Very High Electric Bill

[mbhforum]

So, I just got my first electric bill since I got my Tesla. From January 22-March 23rd, I used 2250kwh for my house. For the same exact period a year earlier, I only used up 1100kwh. While we've had a cold winter in NY, I have gas heating. I use a 14-50 to charge.

I've only put on around 1,500 miles so far, and I do tend to charge it every night, which usually only takes 2-3 hours to get to 90%. My wife did start a new business in December where she does a lot of vinyl printing with a cricuit machine and heat press, so that might contribute a little, but I can't imagine much.

Does this seem right?

 

[Lbkmxp100d]

If you own a 100kw battery and according to your info you would have charged from zero to 100% 11.5X. I seriously doubt the Tesla is to blame for your increase in usage. You have to look at other electricity using appliances (a/c, washer/dryer, dishwasher, etc...).

I own a P100DL and have driven 10k miles since dec 20th and I have not noticed any significant increase in electrical usage.

 

[Snerruc]

If the 1500 miles were all during this period, you probably used about 500 kWh for the car including vampire and charging loss. This is assuming all charging was at home and your average watts/ mi were 300 or less. Add 10-15% if you are about 330. Might be the heat press uses more than you think.

 

[Hans Allis]

1500 miles * 0.45 kWh/mile = 675 kWh. Explains a significant part of the increase. I'd get a power meter to plug between the wall outlet and any device to figure out how much the vinyl related machinery uses, but I guess the Tesla's the main cause.

Luckily you paid $0 in gas for the Tesla

 

[mbhforum]

Yes, all charging was at home. I got the car right around the date the meter reading started.

 

[martinicus]

If you can, install a real-time sensor device on your circuit breaker. I have a Neurio but other people on here are using Sense. It's great to see exactly the patterns and usage spikes (50 amps charging tesla dwarfs everything else in my house, as we have natural gas). I can also see my solar production in the same graph.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I only use 5-6 kWh driving my Tesla round-trip on a typical work day. Even with two Teslas, I think we only average about 20 kWh per day for both cars combined.
I looked up a heat press than they can use a lot of energy: Lab Report: Energy Consumption | Printwear
If the heat press is used for heavily 8 hours a day, it could use 14 kWh a day. If the heat press is 120 volts, you could easily use a Kill-a-watt or something similar to measure how much power it is using. There are lots of other devices you could use to measure energy use for the whole house, various circuits, etc. but the Kill-A-Watt

 

[mbhforum]

Correction, it's 1200 miles I've driven, not 1500. My wife doesn't use the heat press that much. Maybe a few hours a week at most. She uses the cricuit more. I might need to get some voltage monitoring going...

 

[McRat]

Do you have a Time Of Use plan available from your utility or a specific EV charging plan?

We charge 2-3 EV's each night and our power bill is lower than before we bought the first one.

How did that happen? We programmed other devices to operate in the EV time window and minimized power use at the peak hours.

 

[croman]

Vampire drain in cold areas is significant (in December and January when it was 26F avg, I was losing around 6kwh of energy per day). That's 180kwh per month in wasted energy. I did not have this issue with a leaf.

The car also is less efficient. I am now averaging 293wh/mi vs. 370s in deep winter (or higher depending on where/how I was driving). Less efficiency means your 1200 miles used up to 500kwh. I can't explain the other electric usage other than being at home instead of at work uses electricity in other ways (winter = lights on dark days, especially in your neck of the woods).

 

[mbhforum]

I just thought of something. I have a script polling the Tesla API every minute from my Mac. I have a feeling this might be causing the vampire drain!

 

[DarkMatter]

The Cricut won't use that much power. Heat press will matter, sure, but again shouldn't be that much power. Sounds like you have some detective work to do. With three EVs in the house we still only used 1323 kWh last month. Adding the Tesla added around 400 kWh/month of usage.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I just thought of something. I have a script polling the Tesla API every minute from my Mac. I have a feeling this might be causing the vampire drain!

How much vampire drain were you seeing per day? My Model S only loses 2-3 miles per day.

Also, you mentioned gas heat, but is it hot water or forced air? If forced air, the furnace blowers would be running a lot more in the colder months.

 

[mbhforum]

How much vampire drain were you seeing per day? My Model S only loses 2-3 miles per day.

Also, you mentioned gas heat, but is it hot water or forced air? If forced air, the furnace blowers would be running a lot more in the colder months.

I am running hot water heat. How am I able to tell how much vampire drain I am using?

 

[thefortunes]

So, I just got my first electric bill since I got my Tesla. From January 22-March 23rd, I used 2250kwh for my house. For the same exact period a year earlier, I only used up 1100kwh. While we've had a cold winter in NY, I have gas heating. I use a 14-50 to charge.

I've only put on around 1,500 miles so far, and I do tend to charge it every night, which usually only takes 2-3 hours to get to 90%. My wife did start a new business in December where she does a lot of vinyl printing with a cricuit machine and heat press, so that might contribute a little, but I can't imagine much.

Does this seem right?

Something isn't adding up on your charge pattern.

You say you have driven about 1200 miles so far (from a later post). That is about 20 miles per day for the 2 months you have owned the car. To replace 20 miles of driving (at 450 Wh/mi which is probably reasonable for NY in winter with short drives) should only take 1 hour of charging on your NEMA 14-50.

Math:
20miles x 450Wh/mi = 9 kWh used / 90% efficiency charging = 10 kWh consumed at the wall
NEMA 14-50 charges at 40amps * 240volts = 9.6kW per hour

It appears that your vampire losses are doubling-tripling (based on your comment about 2-3 hours of charging per night) your electric consumption for the Tesla.

Edited to add: If you are polling the car every minute that will definitely dramatically increase your vampire losses as the car will not be allowed to go to sleep. There are many threads about vampire losses and the causes - it appears you have some reading to do

 

[MichFin]

You should be getting anywhere from 2-3 miles per KWH depending on how aggressively you drive. Either way that's about 400-600 KWH and not 1200+. You should look at your bill and see if it was estimated in previous months. This happens sometimes when they don't take regular meter readings so when they do it's unpredictable.

 

[mbhforum]

I noticed my car takes 2.5-3 hours to charge usually from a 30 mile round trip commute. I am stopping my 1 minute API polling and will report back and see if I notice an improvement.

I drive mostly AP as it's most highway driving at 70mph with climate turned on. My readings are actual every 2 months, not estimates. They used to estimate every other month, now they just do actual's every other month and don't report on estimates.

 

[K-MTG]

Is your utility on a tier plan? For instance my SCE is defaulted on a tier plan (1-4), if I didn't switch to the EV rate plan. I would be paying $0.45 on tier 4 per kw instead of $0.12 as I do on their EV plan.

 

[thefortunes]

I noticed my car takes 2.5-3 hours to charge usually from a 30 mile round trip commute. I am stopping my 1 minute API polling and will report back and see if I notice an improvement.

I drive mostly AP as it's most highway driving at 70mph with climate turned on. My readings are actual every 2 months, not estimates. They used to estimate every other month, now they just do actual's every other month and don't report on estimates.

See my post #15. Your vampire losses are significant. What does the car say your lifetime Wh/mi is?

 

[rpo]

I have a P90DL (which is driven aggressively), an electric water heater, and electric dryer. My usage runs about 1,000 kWh per month, so your total is not that far off. If you have tiered electricity rates, it may hit the pocketbook hard, but it's still cheaper than gas anywhere in the country. I only spend $50/month on electricity here.