Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

I don't think this metaphor completely holds up. For one, people with solar pay for connection to the distribution network regardless of whether they're running a net surplus of electricity. (In months when we make more electricity than we consume, our bill is still around $14 or $15, specifically to cover all the stuff you're talking about.) For another, they also pay per kWh for the electricity they use when the sun is not shining... the same as everyone else does. And unlike some random ball of dough that a pizza customer presents a server with at the end of a meal, electricity that comes from distributed solar generation isn't, like, secondhand and of questionable quality -- utilities count on being able to send less power into the grid during sunny periods because they know home solar installations will be putting some in.

Unless I've been misreading my bill, Pepco pays a wholesale rate for electricity it buys from us, and we pay a retail rate for electricity we buy from them, plus also separate fees for connection to the grid. Seems reasonable to me. Why do you think it would be more fair for surplus electricity generated by systems people spend a lot of money to install to just get sent back into the grid for no compensation at all?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% it’s status and virtue signaling. And I’m an environmentalist. Most people who own EV fly enough that their commute is noise (esp in new WFH paradigm)

Relative to combustion engines, EVs are a significant improvement with respect to CO2 emissions. The analysis below includes emissions from production:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122000867#:~:text=The%20total%20life%2Dcycle%20emissions,to%20internal%20combustion%20engine%20vehicles.&text=Modern%20battery%20recycling%20techniques%20can,about%2060%20%25%20to%2065%20%25.

So no, an EV isn't virtue signaling. EVs are a good step forward in our efforts to reduce emissions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

This is a nuts analogy, ignoring lots of factors including the nature of electric power markets and utilities. I guess if there was only one restaurant in town and people were required to eat all their meals there and the government regulated what the restaurant could serve and charge you might begin to have a relevant point?

Residential solar is often the cheapest source of new electric power, so unless you think there will never be a need for additional electric power it makes all kinds of sense to let people sell excess power back at wholesale rates. People selling it back still have to pay for infrastructure and connection fees, and people who need power would still have to pay for new sources of electricity one way or another.

Buying it at sholesale rates is not necessarily reasonable. If they're producing an excess of solar power, it likely means that the utility doesn't need additional power at that point. It still doesn't cover the cost of the grid, which is required for sending it back to the power company. It doesn't cover all the additional costs of operating a large corporation, even one that is a tightly regulated monopoly.

Just ask yourself how sustainable it would be if every ratepayer had solar panels and expected to sell power back whenever the sun was shining. Sell it to whom??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have 2 EV’s, both teslas. We drive a lot because we live in a mountain town next to a larger city, so everything is spread out. We have solar on our house. From April - October, about 90% of charging is done by solar for both cars. From Nov - March, it is much less, like 20-30%, but even so, it’s cheaper than gas. During those months, we rely more on charging on the free chargers at our workplace, which run on renewables or has a carbon offset (part of vail epic 100% renewable promise).

It feels great to have close to zero emissions from solar/ev combo for part of the year and for the rest of the year, we try our best. I can sit in a toasty parked car in the winter and blast the air conditioning in a parked car in the summer. I can preheat and precool the car. I can leave our dog in the car with the temp at 68 degrees in the middle of summer. The acceleration is awesome. I haven’t been to a gas station in 6 months. The only maintenance is tires, wipers, and air filters. No oil changes, brake pads, brake fluid, transmissions, transmission fluid, jumper cables, radiators, catalytic converters, coolant, spark plugs, fuel pump, water pump, fan belt, ignition, etc.

In April, I drove 1500 miles on my ev. Average gas cost for ice vehicle is 11.29 per 100 miles, so this would have cost me $170 in gas. Instead, I paid $9. Over the course of the year, I would have paid $2000+ in gas and instead I pay about $500 in electricity.

Thanks for writing this up. Very informative. The significant reduced maintenance makes sense, but--and here I show my ignorance--was surprised that brake pads and fluids were on your list. What makes the process of braking different on EVs vs. Gas?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

This is a nuts analogy, ignoring lots of factors including the nature of electric power markets and utilities. I guess if there was only one restaurant in town and people were required to eat all their meals there and the government regulated what the restaurant could serve and charge you might begin to have a relevant point?

Residential solar is often the cheapest source of new electric power, so unless you think there will never be a need for additional electric power it makes all kinds of sense to let people sell excess power back at wholesale rates. People selling it back still have to pay for infrastructure and connection fees, and people who need power would still have to pay for new sources of electricity one way or another.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have 2 EV’s, both teslas. We drive a lot because we live in a mountain town next to a larger city, so everything is spread out. We have solar on our house. From April - October, about 90% of charging is done by solar for both cars. From Nov - March, it is much less, like 20-30%, but even so, it’s cheaper than gas. During those months, we rely more on charging on the free chargers at our workplace, which run on renewables or has a carbon offset (part of vail epic 100% renewable promise).

It feels great to have close to zero emissions from solar/ev combo for part of the year and for the rest of the year, we try our best. I can sit in a toasty parked car in the winter and blast the air conditioning in a parked car in the summer. I can preheat and precool the car. I can leave our dog in the car with the temp at 68 degrees in the middle of summer. The acceleration is awesome. I haven’t been to a gas station in 6 months. The only maintenance is tires, wipers, and air filters. No oil changes, brake pads, brake fluid, transmissions, transmission fluid, jumper cables, radiators, catalytic converters, coolant, spark plugs, fuel pump, water pump, fan belt, ignition, etc.

In April, I drove 1500 miles on my ev. Average gas cost for ice vehicle is 11.29 per 100 miles, so this would have cost me $170 in gas. Instead, I paid $9. Over the course of the year, I would have paid $2000+ in gas and instead I pay about $500 in electricity.

Thanks for writing this up. Very informative. The significant reduced maintenance makes sense, but--and here I show my ignorance--was surprised that brake pads and fluids were on your list. What makes the process of braking different on EVs vs. Gas?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Thought exercise. Try going to your favorite pizza restaurant. Order a large pizza and maybe a bottle of wine.

While you're waiting for your food, take out some flour and an egg and some water and yeast and start rolling some dough on your table. When your pizza comes, tell the server that you want to send the dough you just made back to the kitchen so that they can use it for the next customer, and you would like the dough that you provided to be credited to you on your check.

This is what people who expect solar net metering are essentially demanding from a business. It is something that was very popular in the very early years, and everyone *loved* to talk about it. "I'm selling my excess power BACK to the utility!!"

Sure, and you're also requiring all the people who don't have solar to subsidize your use of the distribution network, the substations (all the grid stuff) and your use of electricity when the sun is not shining. It's completely unsustainable from a basic costing perspective, and I would try to explain this for years and tell people that it would not last, and nobody wanted to hear it.

/rant

Anonymous wrote:We have 2 EV’s, both teslas. We drive a lot because we live in a mountain town next to a larger city, so everything is spread out. We have solar on our house. From April - October, about 90% of charging is done by solar for both cars. From Nov - March, it is much less, like 20-30%, but even so, it’s cheaper than gas. During those months, we rely more on charging on the free chargers at our workplace, which run on renewables or has a carbon offset (part of vail epic 100% renewable promise).

It feels great to have close to zero emissions from solar/ev combo for part of the year and for the rest of the year, we try our best. I can sit in a toasty parked car in the winter and blast the air conditioning in a parked car in the summer. I can preheat and precool the car. I can leave our dog in the car with the temp at 68 degrees in the middle of summer. The acceleration is awesome. I haven’t been to a gas station in 6 months. The only maintenance is tires, wipers, and air filters. No oil changes, brake pads, brake fluid, transmissions, transmission fluid, jumper cables, radiators, catalytic converters, coolant, spark plugs, fuel pump, water pump, fan belt, ignition, etc.

In April, I drove 1500 miles on my ev. Average gas cost for ice vehicle is 11.29 per 100 miles, so this would have cost me $170 in gas. Instead, I paid $9. Over the course of the year, I would have paid $2000+ in gas and instead I pay about $500 in electricity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do they do for long trips? How long do you have to stop to charge? Have you ever gotten stuck because others are charging at your planned stop?

We have a hybrid. Love it.

after extensive research on evs, think this is the first logical step.....50-60 mpgs seems to be the sweet spot

Still have all the maintenance costs and headaches of a gas car, though. Over the period you own the car, those logistics may wind up being more annoying than the time you spend figuring out how and where to charge would be in a fully electric one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean there are also reasons to buy an EV that have nothing to do with the environment. I've gotten poop, gum, spit and other disgusting things on my hands using gas pumps. I just charge my EV at home so that doesn't happen with that car.

Yeah, one of the biggest reasons I got an EV was I got solar on my roof and was running a credit every month. Pepco won't refund you the difference and I needed a new car anyway so it was win-win. I got a Model 3 and any other car I was looking at was going to be in that price range anyway, this way I get free "gas" and loads better acceleration than anything else in that price range. The environmental benefits are great but I'd have done it for the financial and performance benefits alone.

Pepco won't refund overages? When we installed solar in ~2015 they did in DC. We no longer own that home, but that is news to me.

Anonymous wrote:90% it’s status and virtue signaling. And I’m an environmentalist. Most people who own EV fly enough that their commute is noise (esp in new WFH paradigm)