Still worth getting a Model 3 if Electricity costs more than Gas?

[Glamisduner]

My inverter shows this information in a sub-menu I can see on a display on the face of the inverter.

yea I can tap them and see the prior days generation (I think that's what it shows when it says day). But this changes depending on the time of year. Right now the small one show 15kWh and the large one shows 40 kWh. If we had a gas water heater and dryer stove and oven that would go a long way towards conserving power but also not something easy to convert over to propane. Maybe when we save up to remodel the kitchen, which is right after the new driveway (what I had planned to spend the tax incentive on).

 

[SageBrush]

yea I can tap them and see the prior days generation (I think that's what it shows when it says day). But this changes depending on the time of year. Right now the small one show 15kWh and the large one shows 40 kWh. If we had a gas water heater and dryer stove and oven that would go a long way towards conserving power but also not something easy to convert over to propane. Maybe when we save up to remodel the kitchen, which is right after the new driveway (what I had planned to spend the tax incentive on).

Mine does the same, but a sub-menu shows longer term numbers. I'm pretty sure I can see current year generation; I'm not sure about prior years.

55 kWh in a day (admittedly during the best time of the year) sounds excellent. I peak at 25 kWh in a day with our 3.78 kW array.
I cannot help but still think that you can cut your consumption dramatically if motivated. I suspect that an energy inventory would be most informative.

 

[Glamisduner]

Mine does the same, but a sub-menu shows longer term numbers. I'm pretty sure I can see current year generation; I'm not sure about prior years.

55 kWh in a day (admittedly during the best time of the year) sounds excellent. I peak at 25 kWh in a day with our 3.78 kW array.
I cannot help but still think that you can cut your consumption dramatically if motivated. I suspect that an energy inventory would be most informative.

I'll have to look that up. It's hard to measure our hard-wired appliances though and I'm pretty sure that is where most of our usage is. I do plan on replacing things with gas versions down the road, but doing all those things right now destroys my down payment for a model 3

 

[SageBrush]

It was supposed to be 7kWh, but I think there are only 6.5 kWh of panels.

Btw, panels are rated in power so you probably mean 7 kW

 

[SageBrush]

I'll have to look that up. It's hard to measure our hard-wired appliances though and I'm pretty sure that is where most of our usage is. I do plan on replacing things with gas versions down the road, but doing all those things right now destroys my down payment for a model 3

Divide and conquer.
Turn off a suspected energy hog or two at a time for a day and see the effect on your utility meter.
Or you can just turn it off for a few minutes if you take the time to learn how to read the spinning disk (or its digital representation) on the meter. That works well if the power draw is constant.

Any chance you have an electric Jacuzzi ?

 

[Glamisduner]

Divide and conquer.
Turn off a suspected energy hog or two at a time for a day and see the effect on your utility meter.
Or you can just turn it off for a few minutes if you take the time to learn how to read the spinning disk (or its digital representation) on the meter. That works well if the power draw is constant.

Any chance you have an electric Jacuzzi ?

lol no jacuzzi or pool, and your not the only one in disbelief. Most of my friends don't believe me either because most of them have natural gas. Only us all electric folk are feeling the crushing squeeze of our local power company first. Hell I can hardly believe it myself, but when your water heater says it costs $508 a year based on .08kWh, and you start looking at your dryer, and washer (which also steals hot water), oven and stove it all comes together.

A new refrigerator would help, but our kitchen needs to be redone to fit a more up to date sized unit. I don't want to buy another small refrigerator only to replace it in a few years when we re-do our kitchen. I would love to know what my refridgerator costs to run.

We do have some chest freezers too, for fermenting homebrew, and keeping kegs cold, but that should use less power than if they were used as freezers so I can't imagine thats where our power loss is coming from.

 

[Saghost]

lol no jacuzzi or pool, and your not the only one in disbelief. Most of my friends don't believe me either because most of them have natural gas. Only us all electric folk are feeling the crushing squeeze of our local power company first. Hell I can hardly believe it myself, but when your water heater says it costs $508 a year based on .08kWh, and you start looking at your dryer, and washer (which also steals hot water), oven and stove it all comes together.

A new refrigerator would help, but our kitchen needs to be redone to fit a more up to date sized unit. I don't want to buy another small refrigerator only to replace it in a few years when we re-do our kitchen. I would love to know what my refridgerator costs to run.

We do have some chest freezers too, for fermenting homebrew, and keeping kegs cold, but that should use less power than if they were used as freezers so I can't imagine thats where our power loss is coming from.

Figuring out what the fridge or the chest freezers use should be easy. All of them (except for huge fancy commercial units) are standard 120V plugs, so all you need to do is get one of those kill a watt type energy counters, and plug the fridge into it for a couple days and see what it draws.

 

[SageBrush]

Hell I can hardly believe it myself, but when your water heater says it costs $508 a year based on .08kWh, and you start looking at your dryer, and washer (which also steals hot water), oven and stove it all comes together.

This is where an inventory of energy use is so useful.
Once you know your top 10 consumptions you can decide on alternatives and choices.

Hot water can certainly be a huge energy consumer but it does not have to be. If that is one of your big ticket items then reducing amount used and considering an air-space heat pump would be reasonable places to start.

 

[ℬête Noire]

Divide and conquer.
Turn off a suspected energy hog or two at a time for a day and see the effect on your utility meter.
Or you can just turn it off for a few minutes if you take the time to learn how to read the spinning disk (or its digital representation) on the meter. That works well if the power draw is constant.

Any chance you have an electric Jacuzzi ?

Almost assuredly A/C will be a large factor for Glamisduner (that you will only see in limited use, if you've got one at all).

That tends to be a huge driver of electricity usage on the south side of the US, it's THE factor in why all the top residential averages are on the Gulf coast and double the lowest averaging states in the US.

That's where there's a lot of savings to be found....and often where people living in such climates have already gone, if they've been looking.

Still, worth a re-look periodically. Insulation packs over time, better fan & temp control tech becomes available, A/C units should get their refrigerant level and compressor function checked periodically if that's not happened, reconsidering of temperature settings, etc.

 

[voip-ninja]

Almost assuredly A/C will be a factor for Glamisduner (that you will only see in limited use, if you've got one at all).

That tends to be a huge driver of electricity usage on the south side of the US, it's THE factor in why all the top residential averages are on the Gulf coast and double the lowest averaging states in the US.

ROI on replacing air conditioning units is also typically terrible. I have a pretty large unit as the home is quite large. Replacing the still serviceable 13 year old unit that has a crap efficiency rating (around 8 SEER if I remember correctly) was going to run about $10,000. The electricity savings, especially as I have 7,000 watts of solar production would take something like 25 years to break even from an ROI perspective.

Most consumers are driven by cost analysis first and foremost and being green and reducing their energy usage for environmental reasons is a very distant 2nd, if it's even a priority at all.

With all of the things that have been thrown out there it's a bit boggling to me that nobody has initially commented that simply replacing any old incandescent or lower efficiency fluorescent lights with high efficiency LED models can have a massive impact on home electricity usage.

I once ran into a guy, non-idiot (did live in Boulder though), who had geothermal, solar and wind and still had a huge power outlay every month. AC was a big factor for him (three units, very wasteful, a single unit with vent control and use of recirculation would have been smarter)... this guy had something like 60 can lights in the house, all with incandescent bulbs. Kids left the lights on all the time. He had cases of spare bulbs in his basement and was just in the habit of replacing a couple every month with zero thought to how much power those suckers were wasting.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Yeah LED light bulbs are for sure the best ROI.
If your water heater is costing thousands a year a heat pump water heater would pay for itself in less than a year.

 

[ℬête Noire]

Yeah LED light bulbs are for sure the best ROI.
If your water heater is costing thousands a year a heat pump water heater would pay for itself in less than a year.

LOL, I keep forgetting there are people that haven't converted their lights yet. I started slowly shifting into CFL and then LED several years ago. Going back you can see it was a very noticeable % drop over time, even with all the A/C we use. Somewhere between %15 and %20 savings, paid off those bulbs long ago even at the relatively expensive prices they used to be.

Then again we had a number of younger kids, and kids tend to be very prone to leaving lights on unnecessarily.

P.S. My NG water heaters are original to the house, pre-date us, and given age are a few years past EOL. Seriously considering replacing with electric heat pump + resistor hybrid, because the NG provider in our community has insane pricing. "Gouging" might be an understatement, our bills are roughly double rate of communities in the wider area.

 

[SageBrush]

Almost assuredly A/C will be a large factor for Glamisduner (that you will only see in limited use, if you've got one at all).

That tends to be a huge driver of electricity usage on the south side of the US, it's THE factor in why all the top residential averages are on the Gulf coast and double the lowest averaging states in the US.

That's where there's a lot of savings to be found....and often where people living in such climates have already gone, if they've been looking.

Still, worth a re-look periodically. Insulation packs over time, better fan & temp control tech becomes available, A/C units should get their refrigerant level and compressor function checked periodically if that's not happened, reconsidering of temperature settings, etc.

So far as I can tell our home is the only one in the 'hood without AC. I prefer shading and evenining ventilation. The "South" has a double whammy of heat and humidity. IIRC Escondido gets hot in the summer but I don't remember high humidity and I think most of year is pretty mild.

IF AC is a major energy hog then other solutions come to mind like an air-space heat pump with superheater and a home evaluation to look for leaks.

My over-riding point here is that there are likely many choices and alternatives to consider and 2000 kWh a month consumption is not an immoveable fact of life.

 

[imtubs]

I didn't read through all the posts, so sorry if this has been posted already.

I live in San Diego too and recently looked into saving money on electricity with SDGE.

We recently got approved for the medical baseline pricing (more kWh in Tier 1 with lower rates).
Qualifying Based Medical Need | San Diego Gas & Electric

There's also $200 in free bill credits for owning an EV via the Electric Vehicle Climate Credit.
Electric Vehicle Climate Credit | San Diego Gas & Electric

 

[Glamisduner]

I didn't read through all the posts, so sorry if this has been posted already.

I live in San Diego too and recently looked into saving money on electricity with SDGE.

We recently got approved for the medical baseline pricing (more kWh in Tier 1 with lower rates).
Qualifying Based Medical Need | San Diego Gas & Electric

There's also $200 in free bill credits for owning an EV via the Electric Vehicle Climate Credit.
Electric Vehicle Climate Credit | San Diego Gas & Electric

Hey neat I didn't know about the climate credit! Once I get the title for my volt I will apply. I was thinking I should talk to my doctor about my snoring tos ee if I could qualify for CPAP. It's probably not bad enough though, unless you ask my wife. TThen I would get locked into tier 1 rates and be able to charge under 30 cents per kWh without having to switch to NEM2 or the EV plan.

Yea I have replaced all bulbs in my house with CFL's and LED's except for a couple in one bathroom which will get replaced when they burn out. CFL's are getting replaced with LEDs as they burn out too (at least where possible). House is thick plaster (1960) but the walls are not insulated (the attic is though) we did replace all the aluminum frame windows with double pane insulated ones. We often hit triple digits and have to run the AC (sometimes over 110 outside) so there's no getting around having AC (We had a unit installed 2 years ago so it's pretty up to date). We also had a whole house fan installed for the nights where it cools off enough to use it.

I'm not sure if I can fit a heat pump water heater. They seem larger than regular electric ones, and ours was replaced to the garage before we moved in (the garage door swings into it already). Maybe it would fit though. I was also thinking about getting a Propane on demand water heater installed as it would save some space (just need to monitor propane usage then). Not sure which route would be better.

I thought you were not supposed to plug refrigerators into kilowatt meters?

 

[SageBrush]

I thought you were not supposed to plug refrigerators into kilowatt meters?

I've done it multiple times without issue and I think the result is valid. Just keep it attached for a day or so to average out the cycling.

I wish you good hunting in figuring out where your energy is going. I bet it is going to be an eye-opener and turn out to be a very useful exercise for you.

--
By the way, I checked my inverter information display. I have to tap tap tap into the sub-menus but it tells me yesterday, this month, this year and since coming online generation totals. I used the latter to calculate our home consumption at 11.5 kWh a day. Since we consume about 6 kWh a day for the 1.3 EVs* we own the non-EV home consumption is about 5.5 kWh a day.

*LEAF and Prius Prime. The 0.3 is a bit of a silly number but it well represents the fraction of our use case that is from the meter.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Hey neat I didn't know about the climate credit! Once I get the title for my volt I will apply. I was thinking I should talk to my doctor about my snoring tos ee if I could qualify for CPAP. It's probably not bad enough though, unless you ask my wife. TThen I would get locked into tier 1 rates and be able to charge under 30 cents per kWh without having to switch to NEM2 or the EV plan.

Yea I have replaced all bulbs in my house with CFL's and LED's except for a couple in one bathroom which will get replaced when they burn out. CFL's are getting replaced with LEDs as they burn out too (at least where possible). House is thick plaster (1960) but the walls are not insulated (the attic is though) we did replace all the aluminum frame windows with double pane insulated ones. We often hit triple digits and have to run the AC (sometimes over 110 outside) so there's no getting around having AC (We had a unit installed 2 years ago so it's pretty up to date). We also had a whole house fan installed for the nights where it cools off enough to use it.

I'm not sure if I can fit a heat pump water heater. They seem larger than regular electric ones, and ours was replaced to the garage before we moved in (the garage door swings into it already). Maybe it would fit though. I was also thinking about getting a Propane on demand water heater installed as it would save some space (just need to monitor propane usage then). Not sure which route would be better.

I thought you were not supposed to plug refrigerators into kilowatt meters?

I think a heat pump would be cheaper than propane for heating water. They have ones that are 3.5x as efficient as resistive. I'm sure you could wedge it in your garage somewhere. I assume you have a heat pump for heating the house too?

 

[Glamisduner]

I think a heat pump would be cheaper than propane for heating water. They have ones that are 3.5x as efficient as resistive. I'm sure you could wedge it in your garage somewhere. I assume you have a heat pump for heating the house too?

We have a propane furnace and a catalytic wood burning stove.

 

[devilmountain]

lol no jacuzzi or pool, and your not the only one in disbelief. Most of my friends don't believe me either because most of them have natural gas. Only us all electric folk are feeling the crushing squeeze of our local power company first. Hell I can hardly believe it myself, but when your water heater says it costs $508 a year based on .08kWh, and you start looking at your dryer, and washer (which also steals hot water), oven and stove it all comes together.

A new refrigerator would help, but our kitchen needs to be redone to fit a more up to date sized unit. I don't want to buy another small refrigerator only to replace it in a few years when we re-do our kitchen. I would love to know what my refridgerator costs to run.

We do have some chest freezers too, for fermenting homebrew, and keeping kegs cold, but that should use less power than if they were used as freezers so I can't imagine thats where our power loss is coming from.

I make homebrew too and I have two freezers and a garage refrigerator dedicated to brewing (I may retire the refrigerator but I am currently using it to keep my glasses cold). I actually bought all of the freezers and refrigerator new and made sure it was energy efficient. My 20 year old refrigerator was costing me about 70-100 a month to run if I remember correctly. My house is 100% electricity except for the two hot water heaters. I find that the dryer is the most expensive appliance to run along with the air conditioner. I did a full remodel on my house last year, inlcuding HVAC, and the new appliances help. I converted my house to solar in January.