6-9 months so I guess you can say its our next baby

1 hour ago, vikas83 said:

Did you get to test drive it? The acceleration and instant power in an electric car is fun. 

And there's nothing better than never going to a gas station again.

Just curious but how much has it been costing to charge the electric car?

1 minute ago, Mike030270 said:

Just curious but how much has it been costing to charge the electric car?

Uh...no clue dude. I don't have any idea how much our electricity bill is. Never dealt with it.

17 minutes ago, Mike030270 said:

Just curious but how much has it been costing to charge the electric car?

We sized our solar project to support 2 electric vehicles, so if we estimated correctly hopefully near 0

28 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Uh...no clue dude. I don't have any idea how much our electricity bill is. Never dealt with it.

12 minutes ago, paco said:

We sized our solar project to support 2 electric vehicles, so if we estimated correctly hopefully near 0

I was talking more about having to go to one of those stations. Not a home charge

2 minutes ago, Mike030270 said:

I was talking more about having to go to one of those stations. Not a home charge

Oh...I never have to. Range is 200 miles, and round trip to the office is like 20. When the wife had a Tesla, we stopped at Superchargers a few times, but they were free at the time. 

Honestly, most people I know with electric cars almost never charge away from home.

5 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Oh...I never have to. Range is 200 miles, and round trip to the office is like 20. When the wife had a Tesla, we stopped at Superchargers a few times, but they were free at the time. 

Honestly, most people I know with electric cars almost never charge away from home.

I see lots of reserved spaces in parking lots with chargers, in business parks.

3 minutes ago, Toastrel said:

I see lots of reserved spaces in parking lots with chargers, in business parks.

Some people will use those and charge at work...but it's mainly just for a guaranteed spot.

Very few people are driving hundreds of miles a day.

10 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Oh...I never have to. Range is 200 miles, and round trip to the office is like 20. When the wife had a Tesla, we stopped at Superchargers a few times, but they were free at the time. 

Honestly, most people I know with electric cars almost never charge away from home.

I was curious on how they are during road trips or just going beyond the charge capacity 

20 minutes ago, Mike030270 said:

I was talking more about having to go to one of those stations. Not a home charge

Gotcha.  

 

The range on the Mach-E will allow us to do most things without going to a station.  Even if we went to NEPA to have baby girl visit her grandparents there is enough in the battery go to there and back.  The only time we would need it would be for an extended cross country trip and I havent bothered to look into that yet since we still have our Explorer which would be the likely vehicle for a trip that long.

7 minutes ago, Mike030270 said:

I was curious on how they are during road trips or just going beyond the charge capacity 

I can't speak for @vikas83 midlife crisis mobile, but with ford you can put in the address and it will calculate what stations are where when it thinks you will need a charge and direct you to them.  It will even use crowdsourcing if it knows a particular charger is slow\faulty and send you to a more reliable one.  

2 minutes ago, paco said:

Gotcha.  

 

The range on the Mach-E will allow us to do most things without going to a station.  Even if we went to NEPA to have baby girl visit her grandparents there is enough in the battery go to there and back.  The only time we would need it would be for an extended cross country trip and I havent bothered to look into that yet since we still have our Explorer which would be the likely vehicle for a trip that long.

Same. My wife will drive to visit her parents in NorCal, and she just takes her car (hybrid). 

A new lesson learned in regards to batteries.  We are getting 3 Enphase Battery Module Encharge3 batteries to give us protection from outages.  What I DIDN'T know is this:

• If you install a smart battery backup system, they can be configured to help lower your bill in a ToU (Time of Use) billing plan.  ToU is basically interval billing, where your energy usage is broken down into chunks (usually 15 minute chunks).  Your energy provider will determine different prices for different hours of eletric usage, so during peak usage hours they will charge you a higher rate than say energy usage at 2 am.  You can configure your system with smart batteries so that if you are using energy during those peak hours above what you are generating, it can be configured to drain from the batteries instead of the grid.  Then you recharge the batteries via your panels or during off hours at a cheaper rate.  

4 hours ago, Toastrel said:

I see lots of reserved spaces in parking lots with chargers, in business parks.

A lot of facilities will get those installed for the tax breaks.  I haven't been there in almost 2 years now, but for our office we gutted a 3 story building and remodeled it from the ground up and had chargers put in for tax purposes.  They were always in use pre-COVID but that wasn't really the consideration when the remodel was under design.

On 2/7/2022 at 2:38 PM, vikas83 said:

Got rid of the Tesla a couple years back -- was the Wife's car. I drive a Taycan now. Highly recommend.

You should get a Tesla model S Plaid.  Unless you’re poor. 
 

 

Tesla forgot to put capable brakes on the plaid. Its a death trap. 

Are there any applications for fresnel lenses and energy generation, for those who know what that is?

29 minutes ago, Seventy_Yard_FG said:

Are there any applications for fresnel lenses and energy generation, for those who know what that is?

All Martians get a tax credit

Florida is about to screw over people with solar pretty nicely. Florida Power and Light literally wrote a bill and paid two politicians 10k in campaign donations  to sponsor it. Basically it lets them pay you 30% of what they currently have to pay for the power your system provides back to the grid which they in turn charge people the full retail rate for. They also started charging a monthly minimum bill. The politicians don’t even try to pretend to not be bought anymore.

8 hours ago, Jsvand12 said:

Florida is about to screw over people with solar pretty nicely. Florida Power and Light literally wrote a bill and paid two politicians 10k in campaign donations  to sponsor it. Basically it lets them pay you 30% of what they currently have to pay for the power your system provides back to the grid which they in turn charge people the full retail rate for. They also started charging a monthly minimum bill. The politicians don’t even try to pretend to not be bought anymore.

Id like to see that bill.  Typically net metering allows you to offset your full utility bill throughout the year and any overages on top of that you get paid back.  However PECO, for example caps you at 110% generation per month so in essence anything you put back into the grid above that you get $0.  So if that bill removes the caps then that would actually be an incentive for people to remove the cap, maximize the amount of power they can generate and get more money back at the end of the year.  
 

 

Edit: I put a quasi gripe about that in my lessons learned:

• With most power companies, you can’t go and buy as many panels as you please.  Why?  I have no clue.  For example, with PECO we are having to jump through some hoops to make a case to put more panels than what would be needed to cover our current usage by 110%  (110% is the maximum amount they allow in their net metering program, so basically you can cover your electric and roll over an additional 10%). We have built into our proposal two future electric cars (which is why we are jumping on the Mustang now) as well as a tankless water heater.  

1 hour ago, paco said:

Id like to see that bill.  Typically net metering allows you to offset your full utility bill throughout the year and any overages on top of that you get paid back.  However PECO, for example caps you at 110% generation per month so in essence anything you put back into the grid above that you get $0.  So if that bill removes the caps then that would actually be an incentive for people to remove the cap, maximize the amount of power they can generate and get more money back at the end of the year.  
 

 

Edit: I put a quasi gripe about that in my lessons learned:

 

• With most power companies, you can’t go and buy as many panels as you please.  Why?  I have no clue.  For example, with PECO we are having to jump through some hoops to make a case to put more panels than what would be needed to cover our current usage by 110%  (110% is the maximum amount they allow in their net metering program, so basically you can cover your electric and roll over an additional 10%). We have built into our proposal two future electric cars (which is why we are jumping on the Mustang now) as well as a tankless water heater.  

Did you happen to read the article that PA is looking to get rid of the gas tax? They say they aren't getting what they need from the gas tax anymore because of solar energy and electric cars. So in return they are going to add a fuel tax at the end of the year or something like that.. From what I saw it's a large chunk of change that will be added on to people's year end taxes. 

If you haven't seen it I'll try to find it, I'm interested in knowing exactly what they are trying to do. 

7 minutes ago, Bwestbrook36 said:

Did you happen to read the article that PA is looking to get rid of the gas tax? They say they aren't getting what they need from the gas tax anymore because of solar energy and electric cars. So in return they are going to add a fuel tax at the end of the year or something like that.. From what I saw it's a large chunk of change that will be added on to people's year end taxes. 

If you haven't seen it I'll try to find it, I'm interested in knowing exactly what they are trying to do. 

First, PA realizes the gas tax is becoming obsolete as more EVs and fuel-efficient cars are on the roads. Gas tax is levied per gallon. Vehicles are driving more miles on less gas, providing less funding from gas taxes to maintain the roads. There is a number of things they'd like to do. It will take years to overhaul the system. https://www.penndot.gov/about-us/funding/Pages/TROC.aspx

1 hour ago, Bwestbrook36 said:

Did you happen to read the article that PA is looking to get rid of the gas tax? They say they aren't getting what they need from the gas tax anymore because of solar energy and electric cars. So in return they are going to add a fuel tax at the end of the year or something like that.. From what I saw it's a large chunk of change that will be added on to people's year end taxes. 

If you haven't seen it I'll try to find it, I'm interested in knowing exactly what they are trying to do. 

I heard about that.  Not getting rid of the gas tax, but finding new ways to gouge you for electric vehicles since that revenue is going away.  This f'n state.

1 hour ago, toolg said:

First, PA realizes the gas tax is becoming obsolete as more EVs and fuel-efficient cars are on the roads. Gas tax is levied per gallon. Vehicles are driving more miles on less gas, providing less funding from gas taxes to maintain the roads. There is a number of things they'd like to do. It will take years to overhaul the system. https://www.penndot.gov/about-us/funding/Pages/TROC.aspx

Ok I wasn't seeing things then. The one example they gave, I was like omg you have got to be kidding! 

7 minutes ago, paco said:

I heard about that.  Not getting rid of the gas tax, but finding new ways to gouge you for electric vehicles since that revenue is going away.  This f'n state.

Yeah really, everyone else is encouraging you to go to electric vehicles and offer some type of incentive... Not PA tho! You go electric you will be punished!