Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA): "In 2022, the average annual amount of electricity sold to (purchased by) a U.S. residential electric-utility customer was 10,791 kilowatthours (kWh), an average of about 899 kWh per month. Louisiana had the highest annual electricity purchases per residential customer at 14,774 kWh (1231 kWh/mo)and Hawaii had the lowest at 6,178 kWh (515 kWh/mo) per residential customer". https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3
Yes, 227kWh/mo seems very low - just about 1/4 the US average. But if you have a small and energy efficient house and use gas for heating, hot water and cooking, I guess that would explain it.
House is 1,740 sq. ft., gas furnace and water heater. Electric range, dryer, central air. The A/C is by far the biggest energy hog from June-Sept. Last year, Oct. was the lowest at 160 kWh. I don't know why it's so low, or maybe I should say, I don't know what others are using electricity on that I'm not. I think most people around me have gas water heaters and furnaces. I replaced the tar and gravel roof with TPO a couple of years ago and that did result in a major reduction in summer cooling use.
Another consideration with EV's is that since I drive less than most people, my savings by switching from ICE to EV might end up being canceled out by the higher insurance rate for EV's.
If you drive under the US average for annual mileage, you really won’t see any benefit from EV ownership unless you have solar or maybe in unique situations where monthly income just dropped, but you have an expensive paid off gas car to trade in for a paid off cheaper EV.
I drive 25,000+ miles per year, over 2000 per month, in a Tesla Model 3 performance. My electric cost is about $30 per month. Do not compare it to home usage unless your cost per kwh somehow increases at draw benchmarks (which I have never heard of). Otherwise the ONLY relevant comparison is against your gas usage. Anti-EV’ers love to play that game, either purposefully with intent or stupendously stupidly with total confidence. The only relevant metric is in comparison to monthly gas usage being replaced by electric cost.
If you drive under the US average for annual mileage, you really won’t see any benefit from EV ownership unless you have solar or maybe in unique situations where monthly income just dropped, but you have an expensive paid off gas car to trade in for a paid off cheaper EV.
I drive 25,000+ miles per year, over 2000 per month, in a Tesla Model 3 performance. My electric cost is about $30 per month. Do not compare it to home usage unless your cost per kwh somehow increases at draw benchmarks (which I have never heard of). Otherwise the ONLY relevant comparison is against your gas usage. Anti-EV’ers love to play that game, either purposefully with intent or stupendously stupidly with total confidence. The only relevant metric is in comparison to monthly gas usage being replaced by electric cost.
Good points. I guess I was interested in comparing kWh since it's apples to apples, while gas prices go up and down and are unpredictable.
Another consideration with EV's is that since I drive less than most people, my savings by switching from ICE to EV might end up being canceled out by the higher insurance rate for EV's.
I called my insurance agent and the only difference in cost would be that the EV being new would have a higher replacement costs vs my older truck. If I remember correctly it was about $200 a year more.
I have a Bolt (my second since 2020), It has a 65 kWh battery. It gets 250 miles per charge on average (300 in summer 220 in winter). At 250 miles per charge, and driving the US average of 1000 miles a month, I'm using about 260kWh per month to drive. At my electric rate of 10c/kWh, that's about $26 to drive 1000 miles. It's also about 10-15% of my total electric usage in my 1932 house with everything but heat being electric (for that, I use propane).
So it's not much of an increase, and you have to include in your budget the reduction in gasoline costs. For me that 1000 miles a month would cost, in a car that got 30mpg average, over $100 a month at the national average price of $3.25/gallon (more if you have to use Premium, like I do in my MINI Cooper JCW). So even as I add $26 to my electric bill, I'm removing over $100 in gasoline costs.
When I first got my EV, I worked out that a home charger uses about as much as electricity as a house AC running for four hours. I'm not sure how I calculated it, so I'll attempt to recreate it here.
0.25 kWh energy used per mile, times 50 miles round trip = 12.5 kWh per trip
Whole house AC uses around 3.5 kW so 12.5/3.5 = 3.57 hours of AC power
I may have used slightly different values before, or just rounded differently. That's around $1.30 for where I live, gasoline would be closer to $8, but we have cheap electricity and expensive gas in the Seattle area.
The efficiency of your car or AC may vary. I rarely drive that far now since my job has changed.
I have a Bolt (my second since 2020), It has a 65 kWh battery. It gets 250 miles per charge on average (300 in summer 220 in winter). At 250 miles per charge, and driving the US average of 1000 miles a month, I'm using about 260kWh per month to drive. At my electric rate of 10c/kWh, that's about $26 to drive 1000 miles. It's also about 10-15% of my total electric usage in my 1932 house with everything but heat being electric (for that, I use propane).
So it's not much of an increase, and you have to include in your budget the reduction in gasoline costs. For me that 1000 miles a month would cost, in a car that got 30mpg average, over $100 a month at the national average price of $3.25/gallon (more if you have to use Premium, like I do in my MINI Cooper JCW). So even as I add $26 to my electric bill, I'm removing over $100 in gasoline costs.
I see some used Bolts on Carvana with low miles, and in the $19-$22K range. Not sure if that would make sense for my first EV or not. All my cars I bought new for the last 30 years. But this is a change of topic.
The reason I'm interested in EVs now is that it's about time that I would trade in my car for a new car, which I have done every 6-8 years. And if I make the "switch" to EV, I would not keep my ICE car for long trips as many people do, I would trade it in and go EV only. So I have to be sure it's what I want to do.
Trading in my ICE Honda wouldn't take it off the road since someone else would then drive it. It has only 64,000 miles. So I wouldn't be helping overall emissions reduction by switching.
I don't know what part of NM you live or if HVAC is something you use a lot. But that is def. the biggest energy draws for me - East Coast.
But just to give you some numbers. Tesla Model 3.
Driven 12.6K miles last year.
about 4000Kwh used.
About $460 spent on that "fuel".
My house averages about 820KwH / month (2500 sq ft TH - live alone) - this is inclusive of charging the EV. According to my app - 96% of my charges were at home. So my EV charging is about 1/3 of my energy use. There also some nuance there as my EV charge rate is about 35% less (vs. my other electric uses) as I am enrolled in my utility's off peak program. So the overwhelming majority of my charging are done between 11pm and 5am.
Actually, I calculate 41% o fyour usage is for EV charging. 12,600 miles a year is kindof "average" use. Although your dwelling is large, it's a townhouse so two walls are not externally exposed, and you live alone so much of the day you're not using electricity or you're in your one office at home room - in other words, it's not like three preschool kids at home that have every light and ten computers running all day long.
So as to electricity usage, maybe for the "ordinary run of the mill" user about 33-40% of usage might be a good rule of thumb guesstimate. As you note, the actual $ cost percentage of EV charging is likely to be a bit lower as most charging will occur off-peak.
At any rate it's not in nay way a trivial addition.
You're spending about $0.0365/mile electric costs to charge. A 25 MPG gas car with $3.50/gal gas would be $0.14/mile fuel cost.
I see some used Bolts on Carvana with low miles, and in the $19-$22K range. Not sure if that would make sense for my first EV or not. All my cars I bought new for the last 30 years. But this is a change of topic.
The reason I'm interested in EVs now is that it's about time that I would trade in my car for a new car, which I have done every 6-8 years. And if I make the "switch" to EV, I would not keep my ICE car for long trips as many people do, I would trade it in and go EV only. So I have to be sure it's what I want to do.
Trading in my ICE Honda wouldn't take it off the road since someone else would then drive it. It has only 64,000 miles. So I wouldn't be helping overall emissions reduction by switching.
Don't yet.
Typical public charging experience this weekend. Construction is blocking the home charger so using public charging. Figured I'd juice up at EA and do some shopping at Trader Joe's on Sunday. Nope, 4/6 broken chargers. With a line. That only happens when EVGo is also down. Yup, both EVGo chargers are down. Only thing working is some 6 kW L2 chargers at hotels and municipal ones. I happen to be 15 minutes from a municipal one and a walk won't kill me and I'm not in any rush. Plug in and come back 6 hours later... 8 kW in 6 hours, still charging at 1.2 kW/Hr. I should have just run an extension cord out the window from a household outlet. I bummed a charge off the neighbor overnight.
GM was supposed to get access to Superchargers in February but they haven't done the software updates. It's just billing stuff related to plug and charge. Ford and Rivian have done the updates, GM hasn't yet. But I'd wait until they do and make sure the Bolt does get access an not just GM's newer Ultium EVs. Keep the Accord until then or just get a Tesla.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I bummed a charge off the neighbor overnight.