Recently Greystone EMC started offering its customer's special EV rates that will drop the cost of a kilowatt hour to about 4 cents for overnight charging. This represents not just a 60 percent drop in cost from about 10 cents a kwh, but in the only cost comparison that changes the MPG understanding from how far you can go on a gallon of gasoline to how far you can go for the cost of a gallon of gasoline (MPG$).
I think most people really still haven't thought much about MPG calculations since gasoline remains usually below $3.00/gallon. The current market price for regular gasoline is about $2.40.
Now EVs because they use electricity for propulsion are by design more efficient than any internal combustion engine (ICE) because the engine only captures about 25 percent of the energy contained in the gasoline to the rear wheels (if that). With EV's more like 80+% of the energy makes it to the rear wheels.
There are a bunch of other efficiencies like regeneration instead of braking, much less mechanical loss because it has no transmission, etc.
These factors are all more or less baked into the cake in the federal figures that say this car gets 35 mpg and that one 15 mpg and this electric one doesn't use gasoline so was not comparable. The government set the standard reporting the comparable as energy, i.e. 1 gallon = 33.4 kwh. It is that simple. Finally, the car its self calculates a figure called miles per kwh. If I'm out working driving to maximize my distance, I usually get about 5.8 miles per kwh. The baseline for the car, is 4.4 mi/kwh. If I'm pedal to the metal in a hurry and it is cold and raining, figure 2.7 mi/kwh. Kind of like ICE cars.
The only thing missing is the cost of that energy.
That factor had a big change when the local co-op opened the gate to allow off-peak charging at a wholesale rate for EV owners.
The way to understand the impact of these rates is to think of them almost like a set of tires or some gizmo you add to the engine that doubles the distance you can drive for the COST of a GALLON OF GAS.
So how far could my little Chevy Spark EV go on $2.40 - the cost of a gallon of gas?
Here is the formula: Miles per kwh X cost of gallon of gas / cost of a kwh = mpg$
The story is that before Greystone made their move to make wholesale rates available, my travels were being made in an EV that was getting about 130 mpg$ ... which is pretty doggone efficient. But use four cent a kilowatt juice instead of the almost ten-cent a kilowatt of the standard rate and quite magically the mpg$ zooms to over 300. A rise in the cost of gasoline, like the change in kwh price under the new program, also impacts the MPG$. If gasoline went to $3.79/gallon, my mpg$ would be over 500 electric miles I could go for the cost of one gallon of gasoline.
As the price for gasoline goes up and down the reality is that whatever car or truck you got will get so many miles per gallon.
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gpatt0n
Recently Greystone EMC started offering its customer's special EV rates that will drop the cost of a kilowatt hour to about 4 cents for overnight charging. This represents not just a 60 percent drop in cost from about 10 cents a kwh, but in the only cost comparison that changes the MPG understanding from how far you can go on a gallon of gasoline to how far you can go for the cost of a gallon of gasoline (MPG$).
I think most people really still haven't thought much about MPG calculations since gasoline remains usually below $3.00/gallon. The current market price for regular gasoline is about $2.40.
Now EVs because they use electricity for propulsion are by design more efficient than any internal combustion engine (ICE) because the engine only captures about 25 percent of the energy contained in the gasoline to the rear wheels (if that). With EV's more like 80+% of the energy makes it to the rear wheels.
There are a bunch of other efficiencies like regeneration instead of braking, much less mechanical loss because it has no transmission, etc.
These factors are all more or less baked into the cake in the federal figures that say this car gets 35 mpg and that one 15 mpg and this electric one doesn't use gasoline so was not comparable. The government set the standard reporting the comparable as energy, i.e. 1 gallon = 33.4 kwh. It is that simple. Finally, the car its self calculates a figure called miles per kwh. If I'm out working driving to maximize my distance, I usually get about 5.8 miles per kwh. The baseline for the car, is 4.4 mi/kwh. If I'm pedal to the metal in a hurry and it is cold and raining, figure 2.7 mi/kwh. Kind of like ICE cars.
The only thing missing is the cost of that energy.
That factor had a big change when the local co-op opened the gate to allow off-peak charging at a wholesale rate for EV owners.
The way to understand the impact of these rates is to think of them almost like a set of tires or some gizmo you add to the engine that doubles the distance you can drive for the COST of a GALLON OF GAS.
So how far could my little Chevy Spark EV go on $2.40 - the cost of a gallon of gas?
Here is the formula: Miles per kwh X cost of gallon of gas / cost of a kwh = mpg$
The story is that before Greystone made their move to make wholesale rates available, my travels were being made in an EV that was getting about 130 mpg$ ... which is pretty doggone efficient. But use four cent a kilowatt juice instead of the almost ten-cent a kilowatt of the standard rate and quite magically the mpg$ zooms to over 300. A rise in the cost of gasoline, like the change in kwh price under the new program, also impacts the MPG$. If gasoline went to $3.79/gallon, my mpg$ would be over 500 electric miles I could go for the cost of one gallon of gasoline.
As the price for gasoline goes up and down the reality is that whatever car or truck you got will get so many miles per gallon.
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