Try Figuring out DTE ENERGY KILOWATT RATE So Many Factors

[MIKEA]

They make it so hard to figure out what I will pay for each Kilowatt just for charging EV.
Sure I can divide 971 kilowatts by cost 156.70 and come up with 16.3 cents per Kilowatt but thats not true.
So Many other factors and recovery charges.
No factors % for those Figures .
I would pay service charges and renewable energy costs already so those don't would not count right off the bat.
AAAAUUUUGGGGG :roll:

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[smkettner]

Actually 16.3 is the correct number. There are two tiers but they are so close I would ignore them as noise.

 

[planet4ever]

It depends on how much of the energy is going to the car. The way to look at it is to think about how much you would have paid for electricity if you didn't have the car and compare that to what you do pay with the car. When you look at it that way you can ignore the fixed monthly charges, as you said.

If you are putting 444kWh or less into the car, then your house without the car would use up all of that first tier electricity, and all of the car's electricity is really costing you at the second tier rate. So 0.08257 + 0.05003 + 0.002711 = 0.135311.

You are paying sales tax on that, and it appears your rate is 5%, so 0.135311 * 1.05 = 0.14207655.

So if you are pulling 14kWh/day or less for the car, I'd say your rate for charging the LEAF is about 14.2¢/kWh.

If you are using 15kWh/day or more the rate would edge down slightly, depending on how much you use, but it's never going to drop more than about a tenth of a cent.

Ray

 

[mikeyd810]

So you can get an idea here's an example of my TOU meter and regular meter from DTE. You'll see some off peak and on peak stats for charging (215 KWH and 56 KWH) respectively. Distribution is almost a cent cheaper so that helps a bit as well.

 

[MIKEA]

Thanks for the replies this helps !!!!

 

[swaltner]

When I fill out my homegrown spreadsheet to track vehicle expenses on the Leaf on a monthly basis, I subtract off the base service fee before calculating the per-kWh rate. You pay this fee, even if you use no electricity, which is common since I have solar panels and am on Net Metering. For me, this is $9/month. Looking at your bill, it looks like you pay $6/month for this "Service Charge". That would mean your average price per kWh is $150.70/971kWh ($0.155/kWh).

Also note that you have at least two tiers on your electricity. You pay one rate for the first 527 kWh you consume and then another higher rate for any extra electricity. With the bill you have shown, you can't really tell if there is a third tier or not. With this multi-tier rate, any electricity you use to charge the Leaf should likely be thought of as coming from the most expensive tier. This means your marginal price/kWh is actually really $0.16250/kWh

($156.70 - $6.00 - $36.43 - 36.66) / 971 + 0.08257 = 0.16250

That's how I would track it at least....

 

[planet4ever]

This means your marginal price/kWh is actually really $0.16250/kWh
($156.70 - $6.00 - $36.43 - 36.66) / 971 + 0.08257 = 0.16250

I agreed with your analysis, but that seemed a very odd way to apply it. Did you really mean, as your numbers show, that the marginal price includes all delivery charges (except the service charge) and no supply charges (except the surcharges)?? In line with your statement that, "any electricity you use to charge the Leaf should likely be thought of as coming from the most expensive tier", shouldn't you have included the 2nd tier supply charge and excluded the 1st tier delivery charge?

If you are putting 444kWh or less into the car, then your house without the car would use up all of that first tier electricity, and all of the car's electricity is really costing you at the second tier rate. So 0.08257 + 0.05003 + 0.002711 = 0.135311.
You are paying sales tax on that, and it appears your rate is 5%, so 0.135311 * 1.05 = 0.14207655.

Note that my calculation includes only part of the tax, and none of the surcharges. Yours includes all of the tax and surcharges. The tax part seems obvious to me, but I'm not sure of the surcharges. Are they based purely on time, or on energy? I assumed time, since there are no kWh calculations next to them.

Ray

 

[swaltner]

Looking closer, I guess you would also remove the "Renewable Energy Plan Surchg ($3.00)", "VHWF Credit (-$1.59)", and "LIEAF Factor ($0.99) when calculating the per kWh fees to add onto the "Power Supply Energy" rates to get your actual rates. These fees are the same between the two bills shown, so they are part of the "base fees" you pay simply to have electricity at your house. Since the other fees on your bill vary by usage (looking at the other bill shown), yo can't really call them "base fees"

You could subtract off the sales tax as a "base fee" when calculating your per-kWh delivery/surcharge rates and then add it back in after calculating the surcharges, so your per-kWh price doesn't include sales tax on the ~$8.50 of base fees. However, at this point, you're getting down into the fractions of a penny, so how critical is it? Also, I've found that electric bills have odd sales tax applied to them. The $156.70 electric bill at the beginning of this thread only was charged 3.8% sales tax if sales tax was paid on the bill's total amount. I suspect your sales tax rates aren't really that low. Only portions of electric bills gets charged sales tax, and even then, it's not at the normal sales tax rate. For example, I'm on Net Metering with a 5 kW solar system. 8 or 9 months out of the year, my bill comes to $9.02. $9.00 for the connect fee and $0.02 for sales tax. That comes out to 0.22% sales tax, even though the normal sales tax rate around here is between 7% and 8.5% (depending upon the county and city). So, while I'm paying sales tax on my bill, it's either a very low rate for some reason or they are only charging me sales tax on something like 29 cents of the $9 line item on my bill.

Basically a long way of saying that once you subtract off the major recurring fees that don't vary based on your usage, you'll get pretty close to your actual rates. Without having access to the formulas the electric company is using, it's pretty tough (and likely of limited value) to get down to the precision of tenths of a penny per kWh.