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Advice for Newby RE SoCalEdison

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Hi

I'm about to pull the trigger and order a P85D this week (probably Friday). I'm excited about the car.

Many questions remain, but the one that's most pressing right now is interfacing with SCEdison so that I can charge at home.

I met with the electrician last night to get 200 amp service.

Here are my questions:
What's the best Edison option?
Should I go time of day and just run it through the regular meter?
Or, should I get a separate meter for the "D"?

I don't have solar, and don't plan to install it--not enough time projected to stay in this in house to amortize costs.
My usual SC Edison usage is 600-800KW per month, so I should notice an increase in usage once I get the "D"

I'm in Thousand Oaks if that has any bearing, other than byzantine Edison and City Code issues that will probably necessitate a new conduit for my electrical supply $$$!

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
I'm on PGE in NoCA, so I don't know the SCE plans. But what I did was sign up for the EV time of use plan. It has 3 rates: Peak: .42/kwH, partial peak: .28/kwH and off peak: .09/kwh. Weekend is all off peak, I think. You can see the savings are incredible if used well. I set my car to charge only during off peak (11pm-7am), set my hot tub to only heat during off peak and try to run appliances with timers, like my dishwasher and washing machine to run then too. Since getting the car and the new rate plan, my total electric cost has dropped 100/mth. Add that to my saving of anywhere between 400-600/mth in gas (1,500-2000 mi/mth) and I am way ahead of the game. The car is essentially free to drive.

As far as a separate meter, for me I felt it wasn't necessary. PGE's site give such detailed energy usage stats, down to the hour of each day, that I can see pretty easily what it is costing me to charge: about 4.50 for a full charge. So you might save some cost there.

It takes a little work to change habits, but I have not been inconvenienced at all. Oh, and I am doing it all on only a 100amp service and have had no problems at all with load. But I live alone, which makes a big difference.

I hope this helps!
 
Go to SCE's website and call them. They will go over your electric usage and recommend what is best for you. If you go with the T.O.U. plan and use a lot of juice in the peak hours you will get slammed, but if you don't then this is the way to go. You also have the option to switch back to your regular plan but you can't switch for a year after that.
 
For what it's worth, I just went through this exercise with SCE here in Newport Beach. I ended up with a time of use rate plan called TOU-D-B. It seemed to me to fit my family's lifestyle very well.

From 10pm - 8am, it's $0.11/kWh. That's when I charge my Model S, and that's when my pool pump now runs.

From 8am-2pm and 8pm-10pm it's $0.14/kWh, and also from 2pm-8pm on weekends on holidays. That's when most of my laundry gets done.

From 2pm-8pm weekdays it's much higher (something like $0.35 - $0.45/kWh depending on time of year). Ouch! That's when the air conditioners run in the summer. However, I will be adding solar shortly, so that should help.

One thing I'm considering is whether to get a Tesla home battery at some point, so that I can charge it up overnight at $0.11, then sell the electricity back to the utility during peak hours. This should help SCE meet peak demand, and reduce my electricity bill maybe cheaper than solar. Still, not as green as solar.

Dan
 
Thanks

Go to SCE's website and call them. They will go over your electric usage and recommend what is best for you. If you go with the T.O.U. plan and use a lot of juice in the peak hours you will get slammed, but if you don't then this is the way to go. You also have the option to switch back to your regular plan but you can't switch for a year after that.


Thanks for the info. I'll be calling them. I've had the electrician out and the need for new conduit from the street to accommodate the 200 Amp service is not a pleasant expense. I've got Peterson Dean coming out Tuesday to give me an estimate on solar--maybe a $7-$13K "investment"/prepay of electric bills will allay some of the expense especially if I feed KW back into the grid.

Thanks again.

- - - Updated - - -

For what it's worth, I just went through this exercise with SCE here in Newport Beach. I ended up with a time of use rate plan called TOU-D-B. It seemed to me to fit my family's lifestyle very well.

From 10pm - 8am, it's $0.11/kWh. That's when I charge my Model S, and that's when my pool pump now runs.

From 8am-2pm and 8pm-10pm it's $0.14/kWh, and also from 2pm-8pm on weekends on holidays. That's when most of my laundry gets done.

From 2pm-8pm weekdays it's much higher (something like $0.35 - $0.45/kWh depending on time of year). Ouch! That's when the air conditioners run in the summer. However, I will be adding solar shortly, so that should help.

One thing I'm considering is whether to get a Tesla home battery at some point, so that I can charge it up overnight at $0.11, then sell the electricity back to the utility during peak hours. This should help SCE meet peak demand, and reduce my electricity bill maybe cheaper than solar. Still, not as green as solar.

Dan

The idea with the Tesla home battery sounds great, coupled with solar panels, could yield the possibility of free electric, or even an earnings proposition. I'm a bit hesitant on cost of Solar, given that our average usage is less than 600kWh a month. The Tesla should change that a bit, but at $0.11/kWh, it shouldn't be as expensive as my weekly visit to Costco to feed the Caddy!

thanks for the advice
Lynn
 
Be careful about the cost of getting a separate meter.

I looked into getting the separate vehicle meter with Edison as I wasn't too stoked about the new Time of Use rates that move Peak rates to 2PM to 8PM... I have solar so I miss out of on some peak production times at higher rates. My idea was to get a separate meter and keep the old school Time of Use Rate with only two peak rates for the solar panels. Edison sent out a technician to the house and did research for me and due to some factors of having to hot-tap the new line to the transformer and some other trenching that would need to be done we were looking at 7500 bucks just to get the new meter installed. It would take me a long time to recoup that cost so I am stuck with the new Time of Use Option A for our family right now.

Like many have said... car will charge, pool pump will run, dishwasher and washing machine, and AC during the summer will run at super off peak rates. Heck I may even get the house super chilly at night in the summer time just to hopefully keep it cool during the afternoon.
 
For what it's worth, I just went through this exercise with SCE here in Newport Beach. I ended up with a time of use rate plan called TOU-D-B. It seemed to me to fit my family's lifestyle very well.

However, I will be adding solar shortly, so that should help.

Note that when you get solar, you'll probably want to switch to TOU-D-A, to get the highest rate for your excess solar production between 2pm and dusk and to eliminate the high monthly fee. When you're consumption only, TOU-D-B is better, but on Net-Metering, you generally want -A (generally).
 
Thanks for the info. I'll be calling them. I've had the electrician out and the need for new conduit from the street to accommodate the 200 Amp service is not a pleasant expense. I've got Peterson Dean coming out Tuesday to give me an estimate on solar--maybe a $7-$13K "investment"/prepay of electric bills will allay some of the expense especially if I feed KW back into the grid.
Also keep in mind that if you upgrade the service as part of the solar install, you can get the 30% solar tax credit on the added cost of the upgraded service, too.
 
Thanks for the info. I'll be calling them. I've had the electrician out and the need for new conduit from the street to accommodate the 200 Amp service is not a pleasant expense. I've got Peterson Dean coming out Tuesday to give me an estimate on solar--maybe a $7-$13K "investment"/prepay of electric bills will allay some of the expense especially if I feed KW back into the grid.

Thanks again.

- - - Updated - - -



The idea with the Tesla home battery sounds great, coupled with solar panels, could yield the possibility of free electric, or even an earnings proposition. I'm a bit hesitant on cost of Solar, given that our average usage is less than 600kWh a month. The Tesla should change that a bit, but at $0.11/kWh, it shouldn't be as expensive as my weekly visit to Costco to feed the Caddy!

thanks for the advice
Lynn

We went solar, but ended up with Sullivan instead (spoke with PetersenDean too). Besides being green it's kinda of cool telling folks that your car runs on SUNSHINE!!! :)

Personally on SCE TOU-D-A. There is a third TOU plan: TOU-D-T which which has better peak times for solar generation, but it's a tier system so once you go over your base allocation of energy usage in the month the rates jump quite a bit.

For EV charging you really want to the .11/KWhr rate which is only for the TOU-D-A or TOU-D-B. If you can work with the super-peak times schedules (10pm-8am) then it's a much more cost effective move than installing a brand new meter.

Good luck!
 
.......... .....allay some of the expense especially if I feed KW back into the grid........
Don't forget that at the end of the year, you are only paid $0.04/kWh for excess generated so you won't recoup your investment at that rate.
Note:
The economic sweet spot is when you are a net consumer of kWhs but minimal credit balance in dollars. That can happen if you shift your usage into the off peak times and generate dollars at high rates while the sun shines.
 
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