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TimeHorse

Well-known member
Joined
May 13, 2010
Messages
999
Since I've been posting a lot about Dominion VA Power in the other forum but really that topic is more appropriate here, though there aren't any topics for Utilities outside of California, I thought it may be useful to have a thread specifically for those of us using Dominion, Pepco, etc.

So what are some of the other utilities people are using? Are they more friendly, less friendly or indifferent to EVs?

I spoke to Dominion yesterday about a dual-meter configuration and they said it was possible but would depend on locality (which isn't surprising) but they had to transfer me to the North Carolina branch to get some answers about this, which clearly means there's very little if any demand in Virginia for it. Then again, there aren't that many EVs in Virginia, are there, except for that yellow Tesla I once saw in Arlington. :)
 
I am in VA on dominion power also and looking into adding service to a small garage on my property(its much closer to the line that goes to my house ) wouldnt make sense to trench 400ft from the house instead of having dominion pull a new line to it 100ft and install a TOU meter

thats my hope anyway
 
http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/10/12/electric-cars-thrill-worry?utm_source=2010_12_13&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=IU_DAILY&utm_term=Original-Member

Electric Cars Thrill, Worry
Dec 12 - Tulsa World

The first mass-market electric cars are going on sale this month, and the nation's electric utilities couldn't be more thrilled - or worried.

Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood. That has utilities in parts of California, Texas and North Carolina scrambling to upgrade transformers and other equipment in neighborhoods where the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt are expected to be in high demand.

Not since air conditioning spread across the country in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity. Last year, Americans spent $325 billion on gasoline, and utilities would love even a small piece of that market.
The main obstacles to wide-scale use of electric cars are high cost and limited range, at least until a network of charging stations is built. But utility executives fret that difficulties keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers - and their neighbors - could slow the growth of this new niche.

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression," says Mike Rowand, who is in charge of electric vehicle planning at Duke Energy.

Auto executives say it's inevitable that utilities will experience some difficulties early on. "We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now," says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America.
Electric cars run on big batteries that are charged by plugging into a standard wall socket or a more powerful charging station. A combined 30,000 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts are expected to be sold over the next year. Over the next two years, Ford, Toyota and every other major automaker also plan to offer electric cars.

Governments are promoting the expensive technology as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, cut greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. Congress is offering electric car buyers a $7,500 tax credit, and some states and cities provide additional subsidies that can total $8,000. The Leaf sells for $33,000 and the Volt sells for $41,000.

Electric cars produce no emissions, but the electricity they are charged with is made mostly from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas that do. Still, electric cars produce two-thirds fewer greenhouse gas emissions, on average, than a similarly sized car that runs on gasoline, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Driving 10,000 miles on electricity will use about 2,500 kilowatt- hours, or 20 percent more than the average annual consumption of U.S. homes. At an average utility rate of 11 cents per kilowatt- hour, that's $275 for a year of fuel, equivalent to about 70 cents per gallon of gasoline.

"Electric vehicles have the potential to completely transform our business," says David Owens, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group.

Nationwide, utilities have enough power plants and equipment to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars. Problems could crop up long before that many are sold, though, because of a phenomenon carmakers and utilities call "clustering."
Electric vehicle clusters are expected in neighborhoods where:
• Generous subsidies are offered by states and localities
• Weather is mild, because batteries tend to perform better in warmer climates
• High-income and environmentally conscious commuters live
So while states like North Dakota and Montana may see very few electric cars, California cities like Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and Monrovia could see several vehicles on a block. SoCal Edison expects to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015. California has set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020.

Progress Energy is expecting electric car clusters to form in Raleigh, Cary and Asheville, N.C., and around Orlando and Tampa, Fla. Duke Energy is expecting the same in Charlotte and Indianapolis. The entire territory of Austin Energy in Texas will likely be a hot spot.

Adding electric vehicles to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses.

"We're talking about doubling the load of a conventional home," says Karl Rabago, who leads Austin Energy's electric vehicle- readiness program. "It's big."

How big depends on the size of the battery in the car, and how fast the car is charged. When plugged into a standard 120-volt socket, the electric car will draw 1,500 watts. By comparison, a medium-sized air conditioner or a microwave oven will draw about 1,000 watts.

But the car can be charged faster, and therefore draw more power, when plugged into a home charging station.
 
Do they just make these numbers up?
Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house.
Plugged into a socket, an electric car will pull about 1400 watts. An electric clothes dryer will pull about 4400 watts. Does that mean that a clothes dryer draws as much power as three houses?

The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood.
Yeah, you gotta worry about that. Unknowing housewives could start their evil dryers right in the middle of the peak afternoon period, and then BOOM! On the other hand, when my meek little LEAF starts charging in the middle of the night the neighborhood's overall power use is very low, so I'm sure it won't knock out anything.

Driving 10,000 miles on electricity will use about 2,500 kilowatt- hours, or 20 percent more than the average annual consumption of U.S. homes.
Wait a minute. 2,000 kWh/year for the average house? The numbers I'm seeing from various websites are closer to 5 times as high as that. My own home, despite using natural gas for furnace, hot water, and much of the cooking, consumes about 17,000 kWh/year.
 
planet4ever said:
Do they just make these numbers up?
Driving 10,000 miles on electricity will use about 2,500 kilowatt- hours, or 20 percent more than the average annual consumption of U.S. homes.
Wait a minute. 2,000 kWh/year for the average house? The numbers I'm seeing from various websites are closer to 5 times as high as that. My own home, despite using natural gas for furnace, hot water, and much of the cooking, consumes about 17,000 kWh/year.
These numbers came from an AP article that was later corrected. The "20 percent more than" was changed to "20 percent of". In other words, what the author meant to say was that adding an EV would increase the average home's electric consumption by 20 percent. Unfortunately, no one that picked up the original article picked up the correction.

There's a kernel of truth with respect to "clustering", though. Once the neighbors find out how much you're not spending on gasoline, they'll want one too.
 
Here's a statistic you can rock:

It takes 7.4 KWh of electricity to refine one gallon of crude to gasoline. That exact same electricity will allow my LEAF to travel about 30 miles. Since the average fuel economy of a gas vehicle is about 26 MPG, I will actually reduce the needs of our electrical grid! :D
 
i am using Puget Sound Energy. they do gas and electric here and are probably the most unfriendly utility in the area but also the biggest.

they charge on volume, not TOU and probably havent a clue as to EVs yet since i am the only one in the county with a Leaf. i will be meeting with Joe an EV advocate who owns pluginolympia.com later this week. he has solar so i will ask what kind of deal he gets (if any)
 
DarkStar said:
It takes 7.4 KWh of electricity to refine one gallon of crude to gasoline. That exact same electricity will allow my LEAF to travel about 30 miles. Since the average fuel economy of a gas vehicle is about 26 MPG, I will actually reduce the needs of our electrical grid! :D
Actually, I think it's the equivalent of 7.4 kWh of energy - the same way as the LEAF gets 99 MPGe. In other words, it's usually refinery byproducts that supply the energy used to refine gasoline, not electricity from the grid.

There's a thread somewhere that discusses this in quite some depth... if only I could find it...
 
drees said:
DarkStar said:
It takes 7.4 KWh of electricity to refine one gallon of crude to gasoline. That exact same electricity will allow my LEAF to travel about 30 miles. Since the average fuel economy of a gas vehicle is about 26 MPG, I will actually reduce the needs of our electrical grid! :D
Actually, I think it's the equivalent of 7.4 kWh of energy - the same way as the LEAF gets 99 MPGe. In other words, it's usually refinery byproducts that supply the energy used to refine gasoline, not electricity from the grid.

There's a thread somewhere that discusses this in quite some depth... if only I could find it...
No, the EPA uses the equivalent of 33.7 KWh of energy in one gallon of gasoline. Physically, it takes 7.4 KWh of electricity to "create" one gallon of gasoline.
 
DarkStar said:
No, the EPA uses the equivalent of 33.7 KWh of energy in one gallon of gasoline. Physically, it takes 7.4 KWh of electricity to "create" one gallon of gasoline.

More info than you would want to read ;)

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=820
 
Rather than start a brand new thread as the ramp up in the midwest is probably going to be slow ... thought I would comment a bit about electric rates here around Chicago. Our power utility (ComEd) within the last year was required to let competitors (basically electricity resellers) into the market so I was able to lock in an overall rate of 6.6 cents/KWh for the next 18 months that's a flat rate (no peak or off-peak requirements) versus about 7.9 cents which is where ComEd is at today (ComEd's rate changes monthly -- up and down; hasn't been below 6.6 in a few years). Although I'm not anticipating huge swings in electric usage due to plugging in the LEAF, I'll be looking to see what others have seen since they've had their cars for some time now. We see a few mentions of improving the grid as well as adding quick charge stations (Walgreen's put two downtown) but nothing really noteworthy as of yet around here --- again, the recent move by Nissan to open up the Chicago market much sooner was a bit of surprise and I have a quote waiting for my approval so may become an owner much sooner. I'm even still hedging a bit on the whole AV-based EV charging unit as I think our daily mileage may not need it -- the longest may be on one day over a weekend so plenty of time for it to recover for the work commute. If any others in the midwest can share their own expectations or experiences from the utilities we can add the utilities themselves in their own thread. As the national average is 11 cents/KWh we're probably doing pretty good -- of course that doesn't include delivery (~ 2 cents/KWh) and taxes but still ...
 
My out the door cost is 10.2 cents
/kwh and is higher than the eastern part of the state but sounds like your rates are pretty good.

Either way u would be better by double over a Pruis as far as cents per mile cost
 
My electric company is Alameda Power, in Alameda, CA. Our small town is an island in the San Francisco Bay, near Oakland and Berkeley (across the bridge from San Francisco). All the surrounding cities have PG&E, but we have our own power co. The City owns it, so I suppose I have to call it Socialist, and we all know how Socialism is evil and capitalism is good, except that our electric rates are vastly lower than the PG&E rates:
Tier I: 10 cents
Tier II: 12 cents
Tier III: 19 cents

They don't have SmartMeters. Instead, they have an EV program that's based on the honor system: You agree to charge only during off-peak, which is after 8 PM on weekdays. In return, they take $15.00 off of your bill. But if you prove you use a lot more EV power, they'll discount you further (the discount is supposed to be 6 cents/kWh). In my case, my Prius takes up a whopping 3.2 kWh per charge, or roughly 100 kWh/month. If that's all Tier III power, it costs $19, or $4 with my rebate. If I stay within Tier II, I'll make a profit on my electric car charging. My advice: Move to Alameda.
 
At the risk of you all hating me, we have a municipal utility here in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and as an all electric house we get a huge discount from October 1 - May 31 to help us afford heating. Our normal rate is 6.31 cents/kWh, but in winter months after the first 800 kWh we pay only 2.85 cents/kWh which makes the new Leaf we bought this week very very cheap to charge. :)
 
Psyclonus said:
At the risk of you all hating me, we have a municipal utility here in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and as an all electric house we get a huge discount from October 1 - May 31 to help us afford heating. Our normal rate is 6.31 cents/kWh, but in winter months after the first 800 kWh we pay only 2.85 cents/kWh which makes the new Leaf we bought this week very very cheap to charge. :)

i would gladly pay your "normal" rate
 
Psyclonus said:
At the risk of you all hating me, we have a municipal utility here in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and as an all electric house we get a huge discount from October 1 - May 31 to help us afford heating. Our normal rate is 6.31 cents/kWh, but in winter months after the first 800 kWh we pay only 2.85 cents/kWh which makes the new Leaf we bought this week very very cheap to charge. :)
Wow! Very cheap!

Compare that to ripoff PG&E at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=261198#p261198" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and old rates at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=155519#p155519" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
 
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