Am I doing something wrong? Electric bill

[NY_Cade69]

Thanks to this thread I also figured out I'm on the wrong use plan from my electric provider and could be at $0.1276kwh for overnight charging. Still verifying that I won't over pay for peak time usage.

Wow, Georgia Power is $0.023 per kWh super off-peak 11 p.m. - 7 a.m.

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[tonytaylor53]

Wow, Georgia Power is $0.023 per kWh super off-peak 11 p.m. - 7 a.m.

Don't forget about this guy, almost tripling the rate

https://www.georgiapower.com/content/dam/georgia-power/pdfs/tariffs/tou-fcr.pdf

But don't worry, their PR blitz is technically correct- the base rate is not going up

 

[Richard Goulet]

Got a new 2025 Mach E GTPE less than 2 months ago. I have a 40 amp home charger. Wife drives one way to work 16 miles, then other daily driving but not much. Our power bill went up $176 from last month. Also compared to the same month last year it was almost doubled. I see all these post about how much money people are saving with an EV, some say their electric bill didn’t even go up. We went from loving this car to regretting our purchase.

I have owned my Mach e for 4 months now and total cost to charge for 5700 kms is $49.12 CDN. My hydro provided has an EV rate of 3.9 cents per KwH as long as I charge the vehicle between 11:00 pm and 7:00 am every night.

Moving to an EV has allowed me to go from spending $400 monthly for fuel in my 2019 Nissan Rogue to a grand total of just under $50 for four months or almost 6,000 kms.

As suggested by many other participants, contact your Hydro supplier to ask for an EV rate and charge always during off peak. It is important to make sure that you program your vehicle to only charge during the EV rate time when connected to your home charger.

 

[Bluestang]

My bill for last month is $356.00. We have 2 ev. 24 Mack E Sr and 23 Lightning er. We each drive around 70 miles a day. We are in Georgia so fairly low electric rates. Since going ev the savings over paying for gas is almost like we cool the house for free. A tank per week at $45.00 per tank was $180.00 per vehicle.

 

[Kyle]

I’ll bet your A/C is on in the house now.. Electric bill goes up when you start using it in the summer.

 

[g13g]

Anyone has experience with this product:

https://shop.emporiaenergy.com/products/emporia-vue-3?variant=46067941966079

Seems like a good idea, but wanted to check for practical experience.

I have that and an Emporia Classic L2 EVSE (charger). The Classic tracks usage against my DTE electric plan on its own, and is able to tell me how much I spend on energy. I got the Vue because it allows me to send surplus energy from my solar powers to my EVs.

The way it works is that the charger stops during on-peak hours (11-7 M-F for me), but if the charger is stopped and there's excess solar, it will set the charger to send just the excess. When the sun sets, it will go the full 48 amps, so leaving the car plugged in overnight will fully charge. They must figure that if your car is charged in after sunset, you probably still want it to charge. The Emporia system knows when sunrise and sunset are based on your location.

DTE doesn't do net metering for solar. In the summer I pay about 15¢/kWh off-peak and 26¢/kWh on-peak, but DTE only pays me 6¢ and 17¢ respectively. When I really want to get fiddly and optimize things, I try to charge as much as possible using solar on weekends since I'm "paying" 6¢.

Anyone looking at getting the Vue 3 onto Home Assistant, it works for energy reporting but doesn't update very often (once a minute?). I may wind up flashing the firmware like others and then using Home Assistant to control my Classic's charge rate.

 

[bojesphob]

I have that and an Emporia Classic L2 EVSE (charger). The Classic tracks usage against my DTE electric plan on its own, and is able to tell me how much I spend on energy. I got the Vue because it allows me to send surplus energy from my solar powers to my EVs.

The way it works is that the charger stops during on-peak hours (11-7 M-F for me), but if the charger is stopped and there's excess solar, it will set the charger to send just the excess. When the sun sets, it will go the full 48 amps, so leaving the car plugged in overnight will fully charge. They must figure that if your car is charged in after sunset, you probably still want it to charge. The Emporia system knows when sunrise and sunset are based on your location.

DTE doesn't do net metering for solar. In the summer I pay about 15¢/kWh off-peak and 26¢/kWh on-peak, but DTE only pays me 6¢ and 17¢ respectively. When I really want to get fiddly and optimize things, I try to charge as much as possible using solar on weekends since I'm "paying" 6¢.

Anyone looking at getting the Vue 3 onto Home Assistant, it works for energy reporting but doesn't update very often (once a minute?). I may wind up flashing the firmware like others and then using Home Assistant to control my Classic's charge rate.

One of the things that I like about Ohio is that if you have solar, the local utility has to pay you what they charge customers for what you generate. If they charge 26 cents/kWh, that's what you get paid when you generate. There are a number of negatives of living here, but that's a definite positive.

 

[devmach-e]

The amount of responses have been overwhelming. So many different newer and possibilities.

Are you ever going to respond to the requests for how much you actually pay per kWh, both for this year and last year same period? And how much kWh you actually used? Because those 4 things would be super cool and would probably answer everything...

 

[mkazen]

Are you ever going to respond to the requests for how much you actually pay per kWh, both for this year and last year same period? And how much kWh you actually used? Because those 4 things would be super cool and would probably answer everything...

And should be fairly easy to discover...

 

[devmach-e]

And should be fairly easy to discover...

Right. It's all there on the bill. If nothing else, you can take the total bill amount (including taxes, etc) and divide by the number of kWhs used and get an average cost. Don't have to add up individual generation, delivery, and transmission costs...

 

[g13g]

One of the things that I like about Ohio is that if you have solar, the local utility has to pay you what they charge customers for what you generate. If they charge 26 cents/kWh, that's what you get paid when you generate. There are a number of negatives of living here, but that's a definite positive.

DTE does the same, but they split off a separate 9¢ "distribution" charge. So my 26¢/kWh peak rate is technically 17¢ for generating the energy and 9¢ for distributing it, and since my panels only generate energy without distributing it, they pay me the generation rate.

 

[mkazen]

Right. It's all there on the bill. If nothing else, you can take the total bill amount (including taxes, etc) and divide by the number of kWhs used and get an average cost. Don't have to add up individual generation, delivery, and transmission costs...

Unless you have solar which makes it more complicated But of the 1065 khw I pulled from the grid last month, I know about 460 was for my car. I know (based on a spreadsheet i put together) that my average cost per kwh including generation and distribution is about 12 cents. That makes my month of EV usage (about 1000 miles) cost $55.20. 1000 miles on my Hybrid car which gets about 40mpg would be 25 gallons, so unless I was paying less than $2.21 per gallon, it's still cheaper to run my EV.

 

[devmach-e]

Unless you have solar which makes it more complicated But of the 1065 khw I pulled from the grid last month, I know about 460 was for my car. I know (based on a spreadsheet i put together) that my average cost per kwh including generation and distribution is about 12 cents. That makes my month of EV usage (about 1000 miles) cost $55.20. 1000 miles on my Hybrid car which gets about 40mpg would be 25 gallons, so unless I was paying less than $2.21 per gallon, it's still cheaper to run my EV.

Even with solar it doesn't make it that complicated. At least for me. Most, if not all, of my charging is at night during off peak times (midnight to 3pm). Also, most of my solar production is during that same off-peak period. I have very little production during peak or partial peak period due to the orientation of my roof and the afternoon sun. I just look at overall costs and don't try to micro-manage everything. I know I'm saving money no matter what.

 

[fkyct]

Got a new 2025 Mach E GTPE less than 2 months ago. I have a 40 amp home charger. Wife drives one way to work 16 miles, then other daily driving but not much. Our power bill went up $176 from last month. Also compared to the same month last year it was almost doubled. I see all these post about how much money people are saving with an EV, some say their electric bill didn’t even go up. We went from loving this car to regretting our purchase.

@Kygolfer

You have the details you need on your app, assuming the app reports the same for the MAch-E and Lightning.

Go to the app
Click on the Lightning bolt at the bottom
Under Advanced, click on Charge History
Add up the kWh usage
Multiply the kWh by the kwh rate
Add about 10% for efficiency loss

You can see I used 179 kWhs since 6/14 to replenish my Lightning
My kWh rate is 14 cents/kWh 0.14x179= $25.06 beore charger 10% loss

I drove my Lighting 358 miles since 6/15 at 2.0 mi/kwh so it cost me about 7 cents per mile. I suume your Mach-E will do about 3.0 mi/kwh.

BTW, My Tesla does over 4.1 mi/kwh so it cost 3.5 cents per mile, 1/2 the running cost of my Lightning, Your Mach-E

 

[mkazen]

Most, if not all, of my charging is at night during off peak times (midnight to 3pm). Also, most of my solar production is during that same off-peak period.

You produce energy with your solar panels after midnight?

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