News and Views

I just passed 1000 miles in my new Volt (1024 to be precise). I am still on my first tank of gas — I’ve used about 6 gallons so far, leaving a little more than 3 in the tank. 807 miles were all electric, and the remaining 217 were using gas — most of them driving out to Wickenburg to see Richard and Dianna a couple of weeks ago.

I am still in love with this car!

I bought $3.90 cents worth of electricity this month from the local utility, SRP. With the $15 service charge and taxes, my total bill will be about $20. Last year I paid $113 in April.

I was actually building up a credit, but then two things happened:
1) We had a few cloudy and partly cloudy days last week when I didn’t make as much electricity;
2) I bought the Chevy Volt electric car half-way through the billing period that can use up to 10 KWh a day to fully charge.

All that considered, the $3.90 is not bad at all.

The weather is starting to turn hot — we should hit 100 this weekend — so my bills are going to go way up. But I still expect to save $100 or more each month.

I took a trip out to see Richard and Dianna today in my Volt. They are staying near the village of Congress, about 90 miles from my house. I was interested to see how the Volt did on a longer trip. Here are some numbers:

First a summary:
— It cost the same to make the trip as if I was driving a pure gas car that got 52 miles/gallon, figuring the cost of electricity and gas.
— I drove 53 miles on battery alone, and 127 on 3.27 gallons of gas.
— Pure gas mileage was 39 miles/gallon
— Altogether, since buying the car I have driven 512 miles on 3.7 gallons of gas, leaving my tank still over half full.
— We ate a very good (and spicy!) homemade tomato soup and Mexican cornbread for lunch. Thanks Dianna!

Some Details:
I made it about 38 miles from home before I ran out of battery and the car (automatically) switched over to gas. After charging at Richards, I added about 15 more miles coming home, so for the 180 mile round trip I did about 53 of them on electricity alone. The remaining 127 were done on 3.27 gallons of gas, for a pure gas mileage of 39 miles/gallon.

The pseudo mileage (total distance/total gas) was 55 miles/gallon, but that is calling the electric miles free, which isn’t quite accurate. To make it a little more complicated, since electricity costs about 1/4 of gas for equivalent miles driven, the cost of driving on electricity is the same as the cost of gas at 155 miles/gallon. So 155 miles/gallon for 53 miles, and 39 miles/gallon for 127 miles gives an equivalent to 52 miles/gallon. In other words, if I had a car that got 52 miles/gallon, it would have cost me the same to make the trip as it did in the Volt. It’s about how well a Prius would do.

For shorter trips, especially where I never use gas, the cost is the same as a car that gets 155 miles/gallon. As trips get longer, the cost approaches that of a car getting 39 miles/gallon. So if you frequently drive long distances and your main goal is to save on fuel, get a Prius. If most of your driving is around town and you usually drive less than about 40 miles in a day, a Volt will be cheaper to operate (though not cheaper to buy). Having driven both I have to say that a Volt is more fun to drive.

I had to burn .17 gallons of gas today, driving the last 5 miles home from Mom’s house today. I would have made it, barely, but I added 5 miles when I stopped to meet my friend Don for lunch. It was about 35 miles without the lunch detour.

For you Democrats, Obama said he plans to buy a Volt after he retires from being President.
For you Republicans, George H. W. Bush bought one for his son Neal.
For you late night TV afficionados, Jay Leno has been driving his Volt for over a year as his main commute vehicle.

After buying my Acura MDX a year and a half ago, I had buyer’s remorse. One comment I made below this post was that I could have bought a Chevy Volt instead, since it looked like I was going to keep my Honda mini-van anyway. Well, I finally did just that. I traded in my Acura for an electric car.

I’ve been following the Volt since it was just a concept car at Chevy, several years ago. It caught my imagination right from the start: A plug-in electric car that had a back-up generator on board that would power the car if the batteries were exhausted. This solves the main kick against electric cars — range anxiety.

There are a few things I’m going to miss from my Acura. It was a very nice car. I will miss:

-Adaptive Cruise Control (I used this all the time, even around town)
-Blind spot detection (I also depended on this a lot)
-5 Adult + 2 Children carrying capacity (But I have my van if I need to carry more people)
-Rear seat air conditioning
-All Wheel Drive (never used after the first six months)
-Crash Mitigation Braking System (which I’m glad I never had to use!)

But here’s what I get with the Volt:
– Cost per mile around 2.5 cents, vs 25 cents in the Acura
– Acceleration (The Volt is the fastest car I have owned from zero to 45)
– Maintenance schedule:
   + Every 7500 miles rotate the tires
   + Every two years change the oil
   + Every 55,000 miles change the engine air filter
   That’s it! Even the brake pads don’t wear, since braking is mostly regenerative.
-Keyless entry and start
-Remote “start” (starts the climate control)
-Smart phone “start”, and charge monitoring
-OnStar
-Designed and built in America
-Just plain cool

According to Consumer Reports, the Volt has the highest owner satisfaction level of any car on the market, with the Porsche 911 running second.

I’ll post some pictures when I get a chance.

That’s how much electricity I bought from SRP this month. There is a $15 service charge each month and some taxes added on that, so my total bill is $19.21. Last March I paid $116. I would have been net negative this month except for a couple of cloudy days.

As I’ve mentioned before, March and April are the best months for solar power, since the days are getting longer but the temperatures are mild so there isn’t much (any) need for heating or cooling. I’m sure my July and August bills will be substantial.

So far the system is exceeding the estimates of the company that installed it.

On cloudy or partly cloudy days, like today, I generate less electricity from my solar panels. Of course, that makes sense.

The paradox is that on a partly cloudy day like today, although the power may fluctuate up and down as the clouds cover and then uncover the sun, the peak power is higher than on a clear sunny day. The most power I see on a sunny day is about 6.5 KW. This morning the power is peaking at about 7.5 KW.

It’s pretty clear to me what is happening. When the sun breaks through the clouds and shines directly on the solar panels, it is also reflecting off the nearby white clouds, increasing the total amount of sunlight that hits the panels. Similar to how you can get a worse sunburn on snow, or on the beach. Reflected sunlight combines with direct sunlight to increase the total insolation.

It doesn’t make up for the losses when the sun is covered, but it does help to mitigate it.

Here’s a graph of our power usage from SRP so far for the Feb 22 – Mar 21 billing period. We’re just about breaking even, as the days get longer and warmer. We’re getting more sunlight and therefore more power, and using less for heating.

The days stand out when we do laundry or a lot of cooking, though clouds can also force us to buy more. There are several of those nice days when we sell power back to SRP.

Just a couple of comments on solar power.

I see SRP and other power utilities claiming large areas of desert to install centralized solar energy generation facilities. There may be economic reasons where large scale installations are more efficient, but it seems to me that it makes more sense to utilize the “empty” space on house and business roofs. There are several benefits, but primarily that power is generated right where it is used and so transmission costs and losses are almost eliminated. Roofs will last a little longer too by reducing sun and rain exposure. And in the summer the sunlight and power that doesn’t hit the roof lowers the temperature in the attic a little, reducing the cooling bill. It may increase the heating bill a little in the winter, but in Arizona that’s an acceptable trade-off.

The negative of solar, wind and other alternative sources of power, however, is that it is not available 24 x 7 x 366. The power company may use less fuel when the alternative sources are active, but they still need to have enough capacity to provide ALL the power for times when there is no sun or wind. The big problem is energy storage — a way to efficiently store the extra energy created by the sun or wind and distribute it when it is needed. Current chemical batteries are just not up to the task. Several other ideas for energy storage are in the works, including compressed air, raising and lowering water levels, and heat storage using molten salt or other materials, but until the problem of energy storage can be solved, alternative energy sources will have a limited usage.

One of Devon’s fans started a Facebook Fan Page for him. It wouldn’t hurt him if you went to his page and clicked “Like” in the mid-upper right area.