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I finally received my electric true-up bill and I want to share the results. My electric company is PG&E and I am on NEM2 EV-A plan. I just want to share real numbers and my experiences of owning the Bolt. I took ownership of my Bolt on 3/18/2017 and my first day of PG&E turning on my electric was 3/27/2018. So this is my experiences with both so far and some estimated costs.
2017 Chevy Bolt
If the car had comfortable seats I would give the car a 11 out of 10. By far it has been the most reliable car I have own with the least amount of maintenance required. I was going to trade it in just because of the seats, but I have decided to take the car in and have the seats professionally changed. Buying a new Bolt doesn't make sense with all the fees and taxes, so I will spend some money to get this done. I also may make a mod myself. The big issue is the amount of padding and the pinching of the shoulders and hips with the narrow bolsters. I know everyone has heard my complaints about the seats, so time to move on
I have spent under $30 in maintenance for my 51,455 miles driven. I am under DiscoBolt at https://www.voltstats.net/BoltEV . Costs are hard to estimate because I have solar, but I will try to estimate my costs. If I didn't have solar I would estimate I would have paid $0.14 per kWh for the Bolt. I am including a 10% energy loss with that estimate. I have averaged 3.8 miles per kWh, which kinds of surprised me because I commute on highways for almost all the mileage at 70 mph plus. Even on close to freezing days I hardly ever use the heater, just the heated steering wheel and seat warmers. Add everything together and I would be at $1900 for all electricity and maintenance for the Bolt. My local tire shop rotates my tires for free and even after 51,000 miles they tread still looks great! My previous Ford Fusion Hybrid would have cost over $6000 the same 51,455 miles driven.
There has never been a better commuter car, well besides the horrible 2017 seats, than the Bolt. I prefer commuting with it over my Tesla Model S because of the smaller size and better efficiency. If you commute over 100 miles a day and have a house to set up a charger, it should be mandated you have a Bolt!
1 year of Solar
For California, if you have a Bolt and no solar you really need to consider it! I got my one year true-up bill and it was $335.86. I will explain how having solar has saved me an insane amount of money just over one year.
My true-up bill was $335.86, but I am going to use $454.79 since this was the true cost of my electricity this year. The $454.79 includes my monthly delivery charges and taxes. In one year I produced almost 20 MWh for my system, which included a lot of clipping because of the installer oversizing my system by way too much. The fixed the problem and threw in a SE7600 Inverter with EV charger. I can now charge my car directly from my solar panels if I want. In one year I used 6055 kWh more than I produced. Those 6055 kWh cost me $454.79 for an average cost of 7.5 cents per kWh. Here in California, that is insanely cheap! The reason for this is getting high credits during the day for energy during peak/part-peak sent to the grid and charging my cars at night.
If I didn't have solar I would have used 26,000 kWh this year. I don't want to know how much that would cost me without solar or the EV-A plan. The average cost per kWh in California is about $0.20, so at a minimum it would have cost me $5,200. However, using 26,000 kWh would have put me in a high tier category. The cost of electricity would have been much, much higher. After my tax credits, my 11.25 kW solar system will cost $22,000. Now all I have to do is pay around $300 per year for the electricity for my 3200 sqft house, my electric devices for yard work, and my 40,000 miles driven each year on my Bolt and Model S. The reason it will be less than $454.79 is because my system clipped a lot last year, now that issue is fixed. I do have natural gas for heating my house, water tank, and also my stove. So I do have to pay PG&E about $50 per month for that.
If anyone is interested in seeing snips of my true-up bill let me know. Even if you can't afford a big system, it may be worth it to get a smaller system to try to get on a special EV rate or TOU plan. This year I am going to try to get my true-up to zero by cooling down my house earlier and try to feed the grid at the $0.49 credit per kWh during 2 to 9 pm as much as I can!
2017 Chevy Bolt
If the car had comfortable seats I would give the car a 11 out of 10. By far it has been the most reliable car I have own with the least amount of maintenance required. I was going to trade it in just because of the seats, but I have decided to take the car in and have the seats professionally changed. Buying a new Bolt doesn't make sense with all the fees and taxes, so I will spend some money to get this done. I also may make a mod myself. The big issue is the amount of padding and the pinching of the shoulders and hips with the narrow bolsters. I know everyone has heard my complaints about the seats, so time to move on
I have spent under $30 in maintenance for my 51,455 miles driven. I am under DiscoBolt at https://www.voltstats.net/BoltEV . Costs are hard to estimate because I have solar, but I will try to estimate my costs. If I didn't have solar I would estimate I would have paid $0.14 per kWh for the Bolt. I am including a 10% energy loss with that estimate. I have averaged 3.8 miles per kWh, which kinds of surprised me because I commute on highways for almost all the mileage at 70 mph plus. Even on close to freezing days I hardly ever use the heater, just the heated steering wheel and seat warmers. Add everything together and I would be at $1900 for all electricity and maintenance for the Bolt. My local tire shop rotates my tires for free and even after 51,000 miles they tread still looks great! My previous Ford Fusion Hybrid would have cost over $6000 the same 51,455 miles driven.
There has never been a better commuter car, well besides the horrible 2017 seats, than the Bolt. I prefer commuting with it over my Tesla Model S because of the smaller size and better efficiency. If you commute over 100 miles a day and have a house to set up a charger, it should be mandated you have a Bolt!
1 year of Solar
For California, if you have a Bolt and no solar you really need to consider it! I got my one year true-up bill and it was $335.86. I will explain how having solar has saved me an insane amount of money just over one year.
My true-up bill was $335.86, but I am going to use $454.79 since this was the true cost of my electricity this year. The $454.79 includes my monthly delivery charges and taxes. In one year I produced almost 20 MWh for my system, which included a lot of clipping because of the installer oversizing my system by way too much. The fixed the problem and threw in a SE7600 Inverter with EV charger. I can now charge my car directly from my solar panels if I want. In one year I used 6055 kWh more than I produced. Those 6055 kWh cost me $454.79 for an average cost of 7.5 cents per kWh. Here in California, that is insanely cheap! The reason for this is getting high credits during the day for energy during peak/part-peak sent to the grid and charging my cars at night.
If I didn't have solar I would have used 26,000 kWh this year. I don't want to know how much that would cost me without solar or the EV-A plan. The average cost per kWh in California is about $0.20, so at a minimum it would have cost me $5,200. However, using 26,000 kWh would have put me in a high tier category. The cost of electricity would have been much, much higher. After my tax credits, my 11.25 kW solar system will cost $22,000. Now all I have to do is pay around $300 per year for the electricity for my 3200 sqft house, my electric devices for yard work, and my 40,000 miles driven each year on my Bolt and Model S. The reason it will be less than $454.79 is because my system clipped a lot last year, now that issue is fixed. I do have natural gas for heating my house, water tank, and also my stove. So I do have to pay PG&E about $50 per month for that.
If anyone is interested in seeing snips of my true-up bill let me know. Even if you can't afford a big system, it may be worth it to get a smaller system to try to get on a special EV rate or TOU plan. This year I am going to try to get my true-up to zero by cooling down my house earlier and try to feed the grid at the $0.49 credit per kWh during 2 to 9 pm as much as I can!
