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passwordoops

How much does your electric bill go up by (and related - how much cheaper is it compared to filling up at the pump?)

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It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing:

- your price per kWh of electricity

- the car you drive and the efficiency of it

- the amount you drive

But I'll give it a go with our EV(Volkswagen e-Up).

- our price for electricity at the moment is £0.16/kWh

- the efficiency is about 3-4 miles/kWh most of the time, it can go as high as 6 miles/kWh in the summer.

- we drive about 8000 miles per year.

Based on that(and using the most pessimistic numbers for calculations), you need:

8000/3 = 2666kWh to travel per year. At 16p/kWh that's £427 per year, or about £36 per month(which is actually spot on with what I see on my bills).

As to how that compares with an ICE.......a petrol Volkswagen UP gets about 6L/100km(6L/60 miles - I'm using that unit for simplicity of calculation so we don't have to mess with gallons. And yes 6L/100km is a big high for the UP, but I'm using pessimistic numbers again).

So assuming that 6L/100km, you would need (8000/60)*6 = 800 litres of fuel to cover 8000 miles per year. At the average cost of £1.40/litre it would cost us £1210 in fuel alone to drive for a year(or about £100 per month).

So just in fuel vs Electricity alone, the e-Up is about 3x times as cheap as a petrol one. And the servicing is much cheaper, and it doesn't really use consumables like brake pads, they will last a lot longer. On the other hand I've noticed it uses tyres quite quickly(at 10k miles fronts were down to 3mm, which is a good point to replace them), so it might end up being a wash.

And yes, we are lucky that

- we can charge at home

- our home tariff is pretty cheap

If we could only charge at public charging points(which at the moment are usually all £0.50/kWh if not more), then that entire saving would disappear, and it would probably be cheaper to drive a petrol version of the same car.

> It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing:

TBH, I'm kind of amazed at the way people talk about electricity. It seems like about twice a year I see a couple of threads on local Facebook groups about how much electricity has gone up. Once after the coldest month, and again after the hottest month. I like to ask their $/kwh, and I've never once gotten an answer.

But the US is sort of backward in general. I use an energy coop where how much my car costs to charge is directly affected by how much insulation I have in my attic.

Electric companies have gotten very good at hiding and obfuscating their $/kwh. I can tell you instantly how expensive auto gasoline is in my area because prices are written in giant numbers on billboards next to each station. If you wanted me to quote my electricity costs, I’d have to scrutinize 12 months of bills, find the numbers in the small print, do some averaging because the cost varies throughout the day and has a complex tier system, then do more averaging across the year.

Interesting, the cost per kW⋅h is clearly included on my electric bill. I had assumed that was a regulatory requirement.

But I have a flat rate electric service. I could see that if you have demand-based or time-of-day rates it would be complicated to express anything other than an overall average cost per kW⋅h .

We used to be on a tariff where the cost could change every 30 minutes, in theory it meant that you could get very cheap electricity because the cost was directly linked to local demand, I've seen it where at night it was going into negative numbers(so they were paying us to use electricity), but at peak times it could be absolutely brutal too, you had to be careful and really monitor it almost real-time. We've since changed to a tariff where the cost changes daily, but the cost for the next day is announced around 1pm the day before, so I can plan things like charging my car or running appliances depending on what the tomorrow's cost is going to be.

Keep in mind that especially in the US every state has different regulatory requirements for electricity and some states are better than others at forcing transparency in their utility's processes.

It isn't that complicated. Just separate them into line items.

off-peak == 1,234 kwh @ $.07/kwh, total: x on-peak == 242 kwh @ $.29/kwh, total: y

My previous coop itemized the bill nicely, with the monthly fixed cost, the energy charge, and any relevant taxes all separately itemized. Probably the most confusing part was how to proportion the taxes, but even neglecting that wouldn't be particularly confusing.

My current coop charges at least four different costs. A monthly $25 fee, an energy charge for each kwh below 1,000, a significantly higher charge for each kwh above 1,000, and the taxes. They don't itemize any of it, it is just a single line item with the amount and rate code.

IMO, that shouldn't even be legal.

It gets even more complicated when considering time of day rates, which are becoming more common in the U.S.

You could use the same kWh on two different days but incur very different costs based on when the load occurred.

I know households who are poor and don't have financial education. They own a fully paid-off house, but can't afford to switch from space heaters to heat pump (or gas or anything more efficient). One of them was desperately trying to sell this winter because of the sheer cost of keeping warm.

Luckily she has the home equity to finance and install mini splits. I helped her work through a home equity loan with the local bank.

Being poor is expensive. The people who need efficient houses the most often don't

A British energy bill would typically look like this [1, PDF]. The green marked (11) shows the rate clearly.

My Danish bill is less clear. There are lines for electricity, tax, and other charges, rather than e.g. a single figure for usage and another for the connection.

[1] https://www.britishgas.co.uk/aem6/content/dam/britishgas/dow...

That depends on the efficiency of your EV, how many miles you drive, and power cost in your area.

Something like a Model 3 will typically do <300 wh/mi (gross). At $.14/kwh (pretty close to average for the US), you'd be looking at about $0.042/mile.

Energy prices in the US vary between <$.05/kwh (usually off-peak) to ~$.49/kwh (PG&E if you didn't already guess that), so ymmv.

For the US you can see a state-by-state breakdown here: https://energyinnovation.org/2023/07/27/ev-fill-up-savings/.

I get ~3.5mi/kWh in my EV with how I drive. I pay ~$0.11/kWh for electricity including delivery.

The average US driver drives ~13,000mi/yr. We'll make the math easier and just say you drive ~1,000mi/mo.

1000 mi / 3.5 mi/kWh = 285.7kWh per month. At $0.11/kWh, that's ~$31.43 added to the bill.

Gas around me has been around $3/gal for a while. Average US car fuel economy is like 25mpg, which is a bit better than the car my EV replaced. 1000 mi / 25mpg = 40 gallons of gas, * $3/gal gives ~$120 per month. If I had a 40mpg car, it would cost ~$75/mo in gas. I'd need close to 100mpg in an ICE car to get to the same fuel cost.

That really depends on where you live, but for me in the EU the fuel/energy cost per km is about 2.5-3x lower with a home-charged EV than with a gas vehicle.

Near zero. I pay $0.01/kwh after 11PM. Costs me $0.80-$1 to “fill up” a totally empty car, which they almost never are at zero.

Electric bill goes way up, of course, but it is about the same as gas for me. There have been various fluctuations in both electric and gas prices around me so hard to make an exact comparison. However, my bet is that gas prices long term will only go up and electricity prices ... probably will too, but have a higher chance of remaining lower.

I have 12kW of solar deployed at my house so haven't had a electric bill in years, so I can't really say. I usually charge about 200-300kWh/mo for my EV which would be about $20-30 based on NV energy's rate plan.

About 40 miles per day of driving, $32.7 electricity for last month.

In GA I saw my electricity bill go up ~$30/month charging my Model 3 at home and driving it almost every day, about 1000 miles per month. Still cheaper, safer, warmer, and more convenient than going to a gas station.

Diesel car used to cost 12p/mile. EV is 3p/mile. Save approx £90/month.

Diesel bill was £120 month. Electricity has gone up by £30.

About $25/month in Utah. $0.03/mile

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