Electric vehicles will lower your power bill (opinion piece)

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/01/electric_vehicles_will_lower_y.html#incart_river_home

As an Oregonian I'm embarrassed by the comments to that article. But I have serious doubts about what the author opines. If I pay PGE $25 or so a month more to keep my Spark charged, how can I be worth $2000-9000 to them?
Still; love the Spark, planning on a Bolt.

It's hard not to be embarrassed by comments in the Oregonian

They throw some high numbers to advance their agenda. They learned from Solar companies who use some expensive 30 cts KW rate to show how much you're saving, or EV companies who use a ridiculous low 10 cts kw and a very high $4 a gallon of gas to compare.

I also spend about $30 a month to charge for 40 miles, 5 days a week.

Because we also have solar panels, and we changed rate plans, buying an EV did make our electric bill go from paying about $1,000 a year to getting a check from SoCalEd for $74.26 for the first full billing year with the EV.

Our Spark EV has never been charged anywhere except at home since we bought it in January 2014. On the other hand it only has 5,370 miles on it after 25 months, so I don't do much driving.

Our PV solar power setup is large because we use a lot of power for koi pond pumps. Since it was designed and installed in May 2012 we have also optimized energy use where feasible. When we got the BEV we switched to a Time Of Use rate plan for EV owners, previously we were simply tiered.

For our net metering billing year from June 2014 to June 2015 we were net energy producers, thus the check.

So the solar panels are primarily involved, but the switch to a TOU rate plan for EV owners was also a factor. One might say getting an EV helped lower our electric bill, but few people only drive 2500 miles a year, so it's definitely a corner case.

For those charging an EV at home, look into your utility's TOU rate plan offerings. It might save you a lot of money.

We have a Time-of-Use EV rate from our local utility. The problem is, their peak rates are so high, they nearly offset the savings we get from charging overnight. I did the math on our last bill and we saved $3.58 from the standard rate. That's after a month of limiting shower, cooking and laundry times to off-peak intervals. I'm thinking they need to do better than that if they really want people charging off-peak.

We've also been exploring solar panels. Unfortunately our roof is too small to recoup more than 50% of our average usage, and we use natural gas for furnace heat. Still, there are three companies willing to put them up there and two of them are lease deals. Then there's the possibility our PUC/utility could mimic the BS taking place in Nevada where they're screwing their net-metering solar customers and the leasing companies are abandoning the state. What to do, what to do?

I envision a future where solar is maxed out and utilities encourage EV drivers with lower rates to give them control over when to charge their vehicles with the possibility of pulling juice from the car when needed. Such a scenario would certainly result in lower prices for non-EV customers and a lot less air pollution. But in a world where some utilities are owned and run by fuel burners, we'll have to wait a while.

Based on my experience and reports online I suggest if you do go solar, buy the hardware outright, do not allow some third party to insert itself between you and your electric utility.

We got the details from Solar City this past week. Here in Maryland they don't actually get between us and the utility. After they install the array(s), we get two bills: one from them for the energy generated by the panels, and one from the utility for the amount we used past the solar. We'll save about 3.4 cents per kWh the first year for the solar electricity. After that it's anyone's guess. Solar City raises their rates 2.9% per year so after 20 years our rate for the solar generated electricity is about 20 cents per kWh. They justify that with the expectation the utility will raise their rates faster, which could happen but isn't really substantiated by our previous electric bills.

Obviously the savings are marginal. What bothers me the most is the projected layout of the panels. They proposed putting equal number of panels on both sides of our roof. Since our ridge runs nearly due east to west, the panels on the north side will be almost completely shaded in the winter, which tells me they aren't confused by goals of efficiency, and the cost of the equipment is secondary to soaking the customer for the full 20 years.

I'm in total agreement - buying the system is the way to go.