Up until Feb of this year I only worried about electric usage (more than usual) in the summer when I have to run my AC units for an extended period of time. I had never actually looked at what I was paying per KWH. I just had a vague sense of what kind of usage would result in what kind of bill.
Then I got a PHEV.
The circumstances for me buying that is not relevant here. What is relevant is that it forced me to consider how much I was paying for electricity. You know the old saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged? Well this purchase exposed the mugging.
When I got the vehicle I looked at costs to charge at public points. And what I saw shocked me. 30-60 cent per kwh. In addition to one to three dollar "start fees". Some were in garages that ALSO required you to pay to park. All of this revealed that, at least in my case, it would cost more to charge than it would be to buy gas and use the onboard generator to charge the battery.
The PHEV I have can get, at best 15 miles of pure electric range. It's a 2018. When charging via 120v AC it takes roughly 7 KWH to charge depending on the state of the battery. At the time of purchase I was paying 6 cents per kwh delivery and 15c/kwh supply. I never understood the breakdown but that's outside the scope of this post. That makes a total of 21c/kwh to charge. Each charge from "empty" would be around $1.45. Since I can only go 15 miles (way less in the winter) per charge that works out to 9c/mile.
Gasoline at that time was about $3.50/ gallon. The vehicle gets ~30 MPG if you discount the electric range. That works out to 11c/mile on gasoline (worse in traffic where battery is a huge boost). So you could see that it WAS 2c/mile cheaper to charge the battery and get those 11 miles. And definitely not worth it to charge at ANY public charge point which was FAR more expensive that premium fuel.
Now when the vehicle is charging, mpg drops to ~26mpg. So I'm losing 5 miles of range per gallon. However; it doesn't take an entire gallon to charge the battery. Even if it did, I would be paying 55c to charge the battery using the onboard generator. Far far less than plugging in at home.
Then the summer came and NJ electric rates went to shit. I'll pause here to comment on the so called green initiatives that are the cause of this problem. The idiots who put these mandates in place are so inept that they cannot understand that you do not take power offline until you have an equal or better replacement ready to replace it. Nope, NJ apparently gutted 6 power plants and replaced them with so called "renewable" energy that cannot meet demand. At the same time they are pushing for people to purchase EVs which, tadah, increases electricity demand. But back to the story.
The current electric rate for me is 9c/kwh delivery and 20c/kwh for supply.
That is a 50% increase in "delivery" and 30% increase for supply. Overall that's 29c/kwh up nearly 50% from Feb.
Let that sink in.
So now we go and run these calculations again. 7kwh at 29c/khw is $2.03 to fully charge from near zero. At the best range of 15 miles that's now 13c/mile (Compared to 9c just a few months ago).
Meanwhile gasoline is still hovering around $3.40/gal. which is 11c/mile. It is now more expensive to charge my vehicle to run on "clean" electricity then it is to use gasoline.
These are the idiots running NJ (and elsewhere).
Isn't it cheaper to charge overnight? Well maybe. If you live in a house, I do not, you may have lower rates at night. If you don't there are programs to put in a smart charger that apparently reports that you are charging an EV to the electric company and it gives you a discount for the energy consumed. Of course if you don't live in a house, like me, you cannot get on this program because you cannot install a smart charger. Nor do you get lower rates that MAY be available to houses.
Word is that rates are going to go up significantly again in the near future. Beyond EVs this is untenable. You cannot have 30-50% increases in rates every year or even two years. It is also past time to put the climate scammers out of power and out of influence.
