EVA vs E6

Hi All,

In California PG&E is removing E6 Rate schedule. I have a leaf as well as solar panels.

I am in dilemma that shld i stick to EVA or more to E6 as after May 30th its not available but people who go to E6 rate schedule before May 30th will get to stay on it till 2022.


Any advise will be appreciated.
Supriya

I think it depends on your situation. If you charge your car regularly, and don't get penalized much by the different EVA TOU peak pricing hours, stick with EVA.

However, if you charge your car on a limited basis at home then you might gain more savings by being on the E-6 rates as the Peak pricing ends earlier in the evening when most people are home...The E6 rates are higher off peak than EVA but have a earlier peak rate times.

We chose to stick with E6 as we only charge our Leaf once every 10-14 days, so the lower off peak EVA night time rates are not useful for us.

The other thing to consider is that E6 is also tiered, where EVA isn't, which can save you even more money if you happen to fall into the higher E6 tiers at all.

We have solar panels that are sized to eliminate 80-90% of our expected use, so we don't anticipate needing to worry about any E6 tiers.

If we charged the Leaf, or another EV, on a frequent basis, then I expect we might have some savings if we switched to EVA

Thanks EVTIFOSI

We do charge our car every night. I switched to EVA in feb from E6 and will switch back to E6 which will be effective on June 8th, 2016.

I will have 3-4 months of data to compare.

Our true up showed that we used 768kwh more than what we produced at the end of year and ended up paying 11cents beside $88 delivery charges .

If EV6 doesn't work out that i will switch back to EVA. I definitely need data to compare.

Thanks
Supriya

suppy2010,

It sounds like you're doing what I would recommend. Switch to E-6 while you can and compare your bills in a few months. You can always switch back to EV-A, you can never switch to E-6 once it goes away. (Though E-6 itself starts phasing out in 2020, gone completely in 2022).

Which is better for you depends on how much you charge your Leaf, and since it sounds like you charge a lot, EV-A may be better. Basically it's a question of which works out to be larger -- the savings from the lower overnight charging rate, vs. the bigger benefit of the better TOU time periods for E-6.

You can download your usage data (in 1-hour or 15-minute increments) -- look for the "green button" icon on the website. You can use that to build a spreadsheet and calculate what you would have paid, but it certainly takes some work. Actually, I just remembered that there's a great program called PG&E Toolkit for iPad. It's about $10, but it'll download all your usage data and show you what your bill would have been (and the breakdown) on every rate plan. So that may give you your answer, with the caveat that if you were actually on E-6 (rather than EV-A), you might have adjusted your usage times slightly based on the different rate schedule. But it should quickly answer your question as to what E-6 would have cost you if you behavior didn't change.

I'm like evtifosi -- I charge infrequently, and at the moment I still have the No Charge to Charge program, so I almost never charge at home. So E-6 is the clear winner for me, even before solar -- at least in the winter. This will be my first summer on E-6 so we'll see if it holds up as cheaper than EV-A.

Thank you Itbighorn.

I will try the app and post some results and see how it goes.

I'm currently on E-6 (with SmartRate) and considering switching to EV-A. LEAF delivered 5/18/16. No solar panels.

Oversimplifying PG&E's complicated rates, and assuming we'll spend a lot of time in Tier 3, this is what an E-6 day might look like (in the summer). This incorporates the 3.1-cent reduction for being on the SmartRate plan:



This is what an EV-A day would look like:



I guess the only smart thing to do is wait a year and use PG&E's rate comparison tool (it's based on 12 months of info).

I highly recommend PG&E Toolkit for the iPad for doing comparisons on existing history. It's not as good for forecasting a change in the future, but for an apples to apples comparison of the past, it's really simple and only about $10.

All through winter E-6 rates (no solar), E-6 has been cheaper for me than EV-A, and EV-A cheaper than E-1. Now come summer rates and I find that E-6 is a little bit more expensive than E-1, and EV-A more expensive than E-6.

Right now I charge relatively little at home thanks to NCTC, but I still do my shift-able loads (mainly Leaf charging) after midnight or on weekends, which makes it EV-A optimized too. In a couple months I'll be adding solar, so that'll change things a lot, and about 17 months after that my NCTC will end and I'll charge almost exclusively at home. So will nee to re-examine after that. Still, I charge infrequently so I expect E-6 will be better for me at least until the TOU hours start shifting in 2020.

I had the same question E-6 or EV-A. I have 20 panels generate 30kWh/day and charge my leaf every night, high use pool-A/C.... Did my own analysis in excel after 6 hours of formulas and trying to cut and past data came to the conclusion that EVA should be quiet a bit cheaper. Read this thread downloaded the Ap to compare my work against its results and the Ap is so far showing me E6 is slightly cheaper.

The Ap is a great way to monitor what if's with PGE rates. PGE has made the calculations with TOU and tiered rates so complicated that you need a full time analyst to get it all correctly calculated. I work in the energy sector have a College degree and couldn't get it calculated spot on. The ap does all of that. So my situation going forward is daily look at the ap, and not switch to EVA until it is clearly a better fit.

Additionally its pointing out I should have added more solar panels... I had never considered owning a EV when adding the panels.

rcrummett said:

PGE has made the calculations with TOU and tiered rates so complicated that you need a full time analyst to get it all correctly calculated.

Click to expand...

And not by accident, I might add. One other thing I notice is that even the lowest rates on most TOU plans in CA is higher than the constant rate I pay here in VA.

rcrummett said:

Additionally its pointing out I should have added more solar panels... I had never considered owning a EV when adding the panels.

Click to expand...

My lovely wife saved me from this eventuality. She said "Go ahead and install the max amount you can since you know you will want to add more later."

RegGuheert said:

rcrummett said:

PGE has made the calculations with TOU and tiered rates so complicated that you need a full time analyst to get it all correctly calculated.

Click to expand...

And not by accident, I might add. One other thing I notice is that even the lowest rates on most TOU plans in CA is higher than the constant rate I pay here in VA.

Click to expand...

Yep.

For reference, page 2 of http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-6.pdf has E-6 rates and page 4 has the time bands and baseline quantities. I'm in area X, code B, so those are my daily allotments for baseline. Multiply by 30 or 31 billing days/month to know how many kWh are allowed per month so that I can be charged at baseline vs. higher tiers.

The ridiculous rates and byzantine structure are part of why some of us call them Pacific Gouge and Extort.