flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Was thinking about your numbers. So what you're saying is you're paying about the same as gas users minus the taxes on the fuel.
No, not at all. The Federal gas tax rate is 18.4 cents per gallon, the Wisconsin tax rate is 30.9 cents per gallon for a total of 49.3 cents per gallon. Since a charge is worth about a half gallon of gas and costs me a buck, what you're saying would be true if we were spending $2.493 on gas - In reality, we're about 40 cents a gallon higher than that right now even though gas is as cheap as it's been in a LONG time.
Kent, curious, what are you paying for electricity?
A bit shy of 14 cents per kilowatt hour (13.945, to be exact).
I'm thinking I need to put up a solar bank and windmill.
My brother is actually putting up a solar bank for his house. He figures it'll cost him about 17 cents per kilowatt hour in the long term if it lasts exactly the 20 years it's guaranteed for and no longer. He lives in California and pays less than I do for electricity (What???) - About 13 cents/kWh. He gets lots of sun, too. But, I bet in 20 years their rates will be WAY higher than 17 cents/kWh, so hopefully for him they get high enough to make up for the opportunity cost of paying for his next 20 years' worth of juice up front by buying the solar system.
I was wondering the same thing because my buddy manages way better than that in his MiEV, but he gets electricity at industrial rates for having an EV, and he charges off peak through the night.
I can set the car to charge at off-peak hours... However, I'm on a constant rate so there are no off-peak hours. I charge when I charge.
I do have the option of switching from my current 13.945c/kWh rate to one of the following:
* 9c/kWh off-peak and 21c/kWh on-peak
* 5c/kWh off-peak and 28c/kWh on-peak
(With either of the above, I can choose my peak period to be 7a-7p, 8a-8p, 9a-9p, or 10a-10p. Based on our daily schedule, I'd probably go with the 8a-8p peak period.)
There is another plan that's more complicated, but it is only better than the 2nd one above during part of the year and part of the day, and off-peak rates are the same, so not really worth considering.
I'd have to look at a graph of my daily usage to see whether it'd be worth changing to one of the other plans. However, I'd have to *never* charge my car during on-peak hours because at 21c/kWh I might as well just burn gas. Each 7c/kWh is roughly equivalent to $1.00/gallon.
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