Sacramento has their own utility district, "SMUD". In the neighboring counties, we have PG&E. I talked to a coworker in Sac. His highest "tier" price is abou

Sacramento has their own utility district, "SMUD". In the neighboring counties, we have PG&E. I talked to a coworker in Sac. His highest "tier" price is about my lowest tier. Marginal cost in the upper tiers is in the 30 to 40 cent per kWh range (it has changed a bit from year to year due to some restructuring). The only people who I can see staying in Tier one would be single people who leave the house all day (with the AC off). If you have a family, fuggedaboutid. We recently put in solar panels to at least shave the top tiers off of the bill (very cost effective vs $.35/kWh, even if not at $.12/kWh). However, I feel it's only a matter of time before PG&E lobbies for mandatory time of day based billing, in which case the panels won't help reduce the rates much for charging a car. Sad, but true. Also, I had a used Leaf for a few days, but took it back because the battery only held about 80% of its original capacity, barely made a round trip to work (49 miles) with no A/C running, and required a special fast charge outlet to be installed if I wanted it to do a full recharge overnight. For doing short trips (say, 25 miles including some steep hills), it was great, and would recharge in about 6 hours from a standard outlet. It would have been a great car for my wife, if she could remember to plug it in when she returned from errands (not likely, alas).