PG&E EV-A rate???

[kokimatsing]

Hello everybody. I am a new Ford Focus Electric owner and I love it!

For my question, does anybody here live in CA under PG&E and has the EV-A rate? Isn't this the same as a regular household rate where 11 pm to 7 am is charged off peak ( for any other electrical appliance)?

PG&E website seems to claim benefit to this rate for electric cars provided I charge off-peak, but is there anything else I am missing here? I do not have that rate but have been charging from 11 pm to 7 am only.

Thanks!!!

 

[campfamily]

I'm with SCE, and they offer a similar plan. You have to request to change to that plan, it is not automatic. Negative to that plan is that the rates during the day go up.....way up. Since my wife runs a business from our home, our A/C is typically running in the afternoon when the rates are the highest. It did not make sense for us. However, I charge later at night simply to reduce the impact on the power grid, do my charging when overall useage is lower.

Keith

 

[SpecVStrom]

Hello everybody. I am a new Ford Focus Electric owner and I love it!

For my question, does anybody here live in CA under PG&E and has the EV-A rate? Isn't this the same as a regular household rate where 11 pm to 7 am is charged off peak ( for any other electrical appliance)?

PG&E website seems to claim benefit to this rate for electric cars provided I charge off-peak, but is there anything else I am missing here? I do not have that rate but have been charging from 11 pm to 7 am only.

Thanks!!!

Hello,

I have the EVA rate schedule with PG&E here in Sonoma County CA.
Let's get the choices straight.
Most people have residential tiered base plan. You pay the same rate per kilowatt hour regardless of time of day, until your total usage exceeds the current tier. Then, you pay a progressively higher rate regardless of time of day until you've used up that tiers' allotment.. and so on.
PG&E offers 2 Electric Vehicle rates:
EVA and EVB
EVA is a time of use rate without tiers where the rates from 11pm-7am are about 50% lower than first tier residential. But, the rates are about 300% of that during peak hours, 2pm-11pm.
EVB is a rate plan tied to a specific watt-hour meter installed and used solely for charging EV's.
Without changing to an EV rate, charging at night will not save you anything. Your total usage for the month determines how much you pay by what tier you progress to.

My summer usage before the FFE and EVA was about $100 per month combined power usage. Gas and electric. After Getting the FFE and changing to the EVA plan, my combined bill is about $150. For every workday of the month, I charge for about 2.5 hrs. on average for about 60 miles of travel at an average speed of 55 mph. As you can see, it costs about $2.10 to fully charge from 25 mi left on the GOM.
Luckily, I don't have a big family with heavy power use during peak hours, so I make out great. A large family with a lot of high appliance power use during peak hours cuts into your savings of charging off-peak.
This is copied right off my PG&E usage file you can download each month. (.csv)

Electric usage 4/14/2015 0:00 0:59 7.24 kWh $0.74
Electric usage 4/14/2015 1:00 1:59 7.21 kWh $0.74
Electric usage 4/14/2015 2:00 2:59 5.7 kWh $0.59
Electric usage 4/14/2015 3:00 3:59 0.3 kWh $0.03

I hope this helps.