Posted on 10/31/2012 6:12:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For centuries, the role of Judge has carried with it a solemn duty to uphold justice, the law, and to ascertain which facts are true, and which are not.
So when a journalist in Carmi, Illinois spotted a Second Circuit Judge charging his electric car at Wayne County Courthouse, they ran a story claiming Second Circuit Associate Judge Mark Stanley was misappropriating public funds to charge his car.
Except he wasn’t.
As the CourierPress reports, the local news article caused enough outcry to force Judge Stanley to appear in front of the entire Wayne County Board last week to explain his actions.
The charges? That he was using public funds to charge his $39,995 Volt, while residents of Wayne County were struggling with $4-a-gallon gas.
Sadly for the newspaper, and thankfully for the County Board, the explanation given by Judge Stanley was far from salacious.
Upon buying his plug-in hybrid, Judge Stanley had approached the local Sheriff to ask for approval to install an outlet to charge his car at the courthouse.
2012 Chevrolet Volt Charges Approval was granted, and Judge Stanley then made arrangements with the County Treasurer to pay for the power he used to charge his Volt, ensuring no public funds went to refueling his car.
At 87 cents for a full charge, once a week, the agreement was made that Judge Stanley would make two payments per year to recompense the Wayne County Courthouse for the power he used.
To ensure he wasn’t accused of stealing, Judge Stanley even offered to pay double, something he replicated at every other courthouse he visits in the Second Circuit.
Once everything had been explained--and proven--Wayne County Board members were more than a little embarrassed.
“Uh, I didn’t know you had an arrangement with the sheriff,” said County Board Chairman Gary Sloan. “Oops.”
Judges, it seems, while upholders of justice, can suffer exactly the same conflicts when trying to find somewhere to charge their electric car.
Smells fishy.
If he only has to charge once per week, why not do it at home?
87 cents a week for a full charge? Sure...
Of course the Judge never paid for installation of a 220 volt outlet needed to recharge the electric pipe bomb.
It’s okay, he’s a “circuit” court judge
Now that’s an electrifying observation. I got a charge out of it, not to be confused with a trickle.
Cost to recharge a 16 kwh battery
The cost in Illinois to fully recharge the car is $8.38 each time in Illinois. The judge didn't tell the truth.
Doesn’t it state right in the article you linked that the national average cost for 40 miles of driving (about half battery bank capacity) is around 85 cents and Illinois isn’t far off the average? That’s about what I would have guessed. So a hypothetical full charge would be about $1.70. I am under the weather (not Sandy) today and may be misinterpreting something here.
On a related matter, the liberals never seem to make the connection between charging electric cars and how much electricity is needed to do so.
If the liberals got their wish, and we had millions of electric cars on the road tomorrow, we would need to sharply increase the amount of electrical generation capacity to deal with that.
And, that would likely involve more coal fired power plants.
Increasing the use of pollution free electric cars could actually increase the dreaded greenhouse gases, because of the need to generate huge amounts of electricity in fossil fuel power plants.
But, cause and effect, consequences of actions, are often lost on liberals, who urge us to dream of their utopia.
I guess maybe you are talking about some sort of convenience charging plan (probably much higher charge rate - amps). I’m going to bed.
Sorry, you're having trouble reading.
The math is simple -- at (say) 8 cents per kWh, a 16kWh battery will require 16 * 8 = $1.28 to charge fully. At (say) 5 cents per kWh, it's 80 cents.
Where do you get 10 times that much? I think you missed a decimal.
I'm at about 10 1/2 hours at my desk. About ready to leave work and find some dinner. Take care.
If nat gas stays as cheap as it is now (likely due to the heroic production of the fraccers) you won't see anybody building coal plants.
But I can see where an owner would pay extra to have the car charged at, say, 4x the normal 220v outlet rate. But not THAT much more! Wonder what the maximum “C” charge rate is on the Volt (will look up tomorrow).
The article mentioned that he’s a circuit judge, who travels around to different court houses. The article also mentioned that the judge made similar arrangements with the local sheriffs for other counties he visited. while the story and “expose” only involved one of those court houses. That might well explain the need for charging a Volt while driving from one county to another, and dispels the idea of “87 cents a week.”
Mark
I have been hired to perform rate analysis on municipal operations during my career. The common denominator that hinders in depth analysis is that the facilities typically have only one power meter to the building or plant. So trying to separate or cost account for daily routine processes is virtually impossible. And the sad part is with all of the new technology and high efficient electrical systems it is tough sell to cash strapped cities on projected cost savings without actual data.
My point is unless there is a separate meter for the judges outlet there really is no way to separate out his power consumption and his true cost.
I don’t understand why these cars don’t have solar panels on the roof and windmills on the antenna to charge their batteries.
How much does the electricity cost to recharge an electric car?
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