Virginia pilot program halves electricity bill for charging EVs overnight

Regardless of whether the internal combustion engine gets snuffed out this century, EV chargers aren’t going to replace gas pumps at the rate they’re presently rolling out, so it’s quite likely new Leaf and Prius PHEV owners will need to charge at home. How might that affect one’s electricity bill? It’ll probably go up, but a Virginia utility says that a full tank of juice might not cost all that much. Dominion Virginia Power is volunteering to cut its rates by more than half for off-peak charging as part of a proposed pilot program, whereby 750 lucky EV owners will get enough electricity for a 40-mile commute for just 35 cents so long as they charge overnight. The utility’s not talking kilowatt-hours here, but it says it typically gets $0.86 for the same amount. The deal requires the installation of a specially-approved charging station, but Virginia’s looking at a second scheme too — if those 750 agree to pay a flexible off-peak rate of between $0.33 and $0.41 per 40-mile dose, they can power the rest of their house using the budget volts as well. PR after the break. Continue reading Virginia pilot program halves electricity bill for charging EVs overnight Virginia pilot program halves electricity bill for charging EVs overnight originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on February 4, 2011. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry