My electric bill went up $20 last month

So, first full month(May) of owning the LEAF and we have traveled for ~1100 miles. I got my electric bill today and compared it from last year's bill for the same month and the difference was roughly $20 ( no solar panels )! 349kWh vs 492kWh. It doesn't add up because I also charge at work every other week when it is my turn to use the LEAF to carpool. Also, able to trickle charge at some destinations. We have been using the LEAF much more than our other ICE car. The LEAF has become our primary car and the ICE our secondary. Who would have thought? Anyway, so happy about this car. </bragging>

Wow, you must have been doing a lot of charging other than at home. We drove ours about the same amount in the first month and my usage went from 341kWh to 643, nearly doubling our bill.

TT

LOL, I have had a similar experience. I don't have the electric bill to compare yet, but both the Blink charging station and the utility company assure me this will be very inexpensive... why is this not making headlines?!
I look at the Blink and it says something like, averaging twenty cents a charge, that's insanely cheap.

Sadly, our hybrid highlander is just sitting there, waiting for the rare occasion that we need it's added capacity, I may just have to buy it a cover!

g

I think what Tom is trying to tell you is that the OP did not go 1100 miles on 143 kWh of electricity from the wall. Best case would be double that. So he's either charging a lot at work or not using electricity for some other reason. Not a big deal in that $40/month is pretty cheap, but let's not lose touch with reality and mislead people about how much it will cost to run the car.

I do about 1000 miles a month, and now use about 250kwh additional off peak power, which comes out to about $18-20 a month.

My first 15 days cost 1.5 cents/mi.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=663&p=101710#p101710

I have had my car for two electric bills now, and am averaging 800 miles or so a month with no outside charging until today. My bill has gone up about $40, with about 100 KwH in tier 3 for SCEdison users - that is where it starts to get "expensive" at 24 cents a pop. First tier where I live is 12 cents, and until we got the car we never got into tier 2, which is still cheap, but has a small range - like 100 KwH or so.

If we get a seperate meter and 220 charging, we can charge after midnight for 10 cents a KwH, which we may do, but hey, I am used to fueling a Silverado - talk about savings!!!

My first 4 weeks under SDG&E charging at L2 in my garage cost me $30 more. That is about 14% more than previous month, and 38% more than a year ago (all 3 were very cool here). The tier 3 and 4 increase was about $0.29 per kwh. That was for about 700 miles. My old minivan gets about 20 mpg at best, so I saved 35 gallons at $4, or $30-$140 for a net of -$110. That is about a quarter of the monthly loan payment for the LEAF.
Gregg

Interesting posts thus far. We have had our Leaf since 5/28 and have about 300 miles on the car. At first I was charging at L1 and measured with a watt meter. It pulled about 1400+ watts. So I suspect that if I used that method all the time that we would climb in the tiers (We use SCE). I had a 240 volt connection put in the garage and had our L1 unit modified Rev. 2, so that it can plug into 240 volts. For sure we have seen better than half the time needed for charging. In fact when the car said it needed 5 hours of L2 charging it only took 4 for a complete charge. We have solar panels such that we over produce in the summer and then underproduce in the winter. Last year our total bill was about $325 versus the previous year at $2400. So I am interested in whether our charging at L2 will have much of an effect. We are in tier one which is where we want to be. If I start climbing out of tier 1 to tier 2 or tier 3 then I might need to install a seperate panel with a smart meter to take advantage of SCE's special off peak rate of $0.11 kwh price. They also have a off peak useage program where you pay the max during the day and get the min during the night. I tried inputing data into their formula on SCE's web site and it suggested that the cheapest electricity would come from shifting our useage pattern to off peak. So not sure where we will end up. Regardless of which way we go it is kind of fun to experiment with saving energy and saving the planet.
Manny

some utilities make owning the Leaf a dream.

Our municipal utility, LADWP has a wonderful record.
Some of the pluses:

TOU rates
base rate hours run all weekend and from 8pm to 10 am daily
base rate is 10.5 cents summer four months and 11.2 cents winters
you get 2.5 cents off of that if you have a TOU meter for the charger or the whole house
they offer a 2k rebate for installation with a TOU meter
you can bank your PV overage forever, it doesnt cancel out year to year.
you get paid the TOU rate for making power during the day--summertime it is 22 cents (from 1-5pm) and 14 cents a kWh, the 6-hour balance of the day that isnt base.

solar incentives were about 40% two years ago, when I got my panels.

the investor utilities are a rip, and folks should work on their utility commissions to get better deals. having base rates that run for a few hours a day is not right.

I am waiting for my first bill, but at 4-4.5 kWh per mile, I am paying about 2 cents a mile, for anything that doesnt come off my roof.

Should we do a new spreadsheet ... or better yet, to keep it simple, just add one new column to the VIN spreadsheet ? That new column would be the LEAF owner's actual out-of-pocket cents per mile based on at least one full utility cycle since ownership. Might need a second column for a comment to explain unusual circumstance ... and/or name of utility providing service.

( And I am NOT encouraging adding all sorts of other columns with "junky" CarWings efficiency data, etc )

My first bill went up $2 from prior month, $40 up from a year ago, and usage is down 17% from two years ago.

This post may show up as two new topics. Wrong button, sorry.

If I ever get my car, I can tell you exactly how much I draw from the utility. I have a second meter. I have a VIN but no car yet.

Check my signature. Up to now I knew to the penny what it cost me to charge. But just hooked up my EVSE upgrade today and now my charging efficiency will go from 75% to around 85% or so but I lose the ability to track what I actually use.

Add to that moving (have been in the new house for less than a week) so will have no previous electric bill to judge with. Either way even with 75% efficent charging I am less than half the cost of the Prius so I am not complaining

Have not updated stats for a bit but was just under $8 a week and that is averaging 250-300 miles a week

It's costing me right around 2 cents per mile for electricity, on average.

In the first month of ownership, it was costing me about $1.90/day to go 61 miles. That's about $0.031/mi. As compared to the Prius, it would cost roughly $5.00/day for the same 61 miles. I hope my neighbor is happy with the Prius :lol:

DaveinOlyWA said:

Check my signature. Up to now I knew to the penny what it cost me to charge. But just hooked up my EVSE upgrade today and now my charging efficiency will go from 75% to around 85% or so but I lose the ability to track what I actually use.

Add to that moving (have been in the new house for less than a week) so will have no previous electric bill to judge with. Either way even with 75% efficent charging I am less than half the cost of the Prius so I am not complaining

Have not updated stats for a bit but was just under $8 a week and that is averaging 250-300 miles a week

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I've had my upgraded EVSE for a while, and have done a few monitored (using my home meter) L2 charges, and seem to be getting efficiency increases of closer to 15% over L1 (using a kill-o watt).

An 11 bar charge (from having "just lost" the eleventh bar) took over 24 kWh on L1, but required only about 21 kWh (about 22 at the meter, but I used close to 1 kWh on other loads).

When it's convenient, I will shut off all home power use other than the charger, and get a more precise result.

Someone who can conveniently and repeatedly take their LEAF all the way down to "turtle" might get more accurate results.

I am paying about 1 cent / mile with my TOU meter. Switched to TOU once the LEAF arrived and
my power bill reduced by $10 a month. Driving about 1000 miles a month and charging at home.

With the PVs charging the car, my cost is just the cost of the panels, but that will be paid back in about 4 years. If I didn't have the PVs, I would be paying one and a half cents per mile. :mrgreen:

mogur said:

It's costing me right around 2 cents per mile for electricity, on average.

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+1. Got my first full month's (33 days, actually) electric bill on TOU with the Blink (no PV) and we went 1216 miles on 336kWh (all charging at home on super off-peak), costing us $24.06, very close to 2 cents per mile. If we had driven those miles in our old Miata, it would have cost close to $200 in gas.

TT