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This missing piece of info around SC pricing.

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Nocturnal

Well-Known Member
Supporting Member
Aug 23, 2018
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Deepening Crisis!
Nobody seems to be considering Demand (KW) costs when talking about SC pricing. For high usage equipment like SCs, demand charges can be a sizable component of electrical costs.

Demand charges can easily account for 1/4th or 1/3rd of the entire monthly bill that Tesla pays for even an urban SC. The busier an SC is then those costs are essentially spread out over more charging sessions, slower SCs see the opposite.

Just because you pay X per kWh at home doesn't mean that is what Tesla is paying to charge your car at your local SC. Flat customer charges and taxes can add another 10% on top of that. (not trying to argue one way or the other right now regarding the price increase, just sharing info)
 
Commercial rates incorporate demand and energy charges because commercial load factors vary greatly and it would be an injustice to roll demand charges into kWh for the whole class of customers. Some would over pay their cost to serve and some would under pay. The Residential class of customers have a relatively homogeneous load factor and so their demand charges are rolled into their kWh charge.

Residential customers pay demand charges too but as a part of their kWh charge, not separately. So if the kWh charged at a Supercharger reflects the billed amount divided by the kWh used then it's all good.
 
Commercial rates incorporate demand and energy charges because commercial load factors vary greatly and it would be an injustice to roll demand charges into kWh for the whole class of customers. Some would over pay their cost to serve and some would under pay. The Residential class of customers have a relatively homogeneous load factor and so their demand charges are rolled into their kWh charge.

Residential customers pay demand charges too but as a part of their kWh charge, not separately. So if the kWh charged at a Supercharger reflects the billed amount divided by the kWh used then it's all good.
I'm not getting your point. My point is that most people are just looking at "kWh charge" and think that Tesla is paying a similar rate to what they do at home.

I guess you can say that Res customers pay demand, but it's not like their energy charges are higher to compensate for that. Comparing Kansas small commercial to Residential you have about 10 cents per kWh for residential (summer) and a tiered rate that goes from 14 cents, to 6.5 cents, to 5.5 cents for small commercial. Residential rarely produce large amounts of demand.
 
I am saying that ALL customers pay for demand and energy. For Residential customers it is rolled into the kWh cost. For commercial it is itemized. For Commercial you can compare total energy cost to residential by taking the billed amount and divding by the kWh consumption.

Rolling demand cost into the residential kWh cost means you do not have to measure demand for each customer to bill them. A demand meter costs several times as much as an energy meter. At one time we had about 8 times as many residential customers as commercial.
 
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Reactions: pilotSteve
Free supercharging was a perk to encourage adoptation of new tech as we're cheap rates at first.
Now that Tesla is trying to wean the market off that folks are freaking out they feel entitled to an unsustainable practice.

Tesla has to pay substantial install costs, potential leasing beyond electrical costs, maintenance, insurance all kinds of stuff, not to mention have some money left for all the expansion everyone wants.
 
Meter costs are not the whole story. In a location with competition, anyone can develop any rate. But they have to convince someone to get on that rate to buy from them or they will have no business. So whatever the public wants that is what competition will provide. What does the public want? Cost based rates that vary based on season, time of day, and load factor? No, that is way too complicated. Look at your cell phone bill. Flat rate for service. Maybe a few out there with data rates but no TOU or charge by minute or by text. Same with electricity. Have a look at powertochoose.org that is Texas competitive rates. Most are pretty simple kWh only rates with one year contracts. Some have tiers but I know of no residential demand rates on that site. Sure in a regulated environment the PUC may convince the utility to implement demand based rates but few ratepayers will understand them.