What are you paying for electricity per kWh?

[Persuader]

£0.05p 00.30-04.30
£0.1331p other times.
https://share.octopus.energy/alive-queen-328

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[Torv]

Nothing! We installed a 13KW Tesla solar system and 3 Tesla Powerwalls. Everything is hunky dory and when PG&E loses power, which it does frequently, my lights stay on (and my neighbors who used to be jealous are quickly doing the same installs).

 

[tigerbalm]

PG&E loses power, which it does frequently

From wildfires?

I have to admit power cuts are super rare here – maybe very local due to a storm – but I can't remember the last one I've had – certainly longer than 10 years ago. I should appreciate that more.

 

[tigerbalm]

£0.05p 00.30-04.30
£0.1331p other times.
https://share.octopus.energy/alive-queen-328

Great prices.

Night rate timespan a little tight though. Here in Ireland it runs from 23.00 until 08.00 and in summer from 00.00 until 09.00 - which enough time to get a good charge in at ~7.4 kW.

 

[Torv]

From wildfires?

I have to admit power cuts are super rare here – maybe very local due to a storm – but I can't remember the last one I've had – certainly longer than 10 years ago. I should appreciate that more.

Yep. And the fact that PG&E is simply a horribly run company that invests nearly nothing in maintaining the grid and therefore loses power regularly during relatively minor wind events and storms, not to mention their on-going struggles with wildfire, which due to their horrible maintenance forces them to cut power to wide swaths of Northern California every fall.

I gotta say Tesla Power has been a game changer for us. Well worth the $40K (less the 30% Federal tax credit).

 

[daveo4EV]

Yep. And the fact that PG&E is simply a horribly run company that invests nearly nothing in maintaining the grid and therefore loses power regularly during relatively minor wind events and storms, not to mention their on-going struggles with wildfire, which due to their horrible maintenance forces them to cut power to wide swaths of Northern California every fall.

I gotta say Tesla Power has been a game changer for us. Well worth the $40K (less the 30% Federal tax credit).

wife and I are quite happy with our Powerwalls for same reason - neighbors finally got jealous of seeing our lights on during an 18 hour outage near Santa Cruz - many many powerwall orders placed next day…

 

[daveo4EV]

it’s important to remember that even if the grid is fossil fuel powered - burning fossil fuels at virtually any powerplant running at scale is a more efficient use of fossil fuels vs. refining + distribution of gasoline…

put simply: take an average year of 15,000 miles driven

@ 28 mpg that’s 32 barrels of oil to drive 15,000 miles (just the refining costs - more if include distribution and other overheads)

or

5,000 kWh of grid power

so you have to ask yourself - which is worse - the cost + overhead to refine 32 barrels of oil - or the cost + overhead to generate 5,000 kwh of power - it’s a very very rare analysis that would suggest generating 5,000 kWh of grid power has more impact than 32 barrels of oil - it is in fact nearly trivial for any commercial scale powerplant to generate 5,000 kwh of power…which will in fact move your Taycan 15,000 miles…and once you factor in that 5,000 kWh of can be generated either 100% green or 100% fossil fuels or any mix in between - it becomes pretty clear the EV is a win even when the grid is still fossil fuel powered.

basically I’ll take the efficiencies and scale of a commercial scale powerplant over the realtive inefficiency of 12-21% efficient ICE engines (with a big skew towards the lower end).

 

[daveo4EV]

NOTE: it takes 535 gallons of gasoline to drive 15,000 miles @ 28 mpg

refineraries use electricity to make gasoline (they are in fact some of the largest consumers of electricity in any economy)

it takes about 3,270 kwh to refine 535 gallons of gasoline

that’s enough power to drive 9,810 miles @ 3 mil/kwh just in the cost to make the gasoline @ the refinery (again we’re not counting the full costs for distribution and other overheads of getting the gasoline into your tank).

with the Taycan it’s only about 1,730 kwh incremental change in overall grid power to drive the EV vs. the gas car…
with the Model 3 it’s actually a net decrease in kWh required to drive 15,000 miles (i..e you use fewer kWh to drive 15,000 miles than the power used to refine 535 gallons of gasoline).

I’m quite comfortable with the efficiency gains and emissions reductions with EV’s even in the face of fossil fuel based powerplants - I’ll take a well run super efficient commerical scale fossil fuel plant generating kWh’s instead of a 100,000,000 million little ICE motors running at various efficiencies and states of repair some with no emission controls at all…and we all know you can generate kWh’s using non-fossil fuel technqiues, you can never ever generate gasoline any other way and you still need vast quantaties of electricity for the refining and distribution process.

 

[daveo4EV]

so the “macro” economic question comes down to this:

which is worse impact?

535 gallons of gasoline

or

5,000 kWh of power

both will get you 15,000 miles driven.

my bet (and the data indicates) is on the 5,000 kWh nearly always coming out ahead of the 535 gallons of gasoline.

 

[chrisk]

so the “macro” economic question comes down to this:

which is worse impact?

535 gallons of gasoline

or

5,000 kWh of power

both will get you 15,000 miles driven.

my bet (and the data indicates) is on the 5,000 kWh nearly always coming out ahead of the 535 gallons of gasoline.

My Macan S 3.0 was averaging 14mpg in city driving, 20mpg at highway and 16mpg mixed and these are without driving it like a Porsche.I have seen similar and numbers from Cayennes. So in real life, ICE cars with similar power as the Taycan will need about to 1000 gallons of gas for 15k miles.

My Taycan 4S at the same routes is averaging 43kwh/100m so it will need 6600kwh for 15k miles

 

[daveo4EV]

My Macan S 3.0 340hp was averaging 14mpg in city driving, 20mpg at highway and 16mpg mixed and these are without driving it like a Porsche
I have seen similar and numbers from Cayennes. So in real life, ICE cars with similar power as the Taycan will need about to 1000 gallons of gas for 15k miles

View attachment 14336

I agree - my analysis paints the best possible picture for an ICE vehicle - and a medium grade picture for the EV - we all know the ICE can be much much worse…

comparing the Taycan to a Macan - it comes out much like the Model 3 - in that you actually use less grid power to drive the Taycan than you do to refine the gasoline to drive the Macan…

I was using the 28 mpg figure since that’s Porsche’s own published efficiency data for certain models of the Panamera which is therefore a 4 door sedan being compared to a 4 door sedan.

but it’s a helpful distillation IMHO for people that are “concerned” (either legitimately or as an anti-EV talking point) that the grid is still fossil fuel based - just because a grid is fossil fuel based does not mean it’s equal or worse than the ICE vehicle - it is in fact true comparing commercial scale power plants to your ford F-150 is a not a valid comparison even though both are fossil fuel based - the commerical scale powerplant is a modern marvel of efficiency vs. an individual vehicle running at relative low efficiencies - this is also true of modern diesel truck based shipping and train freight both of which being commerical and profit driven in their nature have iterated over the years to highly efficient distribution systems…

EV’s are very very strong on the overall efficiency front even with a fossil fuel based grid powering them vs. the total cost of gasoline.

 

[Deleted member 1697]

in the street, many stations of these kind :
7,8€ for 1 hour of 24KW DC (0,31€/KW)
3,4€ for 1 hour of 22KW AC (0,15€/KW)

 

[W1NGE]

Clamp him / her!

 

[Mr. 2021 Taycan]

Central Florida (residential fixed rate) - $0.08 per kWh. 85 kWh usable battery at 100% SOC = $6.80 for a full charge. Range about 225 miles = $0.0272 per mile estimated. You can do the rest of the math based on miles traveled per year.

 

[lubricious]

$0.31443 per kWh for electricity + $0.06639 per kWh for "Electric Generation Charges" in California.

We're charged at $0.24986 for the first 315 kWh. We always go beyond 315 kWh per month, so the next tier costs $0.31443. I'm considering charging the vehicle above and beyond our normal household usage. The $0.06639/kWh is constant.

Thank goodness for free Electrify America for now.

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