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Comment by mdasen | Hacker News Reader

That's an unusually low electric rate for the US - way below the lowest state average which is Idaho at 12.4 cents. It's certainly possible that you are getting 7.5 cents including delivery, but I've had friends say that they're "getting 13 cents per kWh" here in Massachusetts, but that's just the supply rate and the delivery is another ~18 cents.

There are parts of states like Grant County Washington that have cheap hydro power, but it's very rare for power to be that cheap in the US. Even if this applies to you, it won't apply to the vast majority of people on here who will have electric rates 2-4x higher.

Average electric rates by region:

    New England            28.1 cents
    Mid Atlantic           25.1 cents
    East North Central     20.8 cents
    West North Central     14.8 cents
    South Atlantic         16.1 cents
    East South Central     15.5 cents
    Mountain               14.6 cents
    Pacific Contiguous     26.1 cents
    Pacific Noncontiguous  42.1 cents

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

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> Pacific Contiguous 26.1 cents

This is a bit misleading, because it's combining the 50 cents/kWh from California with 15ish cents/kWh in Oregon and Washington. Seattle City Light, for example, charges 13.38 cents/kWh on flat rate pricing, and far less with time-of-use billing (8 cents/kWh on off-peak).

I'm actually getting 11 cents in winter, 13 in summer, but my utility company is a co-op. Average for my state is I think 19 cents.

I think you can get down to around 8 if you are signed up for an interruptible load, or a dedicated off peak load, depending on the company, but yeah, standard rates aren't that low.

If you run off solar with battery backup, you can achieve lower than those rates! Look at Time of Use rates. The super off peak rates instantly become the max price point once you pair TOU with Solar + battery.

A lot of people quoting low rates are also just referring to their off-peak rate. This is pretty common in EV discussions. It's not exactly a fair argument there, either, because the flip side of having an off-peak rate is that the on-peak rate is usually quite a lot higher. So the true effective rate is a bit higher, somewhere in the middle depending on usage pattern.

It's easy to have your EV only charge off-peak, though. It's just a setting.

My point is that the tradeoff to get off-peak pricing is that on-peak is way, way more expensive. So you can charge the EV off-peak to maximize the savings, but everything else you do during on-peak time costs way more.

Using myself as an example:

I adjust my A/C to run outside of 5pm-9pm (peak) if at all possible, we try to avoid pointless high-draw usage during that same window, and both of our EVs hold off charging until after 9pm.

My rate from 5pm-9pm is 0.43/kWh. My rate after 9pm is 0.09/kWh. The flat rate alternative, if I did not want to worry about time of day, would be 0.21/kWh. These prices are all-in, including transmission and distribution/whatever.

It would be dishonest to say that my EVs only cost me 0.09/kWh to operate, which on it's face is a claim to paying over 50% less. In reality, time of day pricing typically saves me somewhere between 10% and 15% in an average month compared with flat rate.

Fair point.

I guess it depends on if you would be using ToU otherwise.

It looks like about 50% of Californians use ToU plans, but the number is only 10% nation-wide.

If you leave the EV charging out of your consumption, does a time of day plan still save you money on the remaining usage? Or does it cost you? If it saves you money, then it would make sense to be on a ToD plan regardless of EV charging. Which means it makes sense to consider your additional EV draw as costing the marginal off-peak rate. Essentially the EV load has the valuable property of being dispatchable.

You can do the same thought experiment with say a dehumidifier in your basement. It can easily be off during peak usage and still accomplish its job, so its cost of electricity is also the marginal off-peak rate.

> If you leave the EV charging out of your consumption, does a time of day plan still save you money on the remaining usage? Or does it cost you?

It would cost me more (modestly so, less than 10%) to be on TOD without the EVs. This will vary by customer, of course, and I expect that the power company designs TOD to be a wash for the average customer. They even guarantee it won't be more than 10% more expensive over the first year or they will refund the difference.

Then yes I'd agree with you, it doesn't make sense to describe your EV charging as costing $0.09/kWh since you're presumably only on the slightly more expensive ToD plan due to the EV.

Personally I'd love to have a ToD plan, especially with the rate structure you've laid out - break even seems to be using less than 1/3 of your daily electricity usage during the on-peak hours, which is only 1/6 of the day? I've got a bunch of fixed loads (computers) plus ones that tend to run overnight anyway (dishwasher, dryer, etc).

FWIW I'd think the pricing of the ToD plan versus the fixed rate plan has more to do with how the power company themselves has to buy power and model/hedge against demand at various parts of the day, rather than simply trying to make the costs even for the consumer.

> FWIW I'd think the pricing of the ToD plan versus the fixed rate plan has more to do with how the power company themselves has to buy power and model/hedge against demand at various parts of the day, rather than simply trying to make the costs even for the consumer.

I agree, my single point of evidence to support my theory is that the power company advertises the TOD plan by presenting an average customer with their breakdown of usage throughout a typical day, and then itemizes how it would look with flat-rate versus TOD. The resulting figure is within a few pennies. I figure that is not accidental, but I could be wrong and it is entirely coincidence.

They might just not want to encourage people to switch too hard, lest people blindly sign up for it thinking big savings, their bills spike up, and the poco gets a huge customer service problem. Instead they show just a few pennies savings, and lure only the proactive type of people whose start thinking "... and I could save even more by adjusting my usage" ? Just a thought.

Not the parent, but here is one location that has rates in that range in the U.S.

https://casscountyelectric.com/rates

I'm in Arkansas and get rates fairly similar as quoted.

From my last bill

> KWH USAGE 2590 - $183.37

There's a base customer cost of $18 on top of that, but yeah ~$0.077/kWh taxes included.

Is that for a month or a year?

My monthly bills are similar to this, near Arkansas.

Last one was $212 for 2,146 kwh between June 8 - July 6 (28 Days)

76kWh a day, does that include a lot of EV mileage?!

For me at least, yes but it's not an EV specific rate plan just our general one.

~80mi a day + AC is the vast majority of my use (for why so much AC - it's 102f [39c] and feels like 115f [46c] right now as I type this).

I pay a little less than that though I’m limited to 50 kW average load. Delivery is a fixed monthly fee, about $10 USD/month.

To me (EU) that seems like a pretty generous limit. A normal house connection here is limited to 8kW single phase or 17kW for a 3 phase connection. You can get more, but that is very uncommon and gets expensive quickly

Nashville Electric Service rates are 12.0 cents / kWh. Flat rate, no peak or off peak rates for residential.

Fort Collins, CO is probably where that rate is. I don't know of anywhere cheaper for residential electric.

> That's an unusually low electric rate for the US

What about buying your own solar panels and batteries?

They are most likely not based in the US, but converting to USD to make comparison easier.

I am not in Quebec but Quebec hydro rate D for standard residential would be one example of around what I pay.

https://www.hydroquebec.com/residential/customer-space/rates...

Another example would be Manitoba hydro

All figures in Canadian currency

https://www.hydro.mb.ca/account/rates/residential/

Specifying USD is indeed often a service usually offered by people born elsewhere for people born elsewhere. Americans seem rarely know about these mysterious places, where bills can come in all sorts of funny sizes and colours. (kind of joking)

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