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US Utilities Have Finally Realized Electric Cars May Save Them (qz.com)
Pity the utility company. For decades, electricity demand just went up and up, as surely as the sun rose in the east. Power companies could plan ahead with confidence. No longer. From a report: This year, the Tennessee Valley Authority scrapped its 20-year projections through 2035, since it was clear they had drastically underestimated the extent to which renewable energy would depress demand for electricity from the grid. But there is a bright spot for utilities: electric vehicles (EV), which make up 1% of the US car market.
For years, that market barely registered on utilities' radar. As EVs find growing success, utilities are building charging infrastructure and arranging generous rebates. Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and New Jersey's PSE&G have partnered with carmakers to offer thousands of dollars in rebates for BMW, Nissan, and other brands. Now utilities are asking Congress for help as they attempt to keep tapping into EV demand. A collection of 36 of the nation's largest utilities wrote a letter (PDF) to congressional leadership on March 13, asking for a lift on the cap on EV tax credits. The signatories' include California's Pacific Gas & Electric, New York's Consolidated Edison, the southeast's Duke Energy Company, and others covering almost every state. At the moment, Americans who buy electric vehicles receive a $7,500 federal tax credit (along with some state incentives) for each vehicle.
For years, that market barely registered on utilities' radar. As EVs find growing success, utilities are building charging infrastructure and arranging generous rebates. Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and New Jersey's PSE&G have partnered with carmakers to offer thousands of dollars in rebates for BMW, Nissan, and other brands. Now utilities are asking Congress for help as they attempt to keep tapping into EV demand. A collection of 36 of the nation's largest utilities wrote a letter (PDF) to congressional leadership on March 13, asking for a lift on the cap on EV tax credits. The signatories' include California's Pacific Gas & Electric, New York's Consolidated Edison, the southeast's Duke Energy Company, and others covering almost every state. At the moment, Americans who buy electric vehicles receive a $7,500 federal tax credit (along with some state incentives) for each vehicle.
Most of us around the world pay taxes on every liter or gallon of petroleum our cars consume. In some countries it's a pretty high tax. If electric vehicles start making up a larger and larger % of vehicles on the road will there come an end where to be fair you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity- take a certain % of your electricity usage and put it towards maintaining roads and public transportation?
We all benefit from roads and bridges, even those that don't drive.
Obviously we're still at the stage where most governments are still trying to encourage more electric vehicles, but eventually if electric takes off like planned, it's going to become unfair to place all the burden of taxes to maintain roads on drivers of ICE vehicles. Especially since it will most likely be the poor and impoverished who will be the last to adapt to the new electric-vehicle age.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I pay $0.0725/kWh for 100% solar-hydro-geothermal-wind. BGE wants to give me a coal-oil-nuclear supply deal: $0.215/kWh during the day, $0.0955/kWh during the evening and night when I'm charging my EV. That doesn't include the transmission costs and customer fees.
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but its hard to see electric cars and trucks saving the industry in fifty years for a number of reasons:
Contraction: Many american corporate towns and boomtime cities like Detroit are not only wastelands, but effectively unsustainable in the face of a government that reviles domestic policy. Many places in the rust belt such as Flynt, Michigan are not only a loss-leader, but literally and metaphorically toxic. As time marches on these cities will either continue to draw disproportionate and unjustifiable levels of government funds for upkeep and emergency maintenance, or will be shuttered after cumulative disasters in favour of consolidation and contraction into larger cities. Most suburbs dont meet this condition, however many exurbs such as the Ahwatukee suburb in Arizona exist only at the behest of government officials banging the drum of exurban expansion at cost to surrounding cities (phoenix sheriff and EMS/fire service and water service from the surrounding counties.) deprecating these outlands mean shorter commutes, less charging, and less energy expense.
Batteries: Solar is a game changer in that it places the means of production squarely in the hands of the consumer. The house may run on electricity, however LED lighting and emergy efficient appliances have bled utilities dry for decades and theres no sign that trend will cease. The electric car will, in 30-40 years time if not now, charge itself by dedicated solar array thus sidestepping commercial utilities entirely until theyre required to cut cheques for grid participation by solar owners. its also not entirely unreasonable to imagine a long term future where the car you buy comes with a battery that is only replaced every 100,000 miles. it ships charged, with the car.
What will drive utilities in the future you may ask? climate change. in the future heating and cooling homes and businesses will become more difficult. higher winds and more storm conditions means electric cars and trucks will work harder, and charge more inefficiently from solar than anticipated.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It all seems so obvious now, help build out EV service stations, promote more EVs and sell more electricity!
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I never understand why we let electric companies be private corps. It's not like I have a choice of companies. There's always only been one where I live. And it's not like we don't all need electricity. As near as I can tell the only reason for them to be private is so somebody's uncle or brother in law can skim 10%-20% off the top.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So at some point, will they even slow the rate of new installs? I suspect that will be exactly the case.
So the wild card here is indeed electric transportation. Will it save the utilities? I dunno. I've thought about an EV with a home solar charging station, and I bet a lot of others have as well. Then again, I'm still toying with the idea of going total solar and disconnecting from the grid altogether.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
At some point people will realize if they have access to an ic engine car/truck/van mix at different locations in the city, they can choose the car purely optimized for one commute and two errands per day.
If that shift happens the biggest buyer of IC engine cars/vans/trucks will be the rental companies. They will have even better clout with the car makers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Not as flexible as gas or diesel.
Shorter Range.
Tied to a credit card.
And they sound like vacuum cleaners.
The feedback loops of all these subsidies are long, unwieldy, wasteful and prone to abuse. I don't think the government should be in the business of encouraging anything - let the markets decide what are the best ways. No doubt, things like electric cars will find their niche on their own.
As an aside, I think ALL larger roads should be toll roads, where the users are the ones who pay. Again, it (the market) would resolve everything on its own versus people paying for bridges they'll never see. It's accurate and it's fair.
It does not scale with the price of the car. Any fully-electric car is eligible for the full $7500. A plug-in hybrid like a Volt only gets about half.
Maybe what you are thinking of is not everyone pays $7500 in tax, so they would only be able to take the credit up to their tax liability. With this particular credit, you cannot carry over the credit to the next year, so you use it or lose it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The US system is such a mess. Soon the credits will expire on Tesla and GM, but continue for other EV manufacturers (mostly foreign), so the US will be giving foreign competitors a significant tax advantage relative to domestic manufacturers.
I like our system here. There are no rebates or anything like that. Rather, we have high sales taxes on vehicles, but electric vehicles are exempt from the taxes. So nobody feels that EV buyers are getting "paid" to get an EV. One could argue that it's still cutting revenue from the government, but then comes the counterargument that a lot of these people wouldn't have bought a vehicle at all if not for the tax discount, and all of the side benefits such as reduced pollution benefit everyone.
Basically, I think it's a lot more "publically acceptable" approach than rebates. But regardless of what form incentives take, it's pretty stupid having incentives designed in a way that penalize your domestic industry vs. its competitors.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
So the article doesn't apply to you. It's for people who haven't been saturated with 50+ years of propaganda that having a car that loudly burns fossil fuels somehow makes you more manly.
Right. Power generators are idiots and you, who don't work in the power industry, know oh so much better than them.
Electric utilities have idle capacity at night. Being able to sell more power without having to build more infrastructure is a massive boon for them.
And FYI, you're confusing "solar" with "all renewables". Wind tends to be strongest in the night.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?
I know a few EV owners who use solar power exclusively. They don't commute, but are basically off-grid and off the utility radar...I'm one of them.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The grid should have no problem with EV charging (the UK grid says they haven't). The fast chargers are to supply the cars from battery which is charged by the grid at an even rate so not creating spikes.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I know we're wandering off topic a little here but- I prefer a tax on purchased goods and services.
Which is inherently regressive. Plus you don't want to put all your eggs in a single taxation scheme. Doing that causes all sorts of problems when the economy inevitably has a downturn. You want a mixture of taxation mechanisms and whenever possible you want them as closely related to what they are funding as possible. I understand the appeal of what you are proposing but it's fatally flawed.
The rich have always found ways of circumventing income taxes. Most of the mega-rich end up paying a lower % of their earning on taxes than the average person (despite theoretically being in a high tax bracket).
Only because we as the voting public allow it. Until we collectively stop screwing ourselves it is a problem that will continue. Many of the problem can be solved by taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. You also could solve a lot of problems by taxing businesses on revenue rather than profits. Profits are a LOT easier to fiddle with than revenue is. (yes I'm aware of the challenges this causes too)
Goods and services (exclude non hospitality food items) is a better idea because you pay more based on the more you consume.
The flaw in that reasoning is that there is a limit on how much an individual can consume. Once your basic needs are met your consumption of goods and services does not go up linearly with income. That means that poor people end up paying a MUCH higher percentage of their income in taxes than wealthy people. A modest level of taxation on purchased goods and services is fine and useful but relying on it too much would eventually result in huge revenue problems for governments during every recession. Like for most businesses diversity of income streams is a good thing for governments if you want them to be able to function in both good and bad times. There are multiple ways to make it all work but in every case it is a bad idea to rely too heavily on a single means of taxation.
. I would also suggest a progressive tax-bracket for items too to tax luxuries higher than necessities.
Then you get into a messy situation where the government is de-facto setting prices for goods. (they already do it to some degree and it doesn't work well) Where do you draw the line on what constitutes a luxury? Is a camera a luxury good? If not at what price point does it become one? You would have to do this for every product made and tracking that would be an administrative nightmare. You also are effectively subsidizing some products over others based on an arbitrarily chosen price point. I happen to be an accountant and I assure you that you are hugely underestimating the mess this would be. I know it sounds simple but in reality it very much is not.
How much longer will the masses be kept blind from zero point energy, something the power/utility companies are well aware of. .... poor them, generating power from virtually nothing and billing every single household out there. Incredible.
"Pity the utility company",
Pity the utility company.
Why the snark?
Humans work for utility companies, and humans own stock in them.
Why shouldn't those humans be concerned about making enough money?
My experience with EV Vehicles and Local Utilities in San Diego:
- State EV Vehicle rebate -- State controller says he is out of $ and won't pay out the rebate to any taxpayer making a decent income.
- Federal EV Vehicle rebate -- fine, fair enough and I'm happy to hear that it will be winding down over the next few years.
- Utility Rates and Discounts -- Pricing has gone up from 18 cents/KWH to 24.5 cents/KWH on average for my home. Time of use plans are estimated to cost me more, even with the EV vehicle. There is a $250 rebate for having an EV car, but it's unclear how much longer it will be paid. My normal Gas and Electric bill is $450, but I work from home so it isn't completely out of line. However, that's after the switch to LED lights and ultra efficient appliances. I also already have solar panels...but they're for a moderate sized pool. I'll probably need to invest substantially into solar electric soon too...but I'm waiting for panel tech to mature and efficiency/lifetime of panels to be compelling. The panels will be a once in a lifetime purchase.
That's one way to look at it. Another way is that all manufactures receive the same benefit, but some stretched it out over more years than others. One way or another, GM and Tesla get exactly the same amount of total money as Toyota and Volkswagen.
I guess it depends what you want... are you trying to create an incentive for a first-mover benefit, or are you trying to be sure that every manufacturer develops an electric car?
In any event, I share your distaste for rebates... they have too many undesired consequences compared to simpler incentives like your example of a sales tax exemption. To be fair, this can't happen in the US because there is not a federal sales tax to be exempt from! And people who buy electrics are already free of our national gasoline tax - which is an incentive all by itself.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle This is a new vehicle with at least four wheels that: Is propelled to a significant extent by an electric motor that draws electricity from a battery that has a capacity of not less than 4 kilowatt hours and is capable of being recharged from an external source of electricity, and Has a gross vehicle weight of less than 14,000 pounds.
The Gen 1 Volt battery has a presented/usable capacity of something on the order of 10.3 kWh, but the battery pack itself is on the order of 16 kWh, as it changed from introduction to the end of Gen 1. Gen 2 has 18.4 kWh pack so it also qualifies (and delivers 53ish mile range rather than 35ish mile range)
About a year or so ago California ran a largeish pilot program testing various ways of addressing this coming change to cars that don't use gas and thus don't pay gas taxes.
I participated in this pilot, and just had to report my mileage periodically by taking a photo of my odometer with a smartphone app. and then pretend to pay a fake bill. They had several other reporting and payment methods available, including GPS devices, bringing your car in to have the odometer read, etc. It's definitely a workable problem.
You can read the final report, FAQs, etc, of this pilot here: https://www.californiaroadchar...
Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle This is a new vehicle with at least four wheels that: Is propelled to a significant extent by an electric motor that draws electricity from a battery that has a capacity of not less than 4 kilowatt hours and is capable of being recharged from an external source of electricity, and Has a gross vehicle weight of less than 14,000 pounds.
My bad - next time I'll google before trying to sound smart :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No problem, there's a lot of nitpicking and caveats with this stuff. I do have a Volt so I looked into this a lot when I bought it ... it's been a very nice experience skipping the gas pump for months at a time, since I can charge at home and work. Used market has a lot of good deals, too, both on Volts and other similar models, or full on EVs.
A little tongue in cheek, but I find it weird and wonderful that what could help coal the most in the short term is electric cars.
A huge share of the reduction in demand occurs due to LED lighting.
My electrical demand has dropped tremendously as most of my lighting solutions have dropped from 60w-75w to even 180w for one room to about 60w for the entire house even lower 11w later in the evening.
And LED bulbs do not add heat to the house that must be cooled with air conditioning units that draw 2400w in operation.
Likewise teleisions and monitors sip power compared to CRT's of old.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Instead of paying for coal/oil/nuclear fuel that costs money constantly, they should put in these maaaagical devices that spit out free money for 10+ years called solar panels. You've got install cost, wiring, maintenance, monitoring, etc and the equipment wears out but so does a coal turbine. The difference is YOU DON'T BUY THE DAMN SUNLIGHT.
I could get by with an electric car, not that it would help the environment much my power is provided by coal.
How many times does this particular brand of FUD need to be debunked?
Yes but then if demand for gas is reduced then refining will be reduced then pumping the oil will be reduced and that will drive the price up.
In particular, they need to add geo-thermal, along with nuclear power.
These can handle sudden increases in demand. Solar/Wind does not.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Wrong way. Get rid of all breaks/deductions/exemptions. Then on corporate tax, tax them 25% unless the goods are made-in-america, service is done by Americans, or retail sells made in America. If the exception, tax them ZERO. As to personal tax, make all money the same; 100K in salary = 100k in dividend = 100K in inheritance = 100k in gains = 100k in gambling wins. Then tax with progressive rate. 0-30K is free . 30-50k is 1%. 50-100k is 5%. 100-250k is 10%. 250-500k is 20. 500k-1m is 25%. Above 1m, do 33%. Keep it simple and fair.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Money is money. It does not matter where it came from. As such by taxing all at the same rate, it makes it fair.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you can not afford less than 25,000., to obtain 300,000., then you have big problems that do require u to sell the place.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I can't believe how cheap the Leaf is on the used market - even from a dealer. Sure, the range is abysmal - but if your commute is in the 10-20 mile range, you could probably justify it even as a third car. In my case, the main thing holding me back is the reluctance to clear out the garage :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm going to say you should learn about the economics of trade (imports make the American people wealthier, and the effective universal 25% tariff you describe makes the American people poorer and destroys jobs) and tax policy.
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My employer has installed chargers, free for any employee to use. We have a lot of Leafs and Volts on campus because they are actually in the realm of "affordable", and even more so on the used market. I've got a kid who is going to be a teenager soon, I'd consider picking up a Leaf in a few years for commuting. We'd likely have a "family car/SUV" that my wife uses and for long trips, we'll have a paid-for Volt the that will be 8-9 years old by the time the kid starts driving, and I could pick up a Leaf cheap and use it for the commute. Might have to run some additional electric service to the garage as I'd want the 240V for the Leaf (120V is acceptable for the Volt), but that's a one time cost.