EV Bling

We'll the car has been up and running since mid February and I've been driving to work for probably a month and a half or so without any issues (other than the BMS glitches). I don't see any reason it won't keep running fine so I figured it was time to make things a little more official and add my EV Bling. OK I had way too much crap bought that I was going to add to the car but the more thought about it and placed items it just seemed a bit too nerded out. I settled on two changes to help announce the EVness of the car.

First I added the "EV" to the S2000 emblems on the side.

Second was the customized license plates. I had to make another DMV trip for these, but luckily this was routine and went smooth.

Solar and PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric)

I've been getting a few questions about my solar and how it all works in regards to the power company. I'll do my best to explain it.

The solar is directly connected to the grid through the inverter. The inverter is designed to not send power into the grid if the electricty is off. This prevents the power company from getting shocked if they shut down their side and want to be sure no solar systems are now powering those lines.

So the way it works here is the power company keeps track of the excess energy you produce during the day. This is done in the simplest terms by letting your meter run backwards. Then at night, lets say, when you're not generating any power your meter runs forward again and you recover that excess energy you created earlier. It's really a great setup since you don't have to worry about costly batteries that need replacing.

Additionally, and to some what complicate what I just said, we have a couple of options here and I went with a time of day (TOD) metering. Peak is 1pm-7pm, partial peak is 7-9pm and 9am-12pm, off peak is 9pm - 9am. This is Monday through Friday. The weekends don't have peaks and all holidays are also like weekends. For peak the energy rates start at about 30 cents per killawatt. Partial peak is about 14.5 cents, and off peak is 8.5 cents. What this means is while I'm at work and not using much energy not only am I making excess energy, but it's not really counted on the kW basis. It's tracked as credits in the form of currency. Later at night when I get home and start using the power again I'm buying it back at a cheaper rate than I sold it for. This helps out the power company to supply their power needs during the "peak" for all users and allows me to only require a system that generates about 75% of my energy use.

It gets more confusing yet...Each Peak, Partial Peak, and Off Peak have their own seperate tiers. Tiers, for those who don't aleady have to deal with this, is an alloted amount of energy you can use at a set price. Once you use more than this the price of the power increases. I believe for my power company their are 5 tiers. So even with the right sized system you might end up going up in tiers during off peak (night time and weekends) simply because you don't generate much here. However, you've also been getting paid quite a bit during peak to cover multiple tier pricing during off peak.

So that's how it all works for me with my power company. Hope this clears things up, I know it confuses me more. :)