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Supercharger Pricing Map?
- Thread starter LoudMusic
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- supercharger
Having run both manufacturing and IT businesses in this area for nearly 20 years, I doubt that.
Ouch. I think I'd stick with ICE vehicles (well, hybrid anyway) if my at home rate was that high.
kishkaru
Member
Yep. Unlike gas prices, which are cyclical depending on the external market prices, electric prices are always going up.
For example, during the height of the Ukraine war last summer, gas jumped to $7.50/gal around here. Now it's back down to a reasonable $4.60/gal
But you have to also realize that costs are inline with income. While $0.40/kWh may sound like a lot for someone in the midwest earning < $50-70k, your average single family home in the Bay Area brings in $200-300k+. So it's not unreasonable given the geography. Just to give perspective, a public teacher's salary is approaching $100k, so you can imagine other traditional white collar jobs will bring in over $100k easily.
I'm not trying to justify PG&E (I hate them as much as the next guy), but we have to consider the whole picture.
For example, during the height of the Ukraine war last summer, gas jumped to $7.50/gal around here. Now it's back down to a reasonable $4.60/gal
But you have to also realize that costs are inline with income. While $0.40/kWh may sound like a lot for someone in the midwest earning < $50-70k, your average single family home in the Bay Area brings in $200-300k+. So it's not unreasonable given the geography. Just to give perspective, a public teacher's salary is approaching $100k, so you can imagine other traditional white collar jobs will bring in over $100k easily.
I'm not trying to justify PG&E (I hate them as much as the next guy), but we have to consider the whole picture.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
As an electric car owner on PG&E you are entitled to get the EV-2A rate. That's 24 cents/kWh from midnight to 3pm, but 53 cents in summer from 4pm to 9, and not much better in the shoulder hours.
Unless you have no choice but to use a lot of power in the late afternoon and evening, this is a no brainer. Charge your car, run your dryer, pump your pool all in the off hours. You will save a lot, and pay a bit extra on those few hot days for AC. It's a win.
kishkaru
Member
As someone who lives in Sunnyvale, it's hard to believe you're recommending a TOU plan over tiered.
Summer months May through October is A/C use at home, it gets very warm. 4pm to 9pm is when the A/C is needed the most, as the home is heat soaked. PG&E knows this well, that's why they designed the plan this way.
You also conveniently omitted that partial-peak from 3pm-midnight is $0.46/kWh on that EV-2A plan. (outside of full-peak 4p-9p).
EV-2A Tarrifs
midnight - 3pm = $0.26/kWh (off-peak)
3pm-4pm, 9pm-midnight = $0.46/kWh (partial-peak)
4pm - 9pm = $0.57/kWh (full-peak)
I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to give up my comfort and sweat until 9pm every day waiting to turn my A/C on.
If you live most of your life between midnight and 3pm, maybe this plan makes sense. But for most families, 4pm (when kids come home) to midnight is the most important.
Summer months May through October is A/C use at home, it gets very warm. 4pm to 9pm is when the A/C is needed the most, as the home is heat soaked. PG&E knows this well, that's why they designed the plan this way.
You also conveniently omitted that partial-peak from 3pm-midnight is $0.46/kWh on that EV-2A plan. (outside of full-peak 4p-9p).
EV-2A Tarrifs
midnight - 3pm = $0.26/kWh (off-peak)
3pm-4pm, 9pm-midnight = $0.46/kWh (partial-peak)
4pm - 9pm = $0.57/kWh (full-peak)
I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to give up my comfort and sweat until 9pm every day waiting to turn my A/C on.
If you live most of your life between midnight and 3pm, maybe this plan makes sense. But for most families, 4pm (when kids come home) to midnight is the most important.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Why is it hard to believe? When I switched from tiered to TOU, my bill went down, even though I added a Tesla to the load! My Tesla cost me negative money on my bill.
Last year was a bit unusual but normally there is not much need to run the AC. I run it upstairs from time to time, it is needed downstairs maybe 5 days a year. I don't give up comfort at all.
Yeah, they keep raising those tarriffs. So it has gotten a lot worse. A year ago it was 13 cents off-peak which was the vast bulk of my power usage. Now it's double. Frankly, it's not clear why the PUC accepts that, but it is what it is, and more and more are putting in solar because of it, which is good.
Compared to 40 cents all the time -- I use a lot of power so I am in the higher tiers -- I will take 25 for 80% of my usage and 47 cents for 20% of it.
You can download a spreadsheet from PG&E of your usage, but I just got the $40 Emporium box which lets me see it in real time, which is going to be useful.
'17-'21 avg household income
San Fran 126k
San Jose 125k
Minneapolis 70k
Chicago 65k
No doubt bay area is alot more expensive place to live, but not 4x as much. Fun site to play with different cities:
That aside, a regulated utility should have costs set relative to production and operating costs, not customer income. Gas (not a regulated utility) is roughly 40% higher there than here, electricity is 300% higher. That's a bit nuts. Midwest EV owners have a huge cost savings charging at home, Bay area not so much.
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IronCoffee_Max
Member
You and I have a very different idea of "reasonable"
Then again…I haven't bought gas in over 2 years. I have no idea what it costs now…
kishkaru
Member
You and I have a very different idea of "reasonable"
Haha, agreed! I pass by the nearby gas station daily and mostly look out of curiosity.
Just got my most recent home PG&E bill. Rates went up again starting 3/1/23. Now $0.425/kWh, up from $0.406/kWh last month.
This is why I think Tesla Superchargers cost of $0.43/kWh - $0.56/kWh in the Bay Area is very reasonable.
Extrapolating the above, I'm looking at roughly ($2.55 + $6.15) * 30 days = $265 in electric costs starting this month.
The above is just for 1 typical winter day. And car was not even charged that day! Add electricity for the car and we're looking at well over $300.
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IronCoffee_Max
Member
I drive about a thousand miles a month. Electricity here is about 11-13 cents a kW. Due to road trips, I’ve done 35k in 2.5 years. We have 3 electric cars. In the last 3 months all of my charging with some trips to the mountains and so on cost me $114 total.
There may be a minimum bar, initial cap/ex sunk cost that an SC needs to clear before local pricing rates COULD bring the price back into what local residential/industrial pricing is. I guess IF they chose to do that. They might see the $$ after payback as very nice high margin revenues and then just NOT bring pricing down closer to residential pricing.
It could also be that the higher pricing is actually to DISCOURAGE SC usage unless when commuting, traveling and encourage ppl to charge at home - where possible and apparently CHEAPER.
Now that Tesla has made Supercharger pricing info available via the app, the benefit of having a separate pricing map is diminished.
But I still think it would be nice if there was a website that maintained a map that visually presented pricing in a way where you could easily compare prices in a particular region at a quick glance.
I wonder if an enterprising programmer could write a program that could scrape pricing info from the app and feed it into a web-based map.(?)
But I still think it would be nice if there was a website that maintained a map that visually presented pricing in a way where you could easily compare prices in a particular region at a quick glance.
I wonder if an enterprising programmer could write a program that could scrape pricing info from the app and feed it into a web-based map.(?)
At one time, ABRP would scrape the pricing data from Tesla's website. I haven't checked recently to see if they've updated it to pull from the Tesla app APIs.
There were comments in this thread a year ago about how ABRP data was prone to be outdated and even those running the site acknowledge they we're struggling trying to keep information. Check back on page 3 for posts from late Apr 2022 like this one.
Originally, Tesla's pricing was per state so it was pretty easy to track, even if someone had to update things manually. Now that the price can vary multiple times per day per supercharger, it's nearly impossible to track without direct access to Tesla's APIs.
RayK
Active Member
Which is why I don't mind paying $0.19/kWh sitting at a local ChargePoint station. And that's the only rate; no off-peak or peak rate. Just $0.19 all day.
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