Should I go to EV rate plan?

[jboy210]

Hi,

My current Model X's lease is done in June. With this car, I have free supercharging so don't charge that often at home. Since they don't offer that anymore I assume I will be charging at home more often with the new car.

We have solar and Powerwalls and are currently on a PGE TOU plan (M-F 4-9 peak). I am wondering if I should go to an EV plan. We work from home and don't drive that much, approximately 23,000 miles in 3 years over 2 vehicles.

Also, our cars are leased and titled through our company which has an address which is not home. Is that a factor?

Thanks in advance.

 

[h2ofun]

Hi,

My current Model X's lease is done in June. With this car, I have free supercharging so don't charge that often at home. Since they don't offer that anymore I assume I will be charging at home more often with the new car.

We have solar and Powerwalls and are currently on a PGE TOU plan (M-F 4-9 peak). I am wondering if I should go to an EV plan. We work from home and don't drive that much, approximately 23,000 miles in 3 years over 2 vehicles.

Also, our cars are leased and titled through our company which has an address which is not home. Is that a factor?

Thanks in advance.

How are you on the tou plan? I thought anyone with PW's had to get ev2-a plan?

 

[jboy210]

How are you on the tou plan? I thought anyone with PW's had to get ev2-a plan?

Currently, we are on the same TOU plan we have had for years.

 

[h2ofun]

Currently, we are on the same TOU plan we have had for years.

I wonder when they started to force folks onto ev2-a plan with batteries. Maybe it is only because of SGIP. But if I had an EV, I sure would want the ev2-a plan.

 

[getakey]

Lease address is not a factor. We just turned in our i3 from lease. We have EV1-A plan. Overnight charging at ~$.12/kWh is great. You would go to EV2-A. I think the overnight low rate would be beneficial to you if you get another EV, but would want tp do the math.

 

[SMAlset]

We are in a similar situation as you. Our MS has free supercharging (although it was a purchase not lease) and our Model 3 is on a pay-to-charge basis. Husband is WFH but even before during good weather would walk to train station and take the corporate bus most of the time so mileage for both cars low (get discount on auto insurance). Also now have solar and PW. BTW Only the Calif rebates on EVs has the titled address being pertinent.

Before getting our Model 3 (pre-solar/PW) we called PG&E and had them do a rate plan eval for us and moved to EV2A then. Have them do the same for you. Our town is now part of an aggregate electrical purchasing group since that time so our per kW costs are now a bit more complicated but it saves us a bit more money and we’re still on EV2A rate plan which is I think 11 pm or midnight to 4pm peak rate M-F. With days getting longer now and extending our solar production we’ll get more “free” sun-generated electricity as we go into Summer when we’ll have more AC use. Haven’t looked recently at the summer rate hours.

I charge my car every few days right now. And if my husband will be short on time will add some miles to his car from home occasionally when he can use the sun’s power to do so. It’s cheaper to charge at home than at our local SCs for our Model 3. Right now sunny mornings generally fill up our 3PWs from usage the night before and we’ll charge our car during the noon onward time frame towards 4pm - strictly off solar by setting the charging amps down to a slower charge so as to not pull from our PWs, adding more than enough range for our mostly local driving even if I then charge a bit more times per week. Cloudy/rainy weather has interfered with PWs being able to be full charged by noon so we try to plan a bit for cloudy weather too. Dark Skies weather app has an hourly forecast of percentage cloud cover which we’ll use to get a feel for the solar production during the upcoming week and when we might then plan to add some range to my car. It’s not a biggie for us but more of a game to maximize the solar production and PW usage.

 

[Electrph]

@SMAIset pretty much summarizes our use of solar / powerwalls / one ev model 3 .. if i watch / tweak when we charge ev / rate of charge we never use any grid power ..so seems plan where zero net (or less ) net usage would benefit .. if you don't want to be hassled with watching when / how charge EV and just want to plug in anytime then a lower rate may be better .. so many more factors im sure but that has been our (short) experience so far

 

[aesculus]

I think it really depends on how much you can (or want to) time shift. The EV peak rates are pretty high. So if you need power during those periods you may find that a problem if you exceed what the batteries can supply.

 

[dareed1]

How are you on the tou plan? I thought anyone with PW's had to get ev2-a plan?

We installed and received PTO in December 2020. Two PWs and NET2-PS on TOU-C, no SGIP. We don't have a EV, so I wouldn't expect to even qualify for a ev PG&E plan. I had a choice of TOU-C or TOU-D.

 

[h2ofun]

We installed and received PTO in December 2020. Two PWs and NET2-PS on TOU-C, no SGIP. We don't have a EV, so I wouldn't expect to even qualify for a ev PG&E plan. I had a choice of TOU-C or TOU-D.

I get so confused on this stuff. I am on NEM2 TOU-c, solar only now. I guess you are on NEM2-PS, which is since you have batteries, but you have TOU-c rate plan I assume since no SGIP and or you are under 3 batteries. The ev2-a maybe forced only on 3 or more batteries? Or if SGIP is involved?

 

[cwied]

We installed and received PTO in December 2020. Two PWs and NET2-PS on TOU-C, no SGIP. We don't have a EV, so I wouldn't expect to even qualify for a ev PG&E plan. I had a choice of TOU-C or TOU-D.

Actually, those with battery storage do also qualify for EV2-A on a pilot basis. I haven't heard that they've exhausted the 30,000 battery-only slots, so I suspect you could change to that if you wanted to. See https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV2 (Sch).pdf

I believe EV2-A to be slightly better for me than the TOU rates because my solar only covers about 70% of my usage and I can generally cover the higher rate periods using my Powerwalls. I do have an EV, so that helps in terms of shifting usage to off-peak.

 

[SVDNN]

Have had Teslas with free supercharging for past 6 years and rarely used it as I always home charged at night with EV rates out of convenience (and prior to solar). Can tell you with PGE rate comparison online, my usage always had least annual expense overall with EV rate (now EV2-A) vs TOU. But depends completely on your ability to only charge car after midnight during non-peak. If work / travel constraints are where you need to home charge during peak times, then all bets are off.

As to leased /titled work cars, cannot quite remember if it would have mattered...I believe I only gave the VIN number and make/model to PGE as opposed to show docs the car is actually in your name. Assume one VIN only good for one EV rate residence. Maybe different now.

 

[SVDNN]

Have had Teslas with free supercharging for past 6 years and rarely used it as I always home charged at night with EV rates out of convenience (and prior to solar). Can tell you with PGE rate comparison online, my usage always had least annual expense overall with EV rate (now EV2-A) vs TOU. But depends completely on your ability to only charge car after midnight during non-peak. If work / travel constraints are where you need to home charge during peak times, then all bets are off.

As to leased /titled work cars, cannot quite remember if it would have mattered...I believe I only gave the VIN number and make/model to PGE as opposed to show docs the car is actually in your name. Assume one VIN only good for one EV rate residence. Maybe different now.

....Should have mentioned, certainly other factors play a part into the expense and time of use that would alter final energy costs. For fair comparison, we are unfortunately high energy consumers (30k Kwh annually with ACs, pool pumps, multi-frig, large family / home, etc)

 

[h2ofun]

....Should have mentioned, certainly other factors play a part into the expense and time of use that would alter final energy costs. For fair comparison, we are unfortunately high energy consumers (30k Kwh annually with ACs, pool pumps, multi-frig, large family / home, etc)

Just think what you usage would be if you had heat pumps. Boy have a seen a difference in my large home converting from propane heat to heat pumps. Now, my total energy cost is hopefully now closer to zero since my solar maybe large enough. I am half way into my year bill and I will go into I owe some for this month. Then when the sun shines more and I can stop running the heat pumps for a while before I have to run the AC, I should be pilling up the credits. If so, means next year I kick up the heat.

 

[miimura]

I wonder when they started to force folks onto ev2-a plan with batteries. Maybe it is only because of SGIP. But if I had an EV, I sure would want the ev2-a plan.

If you don't take SGIP you can choose any TOU plan you like when you get Powerwalls.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

If you don't take SGIP you can choose any TOU plan you like when you get Powerwalls.

I have 12.6 PV system (July 2019), 3 PW (Dec 2019 - PTO July 2020) and in process for SGIP Large Scale Step 2.
I'm on NEM-MT but have TOU-C as my rate plan. Are you saying my rate plan will get shifted if my SGIP incentive is approved?

 

[miimura]

I have 12.6 PV system (July 2019), 3 PW (Dec 2019 - PTO July 2020) and in process for SGIP Large Scale Step 2.
I'm on NEM-MT but have TOU-C as my rate plan. Are you saying my rate plan will get shifted if my SGIP incentive is approved?

Let us know if there is any change when you finally get the SGIP funds. Large Scale may be different than Small Residential (<=10kW).

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

Let us know if there is any change when you finally get the SGIP funds. Large Scale may be different than Small Residential (<=10kW).

Will do, I don't have an EV so I don't see how going onto an EV schedule would be beneficial to me.
If PW grid charging at night was allowed.... but that's another story.

 

[h2ofun]

Let us know if there is any change when you finally get the SGIP funds. Large Scale may be different than Small Residential (<=10kW).

I have heard there is large scale, meaning 3 or more money. But if you already have 3 PW's, how many more are you getting? And can a 12.6 pv system charge them all?

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

I have heard there is large scale, meaning 3 or more money. But if you already have 3 PW's, how many more are you getting? And can a 12.6 pv system charge them all?

I'm not getting more, my SGIP Large Scale step 2 application is for the 3 that were installed in 2019.
I'm guessing here the difference is Equity Resiliency need to be approved upfront vs. Large Scale and Residential are separate processes.