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[hein]

My New-Hampshire electricity company PSNH offers "Rate R-OTOD, Residential Time-of-Day Service"
"Available to customers living in individual residences and apartments – varies by time of day.
Off-peak hours: • 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays • weekends and holidays"

The night electricity is 'free': 0.18 cent/KWH versus 3.9 regular

So by charging EV's overnight, and run washers, dryer, pool-pumps over night/weekend you can potentially save!

The catch is that you pay much more for daytime use :12.5  ( Airconditioners )
And you essentially add a meter for so they charge $28/month versus $12
And there is already and almost 11 c/KWH in fixed items in our fair state.

So I put all of that in a spreadsheet (picture attached) and for me it comes out to 'not worth the risk'
Over the year I use less than 20KWH/day roughly, and expect to add at most 100 charging nights @8KWH
The way I read my spreadsheet is that IF ... big IF ... I can move to less
than 20 percent peak-week-day usage, THEN I can save $10 - $20 on a $130 monthly bill.

Hopefully this helps others thinking about this some!
CHeers,
Hein.

[WindRider]

We have a similar program here in Idaho and I signed up for it.

I have a timer on the Zero Power cord.   When I get home I plug it in and at 9 PM the timer kicks over and the lower cost power charges it up for my before I ride off again in the morning.

[NoiseBoy]

Hi Hein,

This kind of deal is VERY popular in the UK.  I have a tariff called 'economy 7' where you get half rate electricity between 12 midnight and 7am.  All the heaters in the house are electric night storage, full of bricks, they get hot overnight with cheap power and release it during the day.  Things like washers and dryers and the water heater are on timers and my Zero charges overnight.

You would need to monitor your power usage to decide if its worthwhile and look at adding timers to your heating and appliances.

[manlytom]

yeap - after all I had no choice after installing solar and feeding into the grid ! I am still pissed of with the utility how they tricked me into the deal.
catch is that lower rate charging is late for us, after midnight or so. So I did put my Zero after each days commute onto a timer and charged on low rate for about 4 hours or so.
as I keep having problems with my 2011 I decided not to risk it and keep it on charge as soon as I plug in - at the high rate and give the battery pack as long as possible to charge and balance. Catch is that the charging happens now at a high rate in the afternoons. not great but I figured still better than having the Zero not working (yet as my other post shows it is not....)

to sum it up the 2kW solar still earns me about $2k a year and I could even plug in another EV and make money with it. That is - pay for the investment into the system in the first place.

[Killroy]

What timer plug would you recommend?

I just switched to time of use rates with PG&E.  Even without the additional charging of my new Zero, it will save me ~$75 a year with my old electricity use habits, more charging a Zero.

So, since Zero does not have a built in charge timer to wait for cheap power, I want to get a timer plug to do it.

[KrazyEd]

   I am on Time of use here in Las Vegas, and, it works out perfectly for me over the year. I am at work during the hottest part of the day in the summer.
From October first until Jun first, my rate is .04377 per kw. 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. is .0388 per KW. From Jun 1 through Sept 30, off peak is .05814 per kw,
Summer EV rate is .05191. Peak rate is from 1 p.m. until 7 p.m. at .36209 per KW.  Works perfectly for me as I leave work well  before 1 p.m. and arrive
home well after 7 p.m. Not sure how it is in other areas, but, here there are two different TOU rates with different associated charges, so, if interested,
in TOU, make sure to check out all options before making a decision.

[dgwillim]

Killroy,

I'm on PG&E as well, under time-of-day usage for my PHEV.

I use a Intermatic DT620CL 15 Amp, which has been pretty solid and keeps me in the 10PM to 8AM sweet spot.

Just a heads up, if you attempt to review the events after setting them the unit will flip the on/off setting to the alternate.