How much are you paying per kwh where you live?
 

I just about crapped in my pants when I got my power bill and wanted to know what others were getting across the country in terms of per/kwh charges.

I'm debating installing a 220V charging post at my business to handle PIH duties for a future company car and I'm now thinking unless I do my charging off peak I'm going to get killed with a power bill.

About 9-12 cents/kWh, give or take. In terms of powering an EV, it looks like my best bet is solar panels, but the up front costs, ~$12,000 initally and ~$5000 after reabtes/tax credits, are intimidating no matter how cheap the levelized electricity is (~6c/kWh over 20 years and half that over 40 years).

12c/KWH UPEC Upper Cumberland Electric Company.
Be wary EC's estimate your power usage so if they see that you actually spike on the month they check your meter you will pay for a spike every month. They won't charge you obviously for the whole spike but on estimate months if its not there you will still get charged for about half of it.

I shut the power off(to everything) one month while I was away and still got an electric bill for 70 bucks.

I now take pictures of my Meter holding that days newspaper(which I buy just for that) on the days they "read" it. When they estimate wrong I take it to their office and sometimes it rebates into the next month sometimes not.

Also might want to ask your EC what their rates are going to be post Cap-and-Trade. already asked and mine will be 22 c/KWH.

I pay $0.094757 per KWH, with a $8 dollar "customer charger" a 3% low income assistance fee, so of my $18.51 electric bill $10.90 of that is electricity.

I don't know what "cap-and-trade" means.

I'm paying close to $.33/kwh for my business. Seems like it's only about 3x's higher than everywhere else in the nation.

Alabama has a massive problem with Alabama Power. They installed new "instant read' meters which are connected to their grid somehow and give 100% accurate instant readings....yet I can't look up my power usage on the website until the day the bill mails.

Can someone good with the math give me an idea of what kind of "per charge cost" I'm looking at if I'm charging an EV (assume the Aptera) at a cost of $0.33/kwh. I'm not sure what the correct formulas are just yet. I'm still new to this.

Yeah sure one second, I think the Aptera has 4 KWH battery life. I'm not certain because they changed their website and now its pretty but totally useless. If its 4KWh batteries you need 4 KWH to recharge it. So for me that would cost 40 cents, for you that would cost at .33 $/KWH thats 1.32$.

Cap-and-Trade is legislation built into the budget that will mandate companies only emit X pollution per unit of production, which on your electric bill (for me) they are making .01 cents per KWHr so it goes as a direct charge to me whatever they raise the taxes on it. Roughly it will double the cost of electricity for me. If your local power grid is supplied more heavily by coal than 40-50% it will increase yor rate more so. So the new Aptera charge cost for me would be 80 cents instead of 40, or my monthly power bill would be 200 instead of 100.

oh and with 220 volts at like 30 milli-amps(I have no clue what the amperage for safe charge is for your batteries) the time to full charge would be. . .10 minutes?
What am I doing wrong today. . . 220 volts * 30 milliamps =6.6 watts. . . 4,000w/6.6=606 seconds/60= 10 minutes

Supposedly the Aptera will hve a 10-13kWh battery pack, so you'r looking at 10kWh/charge for the smaller pack times ($0.33/kWh)=$3.30/charge.

The car uses about .1kWh/mile, maybe more or less depending on how slowly/quickly you drive, so you're looking at 10Wh/charge over .1kWh/mile=100 miles/charge. $3.30/charge over 100 miles/charge results in electricity costs of about 3.3c/mile.

Ok, that is simultaneously helpful and confusing!

I'm going to call my local APCO branch and get some exact figures so I can crunch the numbers on m end.

I'm starting to really like this forum.

Thanks for the numbers Waffle. So in light of that the charge time would be 25 minutes idealy but I would bank on it taking about 45.

that doesn't sound right at all for charge times. I know the aptera (for purpose of this conversation) recharges off 110v but they estimate an 8hr re-charge time from 20%-100%. Jumping it up to 220v should bring it closer to 4hrs am I off here? Does it have to do with amperage and not the voltage?

Will I need to wait to purchase a vehicle to determine what type of power (110 vs 220) to have installed? Can I install 220v and use it still even if my EV charges on 110v?

Yeah sounds like it charges at fewer milli-amps than 30, thats what guessing gets you.

The second part depends. If the charge unit you are buying allows for step-down(allows you to choose 220 or 110) then obviously you can use either for the outlet itself, but definitly do not plug it up at 220 if its supposed to be 110. Theoretically it will charge twice as fast, but in reality it will just burn the batteries charging them too fast.

the only two laws you need to know are V=IR, Voltage = Current *resistance, and P=IV, power=voltage*Current. The first if you double the voltage at the same resistance the current doubles. alot of the time thats not a terrible problem because its for a very short period and systems allow for the increased voltage through Zener diodes that limit the voltage to X(sort of what ever you want) so it can take the fluctuation. However when you are talking 110 volts not millivolts to 220 volts I am pretty hesitant to say the system can handle that for extended periods(more than a few minutes).

The second is how you determine charge rate. 10KW= voltage*current, 10,000/220= current in amps. So at 50 amps and 220volts it charges in one second.

to charge your possible electric car you need to know the charge rate of the batteries, 6-8 hours is common with alot of EV's, 1 hour to 80% full for quality lithium is pretty fast/good, but for the most part the faster you charge the hotter the battery gets and the sooner the ill need to buy another $6,000 lithium battery, it's all based off he charge rate, lead acid is often 10% or less of the capacity in amps/amp hours, so my 220 amp hour battery shouldn't be charged at more then 20 amps, and the normal charge rate is closer to 4 amps or 500 watts, that is with a normal on board charger, a 15 amp outlet can handle 1,500 watts safely without starting your house on fire, but really, you don't want to cook the battery, that is why my cordless tools with it's 15 minute charger has a fan that cools the battery, it's a little battery and has alot of air flow to keep it cool.

Guys, I may be wrong, OT and several other unmentionable things, but in the discussion on the battery capacity, the time required to charge it and the energy requirements for a full charge are being treated a bit simplistically here...

There is a conversion from the AC mains to some level of DC (depending on the voltage required) required to charge the batteries. Depending on the way this conversion is derived there is a small to substantial energy wastage here. Even a switch mode power supply is really about 80% or so efficient.

The battery charging requires charging at prescribed rates to help maintain the battery life, otherwise it would go bad quickly.

There are ohmic losses in the battery/batteries, that is not taken into account when the charging energy is quantified.

So in general, the total energy required to charge up a 4kWh battery would take much more than 4kWh.

To come back to topic, I pay ~$0.06 to $0.09 per kWh on my grid electricity bill, which is charged in slabs - first slab is charged less, and if usage increases, the next slab is charged more (assuming the person would not mind paying more as he seems to be rich, based on the energy usage pattern). An additional $6 flat charge is applicable

We also require a backup community DG set for grid power outages (frequent). There is a minimum monthly charge of $8, adjusted @$0.17/kWh on the usage from the DG set.

So, depending on how much electricity I use (starting with 0 use = $14 flat charge) I pay ~$30 to $60 (in summer, owing to AC use) per month.

Very true. . .but we don't have the values for these specific batteries or the charger unit and its eta, so we just did with a perfect system.

Thats a baseline of what it will always cost at least more than this. Which is a pretty good place to start since everything else is pretty highly variable(what is the temperature outside, is there any wind, did you just finish driving and the components are producing extra heat, has the charger been running for a week or is it brand new, are the wires in the outlet new, is it peak off-peak.) In short there are way too many factors for it to be worthwhile to compute an exact amount. The estimates are reasonably close and to get an approximation thats near exact would take alot of effort.

great discussion going on in here.


I'm paying about $0.33/kwh at my business just for power. when you tack on all the other assorted fee's it jumps up quite a bit. (I'm paying about 9.2c/kwh at home though so that seems fair)

[QUOTE=Electric Frenzy;95785]I'm paying close to $.33/kwh for my business. Seems like it's only about 3x's higher than everywhere else in the nation.

Alabama has a massive problem with Alabama Power. They installed new "instant read' meters which are connected to their grid somehow and give 100% accurate instant readings....yet I can't look up my power usage on the website until the day the bill mails.QUOTE]

I'm paying a flat rate of just a sliver under 10c per kwh. Then there is about 10% fees and taxes on top of that.

Alabama Power, I cringe when I hear that name. We just built a bunch of bulk material loading equipment for them. I would put them in the top 5 of the worst customers we have had to deal with. It's probably the same company because the ones we dealt with had an office in Birmingham.

I'm sure it's the same one. We only have two choices for power in AL and one of them is only north alabama (TVA).

Alabama Power is the most hated business in the state. I don't know anyone who has been happy with their service or more precisely their billing.

What's REALLY funny is the town my business is in USED to be APCO's headquarters. they've closed up shop and moved to a more bustling part of town now. and of course when the move was announced everyone's rates went up.

Electric Frenzy, is it possible for you to use captive generation of some sorts? Looks like you would be better off with captive generation, if the power co is ripping you so badly...

In CAD (divide by .8 for USD)

Fixed charge per day 40.64¢
First 30 kWh per day 5.45¢/kWh
Remaining energy consumption 7.46¢/kWh

The electricity network is government owned here, so it's pretty cheap.

I worked some numbers on wattage and amp draw related to electric cars and cost, and unfortunately replacing lead/acid batteries every 2 years, plus the cost of electricity here breaks even with gasoline at $3.40/Gallon when consumed in my Civic.
The cost of electricity is a problem, a governmental problem that needs to be addressed. Alternative forms of energy need to be priced attractively to promote the change we need, right now they price them so there is no escape from forking over your dollars no matter if it's electricity gas diesel propane or natural gas.
We just recently got our rates bumped 10% to about $.109 per KMH.

That's why something like cheap LFPs are great, since they're only ~$50-150/kWh more and easily last three to four times longer.