That’s really funny. My electricity prices have basically tripled over the past two or three years and my use hasn’t changed.
With the push towards AI data centers that seem to have coats pushed to the average homeowner, I do not think an EV will be the most cost effective option, at least in “car” form.
Maybe an electric bike or scooter would be more cost effective
I know the prices vary by state and municipality but even with a 300% increase you might still save money overall with reduced maintenance and cost-per-mile. Filling up my tank with gas is ~$42 right now and with an equivalent EV it would cost ~$12 to fully charge (if it was 0-100%).
While my current use case for a car would not allow me to purchase an electric vehicle, my future case would. However, I am planning to wait for solid state vehicles. I don’t like how prone to thermal runaway lithium batteries are in their current state. That, and I don’t like the trend towards bigger and heavier vehicles.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to own a large diesel truck for when I need a truck, but it feels like such a waste as a daily personal commuter vehicle. Most of the time, it’s literally me and my spouse. Sometimes we have groceries, sometimes luggage. It’s such a waste of space and energy to be transporting an extra 3000 lbs around
I feel you… I went full electric and despite having solar I’m at about 300€ monthly. And that’s on top of the cost of solar and the production I get from the panels. The less we take on the grid the more expensive it is. Now we pay to inject our production when we don’t auto consume it. So all in all it’s always about paying more.
But at least we are not fucking up the air anymore which was the initial idea.
Simply setting up an off-grid solar system with inverter and batteries connected to the primary side of an automatic transfer switch. With the grid power connected to the ‘reserve’ side on that automatic switch. Whenever battery power is available, the whole house will run on that, when/if the batteries run out, it will automatically switch to grid power. And automatically switch back to battery power when it’s available again.
(My power company is not very friendly toward grid-tie solar systems. So fuck 'em. I’ll go mostly off-grid and only use them for backup power.)
How much do you have to pay for the ability to have a backup, or are you lucky enough to be charged more or less nothing if the batteries don’t go out?
What do you mean by not friendly towards grid tie? Do they charge you more for having solar (supposedly some places in California may have this)? Did they tell you you can’t sell solar power back?
How much do you have to pay for the ability to have a backup, or are you lucky enough to be charged more or less nothing if the batteries don’t go out?
$10/mo service charge just for being connected. Might eventually replace it with a backup generator, but for now, $10/mo is a fair bit cheaper than buying, maintaining, and refueling a generator big enough to run the whole house.
What do you mean by not friendly towards grid tie? Do they charge you more for having solar (supposedly some places in California may have this)? Did they tell you you can’t sell solar power back?
A) You have to apply for permission to have a grid-tie system (with $100 application fee), and that application can be arbitrarily denied if they decide they don’t want any more grid-tie houses in this area. No way to tell if they’d approve it or not; either way, they’re keeping the fee.
B) Part of that application is permits and inspection, and there’s no way my house is passing an electrical system inspection. It was originally built in 1910 and has been added onto and modified many times by many owners since. Some circuits are completely dead, absolutely none of the breakers on my four service panels are labeled … it’s a nightmare. Getting all of it up to modern electrical code would probably involve just ripping out every inch of wiring in the house and redoing it from scratch.
C) They never let me ‘sell’ solar power back. They’ll never pay me cash for it under any circumstance. They give a 1:1 ‘energy credit’ which can be applied toward future power bills and that credit arbitrarily expires and resets to zero once a year, no matter how much you’ve built up. Not a great deal.
I already had my gas connection cut off. Use 4G for internet because the wired ISPs here are shit for various reasons. The only things going in/out of my house that I use are clean/dirty water and electricity.
Solar/battery possibly with a petrol generator backup would allow cutting off the mains electricity too. The daily service charge just to have a mains connection costs as much per year as buying a petrol generator. As long as you don’t need to use much petrol then it rapidly becomes a pretty reasonable choice.
I suppose it depends what export tariffs are like, if they pay you a decent amount for sending energy back then it might cover the service charge for having a grid connection. If it doesn’t, get fucked. Disconnect me, I ain’t paying.
That’s really funny. My electricity prices have basically tripled over the past two or three years and my use hasn’t changed.
With the push towards AI data centers that seem to have coats pushed to the average homeowner, I do not think an EV will be the most cost effective option, at least in “car” form.
Maybe an electric bike or scooter would be more cost effective
I need a vehicle powered by spite. It’s my most common fuel, why can’t my car take it too?
Pretty sure that would be my bike
I know the prices vary by state and municipality but even with a 300% increase you might still save money overall with reduced maintenance and cost-per-mile. Filling up my tank with gas is ~$42 right now and with an equivalent EV it would cost ~$12 to fully charge (if it was 0-100%).
While my current use case for a car would not allow me to purchase an electric vehicle, my future case would. However, I am planning to wait for solid state vehicles. I don’t like how prone to thermal runaway lithium batteries are in their current state. That, and I don’t like the trend towards bigger and heavier vehicles.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to own a large diesel truck for when I need a truck, but it feels like such a waste as a daily personal commuter vehicle. Most of the time, it’s literally me and my spouse. Sometimes we have groceries, sometimes luggage. It’s such a waste of space and energy to be transporting an extra 3000 lbs around
I feel you… I went full electric and despite having solar I’m at about 300€ monthly. And that’s on top of the cost of solar and the production I get from the panels. The less we take on the grid the more expensive it is. Now we pay to inject our production when we don’t auto consume it. So all in all it’s always about paying more.
But at least we are not fucking up the air anymore which was the initial idea.
I’m going to a mostly off-grid solar system, with grid power only as an emergency backup.
I’d like to hear more about this.
Simply setting up an off-grid solar system with inverter and batteries connected to the primary side of an automatic transfer switch. With the grid power connected to the ‘reserve’ side on that automatic switch. Whenever battery power is available, the whole house will run on that, when/if the batteries run out, it will automatically switch to grid power. And automatically switch back to battery power when it’s available again.
(My power company is not very friendly toward grid-tie solar systems. So fuck 'em. I’ll go mostly off-grid and only use them for backup power.)
How much do you have to pay for the ability to have a backup, or are you lucky enough to be charged more or less nothing if the batteries don’t go out?
What do you mean by not friendly towards grid tie? Do they charge you more for having solar (supposedly some places in California may have this)? Did they tell you you can’t sell solar power back?
$10/mo service charge just for being connected. Might eventually replace it with a backup generator, but for now, $10/mo is a fair bit cheaper than buying, maintaining, and refueling a generator big enough to run the whole house.
A) You have to apply for permission to have a grid-tie system (with $100 application fee), and that application can be arbitrarily denied if they decide they don’t want any more grid-tie houses in this area. No way to tell if they’d approve it or not; either way, they’re keeping the fee.
B) Part of that application is permits and inspection, and there’s no way my house is passing an electrical system inspection. It was originally built in 1910 and has been added onto and modified many times by many owners since. Some circuits are completely dead, absolutely none of the breakers on my four service panels are labeled … it’s a nightmare. Getting all of it up to modern electrical code would probably involve just ripping out every inch of wiring in the house and redoing it from scratch.
C) They never let me ‘sell’ solar power back. They’ll never pay me cash for it under any circumstance. They give a 1:1 ‘energy credit’ which can be applied toward future power bills and that credit arbitrarily expires and resets to zero once a year, no matter how much you’ve built up. Not a great deal.
I already had my gas connection cut off. Use 4G for internet because the wired ISPs here are shit for various reasons. The only things going in/out of my house that I use are clean/dirty water and electricity.
Solar/battery possibly with a petrol generator backup would allow cutting off the mains electricity too. The daily service charge just to have a mains connection costs as much per year as buying a petrol generator. As long as you don’t need to use much petrol then it rapidly becomes a pretty reasonable choice.
I suppose it depends what export tariffs are like, if they pay you a decent amount for sending energy back then it might cover the service charge for having a grid connection. If it doesn’t, get fucked. Disconnect me, I ain’t paying.
Hybrid vehicles are still an option.
The higher the price of gas is, the more hybrids make sense.
Even if gas prices were low, I’d still want to buy a hybrid because prices don’t always stay low.
I bought a used 2014 Chevy Volt 3 weeks ago and am averaging 250 mpg since owning it, it’s got a lifetime 140 mpg average.
I live 13 miles from work so essentially not using gasoline. So stoked.