Drew Dowdell

I forget where, but I was reading recently that their retail incentives are waaaay up now. One wonders..... are there any gasoline models from any brand with this sort of cheat software?

More entries from your serial killer blog?

*sigh*.... really... how hard can it be to seal a valve cover?

In the holiday spirit.

Well, you're both right. The Powerwall can/will recharge from whatever system it has available at the time. Some places like Texas have very cheap electricity rates at certain times of the day or on certain days. The power wall can be programmed to recharge during the low cost time periods and discharge during the high cost time periods. If you have net metering, it can even be programmed to release the low price energy back to the grid during high price times and you can make money on it. All of that is completely independent of whether you have rooftop solar or not. If you have a solar setup, a Powerwall charge cycle might look something like this. 1. 9am - 11am - Solar provides energy to the house with Powerwall picking up the slack... any excess is sold to the grid 2. 11am - 5pm - Solar recharges Powerwall, anything Powerwall can't take, sell to the grid. 3. 5pm - 7pm - High grid prices, high household usage. Solar and Powerwall combine to avoid grid activity, if household usage is low, sell power from the Powerwall back to the grid to make money. 4. 7pm - 9pm - High grid prices, high household usage, solar is done for the night. Powerwall is in full discharge mode to avoid pulling from the grid. 5. 9pm - 12am - medium grid prices, lower household usage, powerwall close to spent, switching to grid as primary source 6. 12am - 8am - lowest grid prices, lowest household usage, powerwall and the Model S in the garage recharging from the grid. The bigger the Powerwall, the more wiggle room you have to either not use grid power or to sell collected energy back to the grid. But even if you don't have solar, Powerwall can use net metering to save, or even make money.

With home heating bills like that, I would think a geothermal system would pay off in 15 years, sooner if you get any rebates or credits.... plus your house would increase in value by about 75% of the cost of the system you installed. Fairly easy math if you can swing it financially.

If you can get $6500 + 30% tax credit + Net Metering..... you go for it right away... don't wait as you don't know when the rebates will be back again

Yes

Dfelt, on a typical house, it sounds like a $1500 rebate with a max of $2000. There would need to be other rebates and subsides available to make solar financially worthwhile there if it will take off. In MA and NY, all of the subsidies stacked can take up to 65% of the price of the install. Still, it would be nice to have an EV and charge it at home using some solar to do so. It looks like you're billed on 2 month cycles? Quick division says that at your worst, you were paying 9.2 cents per kWh from January to March. Not terrible, but not great when you're using 10k kWhs. What fuel do you use to heat your house and have you looked at alternatives? My electric bill just dropped in half to $80 a month on budget billing and I expect it to drop even further over the next year. I just had a new high efficiency furnace and A/C system installed. I used to have window A/C units and my gas furnace was 65 years old. Oddly, we used more electric in the winter than in the summer because the blower on that old furnace burned up so much electricity that the lights would dim when it kicked on. I also had the electrical box upgraded from 60amp fuse service to 150amp breakers. I had them leave a provision for another 220 line in case I need a car charger in the future. ELECTRICITY...and only electricity is the fuel I use. Im thinking about installing a thermal pump. When I built the house, I had all plumbing and electrical wiring done to accommodate a thermal pump. Yeah...two month cycles...and yeah...it is that expensive in the winter...and it was cold during December-March last year....2 years in a row. And...this year, rates went up in April 2015, so, if El Nino does not kick in and we get another record breakin cold winter, it will be probably more than 9.2 cents. Not an external heat pump?! I thought those don't work below about 15 degrees F? You mean something like Geothermal, right? You'd be better off installing natural gas if it's available near you....

Home Electricity and EV Charging discussion has been moved

It looks like you're billed on 2 month cycles? Quick division says that at your worst, you were paying 9.2 cents per kWh from January to March. Not terrible, but not great when you're using 10k kWhs. What fuel do you use to heat your house and have you looked at alternatives? My electric bill just dropped in half to $80 a month on budget billing and I expect it to drop even further over the next year. I just had a new high efficiency furnace and A/C system installed. I used to have window A/C units and my gas furnace was 65 years old. Oddly, we used more electric in the winter than in the summer because the blower on that old furnace burned up so much electricity that the lights would dim when it kicked on. I also had the electrical box upgraded from 60amp fuse service to 150amp breakers. I had them leave a provision for another 220 line in case I need a car charger in the future.

That is a LOT of incentive to go with an EV! Do you guys get Solar Rebates for installing household solar as well?* *Disclaimer, I work for a company that, among other products and services, offers residential and commercial solar installation and financing. I am not endorsing any particular product or service in this discussion.

I'm breaking off a new thread here from the discussion in Tesla because I think it is interesting. I'll move the off-topic posts into here.

Wonder if they'll start to up the limit for owners who charge cars.

Wow! Good year... you had a lot of great choices to pick from as well.

I'm curious about material quality on this one.... if it is as good as you say, it would be better than the RLX that I drove 2 weeks ago.... and I wasn't impressed.

But he did state it correctly, I followed the links and even the Canada government shows it as $6.21 per KWh. The web site unless I am miss understanding is wanting people to stay under the 30KWh thresh hold. Seems crazy expensive but that is what they post and say on the web site. Still electricity is cheap but they do have a big hit for heavy users according to the web site. You're right, I found another PDF that lists that same rate.... but still, that is a LOT of energy for a residential place to use. I went and looked at my bill and I'm only using an average of 12kWh - 15kWh per day... even with electric heat, I would think it would be hard to hit 3.3 times that.

I think he meant 6.21 cents/kWh.... not dollars.

I don't mind the idea of the self driving car. There are times I want to drive and there are times (like my frequent trips to NJ on the PA Turnpike) where I'd rather someone else was driving.

So that we're not flooded with a bunch of supercars that even William and I haven't been able to drive, lets try to keep it to makes/models that are accessible to most of the population: What car have you always wanted to drive, even as just an extended test drive, but have never had the chance? I mentioned one in the "Cars from your soul year?" thread, the Mazda RX7 I've also never been behind the wheel of an old Air-Cooled Beetle.... and while not fast, I still think it would be neat. I also would want to "return to my roots" and drive one of the old Old 350 Diesel power GM cars on a long drive.... just to experience it.

Well in the case of the sensors, I assume there will be some self diagnostic built in that will disable the autonomous drive if the sensors aren't in perfect working order. I had a test Lincoln MKS years ago with adaptive cruise control. I took it on a trip about 2.5 hours into Ohio during a heavy snow storm. The front end would get completely caked over with ice/snow/mush, including wherever the sensor was located for the ACC. After a very short time, ACC would simply refuse to function, citing a sensor error.

Very good question. The Benz CLS400 I had over the summer had a bad habit of its navigation system freezing up on me and me not realizing it until 5 or 10 miles down the road. Then it would reboot which seemed to take 2 - 3 minutes.

So here's a question about self driving cars: Can it recognize a road closure? What happens if your maps are out of date? Here in Pittsburgh, one street was suddenly switched from 2 way to 1 way with one lane converted into a bike lane. Even with instant update Google Maps, it would take a few days for that change to be reflected in the Google Map ecosystem. Does your Benz just plow into the bike lane until you get a map update?

OK, so how much per Kilowatt hr? Washington state which is 100% Hyrdo powered and they just built a couple of huge wind farms on the Columbia river so do not know how that factors in, but we have always had almost the cheapest electric cost in the nation. One reason the aluminum plants all came here. Our Home rate is 6.94 cents per Kilowatt hr. Only 2 other states are cheaper than us at 6.90 and 6.92. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ Course on this Gov web site they show us as the cheapest in the nation. http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm So what is your rate? I'm at 7.5 cpkwh.