Increases in your electricity bills?

[wsb44]

Just wondering what new R1T owners are experiencing in terms of increased electricity bills when charging at home. How often are you charging and how much are your bills increasing? The real question is whether or not I should invest in solar. I know there are many factors to consider, but if our bills are going to increase substantially, it might be worth it. Just curious!

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[Donald Stanfield]

It depends on how much you drive. My truck. costs me around 100 bucks a month to drive which is much cheaper than I was spending on gas for my Audi so it's a net win.

 

[NY_Rob]

An easy way to estimate your monthly cost:

Take your miles driven per month, divide that number by 2.1 then multiply the result by your cost per kWh at home.

Example driving 1,000 miles per month and electricity at home is $0.23/kWh:
1,000mi/2.1= 476 * .23 = $109 per month.

 

[TxBeachRivian]

Free nights plan. So zero. But that ends in March,

 

[wsb44]

An easy way to estimate your monthly cost:

Take your miles driven per month, divide that number by 2.1 then multiply the result by your cost per kWh at home.

Example driving 1,000 miles per month and electricity at home is $0.23/kWh:
1,000mi/2.1= 476 * .23 = $109 per month.

Awesome! That's really helpful. Thanks tons!

 

[MDH]

I have a 14kWh Tesla solar system and three Powerwalls. We charge the Y and R1T about once a week. Peak winter rate here is $ 0.11/kWh. We charge the vehicles from 10pm to 4am when the rate is $.06/kWh. With Net Metering, our bill each month is $15...the grid hook-up minimum.

Effectively the sun charges the vehicles but more importantly the house, shop, garage, well, Starlink and irrigation system pump are all backed-up when the grid goes down.

 

[SingleMalt]

Just wondering what new R1T owners are experiencing in terms of increased electricity bills when charging at home. How often are you charging and how much are your bills increasing? The real question is whether or not I should invest in solar. I know there are many factors to consider, but if our bills are going to increase substantially, it might be worth it. Just curious!

My electricity costs have gone up, but a lot less than what it would have cost me in gas for my previous vehicle.

My public utility provides an "off-peak" rate, so I get electricity between 8:00 PM - 2:00 PM for .08/kWh. I have a higher "on-peak" rate than I did before, but in comparing the rates from when I was charged a flat rate I'm saving about $15 - $20 a month on what I would have paid if I hadn't changed rate plans and about $20 - $40 a month more than I did pre-R1T.

I'm getting (according to the truck) about 2.4 miles/kWh. So when I charge at home (which I do mostly) I'm paying about 3.3 cents per mile, which I'll take all day long.

I do wonder where the investment in solar would start to pay off. I guess it depends on your local utility's rates. You may want to check (if you haven't already) about whether or not they offer an "off-peak" rate.

Best of luck.

 

[NY_Rob]

I do wonder where the investment in solar would start to pay off. I guess it depends on your local utility's rates.

One member from MA recently commented that his current rate of $0.26/kWh increased 64% starting in Nov to $0.43/kWh... at that rate, solar could be a 5year break even point, and the system would still be going for another 20yrs.

 

[RivianNowPlz]

My coop does a subscription service. It was $23 per month for unlimited charging 9p to 9a everyday. Unfortunately that’s going from $23 to $30 for tier one and $50 for tier 2 based on usage. I guess I can’t really complain but it is a minor bummer.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Just wondering what new R1T owners are experiencing in terms of increased electricity bills when charging at home. How often are you charging and how much are your bills increasing? The real question is whether or not I should invest in solar. I know there are many factors to consider, but if our bills are going to increase substantially, it might be worth it. Just curious!

I have solar, so my bills haven’t increased at all….

That said the truck is projecting to utilize 14,000 kWh/year for me for between 18-20,000 miles.

If you can afford it, it’s a worthwhile investment.

 

[Redmond Chad]

An easy way to estimate your monthly cost:

Take your miles driven per month, divide that number by 2.1 then multiply the result by your cost per kWh at home.

Example driving 1,000 miles per month and electricity at home is $0.23/kWh:
1,000mi/2.1= 476 * .23 = $109 per month.

That is indeed a great answer. Just to clarify for anyone unfamiliar:

What he's doing is:

(miles/month) / (2.1 miles/kwh for a Rivian) = kwh/month of electricity used
(kwh/month) * (dollars/kwh) = dollars/month

You may want to add on 10-15% for charging overhead, as that 2.1 figure is only counting electricity actually used by the car. Some gets lost when charging as AC is converted to DC.

When I got my first PHEV in 2008, I didn't know what the expected electric efficiency was supposed to be, so I couldn't calculate it ahead of time. I carefully checked my electric bill after a month...and was very puzzled to find that my bill had gone DOWN. After a few minutes, I realized that I got the car at the same time my son left for college. He used more electricity than the car did!

For my current EV, in Washington paying about 11 cents/kWh, it costs me about $30/month to drive a fairly average 1,000 miles per month. The Rivian isn't nearly as efficient, so I expect it will be over $50/month when it arrives. Still far cheaper than gas!

 

[Redmond Chad]

Here's something I wrote 2.5 years ago (when gas was cheaper!) about calculating EV savings over gas. The example uses (old) US averages; of course you'll want to plug in your own numbers:

Calculating Fuel Savings

U.S. Averages:

• Cost per kWh of electricity: $0.1319 (https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/, April 2020)
• Cost per gallon of gas: $2.329 (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_m.htm, March 2020)
• MPG: 25.1 (https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100YVFS.pdf, March 2019)
• MPkWh: 3 (https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Pow...c&pageno=1&sortBy=Comb&tabView=0&rowLimit=100, April 2020)
• Miles traveled per year: 13,476 (https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm, March 2018)

The cost of gasoline is miles/year / miles/gallon * dollar/gallon = dollars/year
Plugging in the averages, we get 13,476 / 25.1 * 2.329 = $1,250.42
The cost of electricity is miles/year / miles/kWh * dollar/kWh = dollars/year
Plugging in the averages, we get 13,476 / 3 * 0.1319 = $592.49
Using this framework, we find that the average annual fuel savings per year is $657.93, given current US averages (April 2020).

 

[ads75]

I just got my truck last week, so I don’t have firm numbers on my bill yet. But my rate is about to go to 14 cents a kilowatt, so I figure a full charge (135 kw) is just under $19, so almost $20, to go about 270ish miles (I have 20” AT tires). My 2019 2 door Wrangler also gets almost 300 miles on a full tank of gas, at about $4.10/gal in Pennsylvania, works out to almost $70 for a full tank (from dry/completely empty, so about $50 on a fill up from 1/4 tank). Sure, some of my math may be slightly fuzzy, and someone please correct me if my numbers are wrong. Two vehicles, similar ranges, the R1T is 1/3 the cost to move. Of course, you have to figure charger/EVSE home installation costs in also for total cost.

 

[Marchin_MTB]

Keep in mind that the trip page on the R1 tracks the total consumption for the trip period in kWh. I take photos of the trip A window before resets so I can track consumption and efficiency trends (I reset that about once a month). I also try not to reset trip B so I can see total cumulative consumption. I am a fan of sanity checking using the calculations people have shared above above though that won’t include the few kWh consumed per day for standby draw.

In 5 months, the R1T used about 1500 kWh or an average of 300 kWh per month, which would be equivalent to 30% of our utility bill. However, a lot of that usage was due to longer trips with the energy supplied by DCFC on the road, so our household consumption impact is about a 15% increase.

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