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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

Well that's one way to discourage EV adoption

If you live in Austin, there’s a $4.17/mo charge you can add to your bill for unlimited charging at Austin Energy-owned Level 2 chargers. They’re installed all over the city. Many people commenting here don’t live in Texas and are unaware of initiatives like this.

https://austinenergy.com/green-power/plug-in-austin

Is it really appropriate to use Austin as a proxy for the entire state?

Didn't Texas, the state, recently pass an exceptionally high EV registration tax that 100% exempts hybrids?

Edit:

  > Austin Energy is the prime recipient of
  > Department of Energy funding and has
  > successfully led an infrastructure planning
  > process called the Texas River Cities Plug-in
  > Electric Vehicle Initiative.

You're highlighting the results at the edge of federal funding that must be spent on these things. TFA is about grid-scale problems, the energy supplying these charging ports.

Do you know why that EV registration tax was passed?

To be fair, in California I pay $0.67/kWh, every day, during peak. And, on hot days, we’re told to not charge our cars.

I don’t think it’s conscious discouragement. If it is, then California is much better at it, and that’s a silly proposition.

Yikes. The peak rate here in Ontario is CAD$0.157/kWh, but our delivery charges are ~$0.05/kWh on top of that (Hydro One is the worst in that regard).

Which utility is this, and what type of plan are you on? The time-of-day based plans can have extremely high pricing during peak, to discourage non-essential usage during those hours.

We are on PG&E and they moved us (involuntarily) from usage-based to time-of-day in 2021. But they promised to refund us after a year if it was more expensive on the new plan than it would have been on the old plan. It was, and we switched back. I don't think we pay even close to 67¢/kWh on the usage-based, unless we're like triple our base allotment (which we aren't, but might be if our PHEV were a full EV).

Sometimes it's also possible to put the EV on a separate EV account, so that you can have your main house on usage-based and your EV on time-of-day. Given how much you're paying, I'd look into alternatives (or not charge during peak, which most people don't need to do).

Most EVs automatically charge at night when the electric demand is at its lowest.

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