charging (NEMA 14-50) at night from approximately 65% to 90% from midnight to 6 am. Only 11 days of this are on my most recent PGE bill, but my bill went up about $120.

I just today switched to the EV plan with lower rates from midnight to 3 pm. I’m hoping that will help.

For those that don’t have solar, has your electric bill gone up considerably? I was guessing the increase would be about $100 per month, not $120 in 11 days. That would equate to about $350 per month. I could drive a huge SUV and just pay for gas at that point.

Thanks for any information or advice.

 

[mociaf9]

Hi all. I just took delivery of my MY LR AWD on July 3. I do not have solar on my house. I’ve been charging (NEMA 14-50) at night from approximately 65% to 90% from midnight to 6 am. Only 11 days of this are on my most recent PGE bill, but my bill went up about $120.

I just today switched to the EV plan with lower rates from midnight to 3 pm. I’m hoping that will help.

For those that don’t have solar, has your electric bill gone up considerably? I was guessing the increase would be about $100 per month, not $120 in 11 days. That would equate to about $350 per month. I could drive a huge SUV and just pay for gas at that point.

Thanks for any information or advice.

If you were on a tiered rate and the extra usage bumped you up into a higher tier, that over usage can get expensive pretty quickly. Also, if you're just comparing month to month, then you may need to account for the recent credits applied to help with COVID-19 bill relief. PG&E moved the CA Climate Credits that are usually applied in October to earlier in the year and spread them out over a few months which I believe just ended. Also, on a month to month comparison, try to account for other usage pattern changes like increased/decreased use of your home A/C. Be sure that these things aren't skewing your comparison.

 

[Pluturi]

Your bill should have the details. What is the increase in kWh? Given what you said about your charging, the increase due to the car should be around 235 kWh. That would be quite a rate increase for that by itself to cost $120.

 

[sparkz]

Hi all. I just took delivery of my MY LR AWD on July 3. I do not have solar on my house. I’ve been charging (NEMA 14-50) at night from approximately 65% to 90% from midnight to 6 am. Only 11 days of this are on my most recent PGE bill, but my bill went up about $120.

I just today switched to the EV plan with lower rates from midnight to 3 pm. I’m hoping that will help.

For those that don’t have solar, has your electric bill gone up considerably? I was guessing the increase would be about $100 per month, not $120 in 11 days. That would equate to about $350 per month. I could drive a huge SUV and just pay for gas at that point.

Thanks for any information or advice.

If you were on a tiered rate (rather than TOU Time of Use), I can believe it. I used to be (CA - PG&E) also. This will push you into the higher rate tiers that are insane.

Now you are on EV plan, I think that will help you a lot (vs tiered). Even a TOU is going to be better than tiered.

Fortunately for me I went from a tiered rate plan where I’d hit tier 4 in the summer, over to installing my own solar before I got my model 3, so I avoided a shock!

 

[ChrisJ]

THe only caveat/tip with being on TOU, especially the EV rates is to avoid using heavy electical appliances like AC during peak. I think it's currently around 55c/kW vs 13-15c/kW offpeak. Sometimes you can't avoid it, especially in summer months.

 

[ucmndd]

As others have said, if you were on a standard tiered plan like E-1 and already using a lot of power (likely as I see you’re in Sac and it’s been hot as hell lately), you’re gonna be for sure in Tier 2 and likely even Tier 3 at the end of the month, so every kWh you put in your car during those last 11 days of your bill cycle cost you 38 cents (that’s more than Tesla will charge you for Supercharging).

The EV2-A plan will help. But again as has been mentioned, you’ll need to be much more conscious about high loads during the day and early evening when electricity is quite expensive in exchange for the low rate overnight.

 

[Levelheadsteve]

Thanks everyone. Much appreciated.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Two issues that are making it hard to determine why your bill went up, outside of your at home charging.
1. You just changed your rate plan.
2. Sacramento had a heat wave during that time. If you were running your AC more during that period it will be challenging to determine just how much of your increase was due to car charging.
3. Your new TOU billing might be charging you much more for daytime electric use. If you ran dishwasher, AC, lights, vacuum, refrigerator, washer, dryer etc during the daytime that could also show up in the bill.

 

[Mardak]

I’ve been charging (NEMA 14-50) at night from approximately 65% to 90% from midnight to 6 am. Only 11 days of this are on my most recent PGE bill, but my bill went up about $120.

25% battery is about 20kWh from the wall with some charging efficiency loss, so that's an additional 220 kWh at 38¢/kWh for $84 extra which is pretty close to your bill increase especially if there was additional air conditioning usage. For reference, scheduling charging to start after midnight for the EV2-A Off-peak rate 17¢/kWh would have been $36 or about $100 for a whole month of charging.