Official Southern California Edison thread

[mwalsh]

Also being moved to A, according to the letter we received. It's estimating energy costs at $0 and non-Energy costs at $11, vs. $9 on TOU-D-TEV.

 

[smkettner]

Just started a new billing cycle and still SCE has me continued still on the old rate plan TOU-DTEV-SDP

 

[Boomer23]

Just started a new billing cycle and still SCE has me continued still on the old rate plan TOU-DTEV-SDP

As I recall, the letters we got said the switch would happen in April.

 

[Valdemar]

I have a separate EV meter and toying with the idea to get solar added this year. Is there any good reason to keep my EV charging on its own meter and add solar to the house meter? As far as I remember SCE only allows solar generation on the non-EV meter.

EDIT: I suppose one benefit is that by the time I'm ready to pull the trigger the TOU-D-A plan will be no more, but as there will be no EV on it TOU-D-T won't be as penalizing for off-peak usage above the baseline and provide the benefit of the friendlier for solar generation on-peak window, i.e. I can likely get away with a smaller system and lower up-front costs but won't be able to offset EV usage by solar. I also want to know if SCE will allow a second solar array tied to the EV meter with separate net-metering.

 

[smkettner]

I thought the two meters were on same bill and you just pay the total. Typically once on net metering everything rolls forward a full 12 months before the full net cost is presented for payment. This is why it is called "Net Metering". You should be able to continue using the separate meter or the main house meter for the EV. Probably the solar only goes on the main house meter. But still it should be 'net' with the EV meter.

 

[Valdemar]

I thought the two meters were on same bill and you just pay the total.

Yes

Typically once on net metering everything rolls forward a full 12 months before the full net cost is presented for payment. This is why it is called "Net Metering". You should be able to continue using the separate meter or the main house meter for the EV. Probably the solar only goes on the main house meter. But still it should be 'net' with the EV meter.

I understand there is not much of an incentive to be a net-producer as SCE buys back excess generation at wholesale price of 4c/kWh or so, at least this is what SCE told me today on the phone. At the same time I don't think I can apply month-to-month credits, if any, from the main house meter to the EV portion of the bill. To do that it would seem I need to have a separate solar array connected to the EV meter. I couldn't get a clear answer from SCE today if this is something they allow, but given the EV on-peak starts at 12pm and car charging is done overnight 99% of the time a 1.5kW well-positioned EV-only array will be able to bring the EV portion of the bill almost to $0 and will pay for itself after 5-6 years.

 

[tbleakne]

I have a separate EV meter and toying with the idea to get solar added this year. Is there any good reason to keep my EV charging on its own meter and add solar to the house meter? As far as I remember SCE only allows solar generation on the non-EV meter.

EDIT: I suppose one benefit is that by the time I'm ready to pull the trigger the TOU-D-A plan will be no more, but as there will be no EV on it TOU-D-T won't be as penalizing for off-peak usage above the baseline and provide the benefit of the friendlier for solar generation on-peak window, i.e. I can likely get away with a smaller system and lower up-front costs but won't be able to offset EV usage by solar. I also want to know if SCE will allow a second solar array tied to the EV meter with separate net-metering.

The advantage of your present separate EV meter is that you most likely have your house on regular tariff without TOU? I believe you are correct that SCE will not allow anything else connected to your EV meter, including solar. You might wish to confirm this by calling SCE at 866.701.7868, which I believe is specific for Net Metering customers.

You definitely do not want to delay getting solar, both because the 30% tax credit is set to expire Dec 2016, and because in California you want to be grandfathered into the original Net Metering principle of getting full retail price, whatever that is for a particular time of day, for running your meter backwards. 2016 may be too late for the grandfathering.

Having a single meter under the old TOU-EV plan paid off big time for me, with the benefits you mention of no net $ due other than meter fee with a smaller solar array then would be required for full annual zero kWh balance. However, that payback was amplified by its 2-level tiered structure, which meant that the more I drove my car, the more deeply I was pushed into Level 2, and the higher the average price I was paid for my weekday afternoon solar. The new TOU-EV plan has no tiers, and the on-peak window has fewer solar production hours (starts 2pm rather than 10am weekdays), and more consumption hours (ends 8pm instead of 5pm).

The low risk approach would be to install the solar first, keeping your separate EV meter for now, until you see how your net usage goes. The alternative would be to do a detailed TOU analysis using your actual online SCE usage data for the past year to see what size solar would work the best for you. You definitely do not want to install an array too large, one that leaves you with a substantial credit at the end of the Net Metering year. If the credit is in $ with TOU, your credit is erased. If your credit is in kWh without TOU, you are paid only a few cents/kWh.

If you install solar too late for grandfathering, the ability to run solar power directly into your EVSE and your car behind a single meter may become valuable, because the price for running the meter backwards could be lower than the net consumption price, but this would require charging the car during the day, which would on weekdays would be impossible if the car is at work.

 

[Valdemar]

Thank you for the good info. Yes, I'm currently on the domestic tiered plan and the separate EV meter allows me to charge at 11c/kWh at night instead of 31c in the tier 4.

I called SCE again today and learned that they allow aggregation of several meters on a single net-metering plan and the lady on the phone said that getting my EV meter added should be no problem as it is on the same property, so smkettner is right. A special form is needed to request aggregation at the time you apply for net-metering. Now it gets interesting, if I understand it correctly when/if you sell excess power and charge your car at the same time you technically get paid 11-15c/kWh. Does it sound too good to be true?

 

[smkettner]

TOU/Solar/EVs tend to go well together. If you are on TOU-A you may well be selling power at the on-peak rate at the same time you are consuming power at a lower peak rate for EVs. You are still better off to charge the vehicle off-peak. If you stay on schedule D you just reduce your net consumption so you are avoiding the higher tiers not selling at those rates.

 

[Valdemar]

TOU/Solar/EVs tend to go well together. If you are on TOU-A you may well be selling power at the on-peak rate at the same time you are consuming power at a lower peak rate for EVs. You are still better off to charge the vehicle off-peak. If you stay on schedule D you just reduce your net consumption so you are avoiding the higher tiers not selling at those rates.

Sure, off-peak is still better. It is just the concept of generating money out of thin air (or rather sun) without having to wait until nighttime is new to me. Most likely I'll end up on TOU-D-T as TOU-D-A is limited availability and doesn't really give me anything additional as I already have access to lower EV rates through my second meter, plus the "T" plan has a 12-6pm on-peak window vs. 2-8pm that will work better with my SE facing roof.

 

[Boomer23]

Thank you for the good info. Yes, I'm currently on the domestic tiered plan and the separate EV meter allows me to charge at 11c/kWh at night instead of 31c in the tier 4.

I called SCE again today and learned that they allow aggregation of several meters on a single net-metering plan and the lady on the phone said that getting my EV meter added should be no problem as it is on the same property, so smkettner is right. A special form is needed to request aggregation at the time you apply for net-metering. Now it gets interesting, if I understand it correctly when/if you sell excess power and charge your car at the same time you technically get paid 11-15c/kWh. Does it sound too good to be true?

Your last point is just a question of semantics and at what wattage you are charging and what wattage your PV system is putting out at the moment you are charging. And smkettner is correct, you're still better off charging super off peak.

On a full sun day at peak output, a largish PV array can easily put out 5 or 6 kW. If your 2011 Leaf pulls 3.3 kW and you are using zero other power in your home, you are sending the excess power back to the grid. You'll never get paid for that net power difference unless you end your net metering year with a kWh surplus, and even then you'll be lucky to be paid 4 cents per kWh. But it is correct to say that you will bank that net difference in $ at the full retail rate against other retail power costs that you incur at other times of the day and year.

But if it's a cloudy day, or if your Leaf pulls 6 kW, you will be pulling some power from the grid and not banking any retail credits for that moment in time.

The reason it's better to charge at super off peak is that you're paying the minimum per kWh while charging and you're banking the full retail credit of your Peak solar power generation. Basically, if you charge your car during Peak time, you're paying full Peak rates to charge because you're banking less retail credit from your PV system than you would be if you charge during a lower cost period.

 

[Valdemar]

I suppose I'm just pleasantly surprised that my EV meter will continue to provide benefits even with the solar installed. There used to be a note next to the EV-meter rates on the SCE web-site that advised against a separate meter setup for those with or planning to add solar, because of it I originally thought that I would need to rewire my EVSE to the main meter to better utilize solar for EV charging (from the billing point of view) and as such there would be no continuing return on my investment into the EV meter as soon as I add solar. That note is now gone and with the new TOU rates and Net-metering it seems like it is going to work out pretty well overall.

 

[tbleakne]

My comments below edited 3-29 Sunday, finished editing 5 pm:

You got me thinking (read: worrying), about how SCE might finagle this weird baseline credit, and possibly do the double-negative thing and actually charge us ten cents per kWh that we over-generate. I highly doubt that extreme outcome would get past the uproar from both the solar PV user base and the solar industry after the first month's bills arrive. But I did some further searching to see if anyone has gotten a clearer answer as to how it'll work.

This link here will take you to a Tesla owner forum where they discussed this. If you scroll down to member DaveR75, you'll see a dialogue from an SCE rep on how it'll work. Granted, it's incomplete and it doesn't address solar users, but it does say that all users will get a monthly credit of $0.10 per kWh of actual usage (meaning net usage drawn from SCE's grid) up to their baseline amount. But for months when the customer uses less power than the baseline, the credit would be reduced accordingly. (Baseline is different for each city, but for example, for me in Irvine, winter baseline is 285 kWh and summer baseline is 313 kWh for some representative months. The actual baseline is a daily number of kWh, so the total baseline for a month will depend partly on the number of days in the month.)

That means to me that if a solar user generates power equal to his power usage for any month, he wouldn't get any baseline credit for that month. And in other months, if his net usage is let's say half of his baseline amount, say 150 kWh, he'd only get his 10 cent credit for that much usage, i.e. $15 for that month. You'd only get the full baseline credit in any month that you net use at least your baseline allocation.

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong on this, if your PV system is large enough that you always have a net usage of zero kWh, and if you're on a TOU plan and charging over night, you're probably sitting on a monthly credit that gets zeroed out at the end of the net metering year anyway, so you don't care that you'd miss out on the baseline credit. But if you're like most people and you use slightly more power than you generate some months, each month of the year will be a different story. If you use a lot of air conditioning in August, you'll have a net bill for Peak power usage and possibly not much if any baseline credit to offset it.

So how to play this game? Looking at my own usage over the last year, I'd only get the full baseline credit in November, December and January. So if that turns out to be true, for those other nine months, I'll be missing out on using some cheap kWh. Since the credit is 10 cents and Super Off Peak usage is 11 cents, any car charging or other power usage during Super Off Peak up to the baseline amount would only cost me a penny per kWh. And SCE has expanded Super Off Peak to include the ten hours of 10 pm to 8 am, every day. So you could probably move some of your laundry and dish washing into those hours, and maybe you could drive your EV more and do more charging at a penny per kWh.

Will it work out this way? We shall see. One member of that Tesla forum, "ARCHER" at the bottom of the page, says that he's been on Plan A since January, (I'm not sure how he got on the plan that early) and it hasn't bitten him in any strange way, so maybe some of our fears won't come to pass.

I called SCE on the EV number, 1-800-438-4636. The lady was knowledgeable about the TOU-D-A tariff. Boomer23 is right, they will deduct $.10 per kWh up to your baseline allocation off the price for all 3 TOU periods. The $.10 deduction stops when you exceed the baseline allocation. So effectively, we actually have 2 tiers for each TOU period, not one as advertised.
The SCE lady confirmed what I call the full "Net Metering Principle," the promise that the price applied will always be the same in each direction for a given time period, is still in force for this tariff. Maintaining this principle is key to my reasoning below.

After some struggle, I agree with much of Boomer23's analysis, but my interpretation is a little different. I don't believe any of us will ever really lose the Baseline benefit, because it will work much like our old two-level TOU tariff, which is complicated but we are used to it.

For a given month to yield a credit in $, it is necessary but not sufficient that either the Off-Peak or the On-Peak or hopefully both periods have negative net consumption for the month. This happens or not for each TOU period independent of the baseline and the prices, but the total net credit or debit for the month obviously does depend upon the prices. We need net credit in $ for some months if we have any hope of not owing money at the end of the year.

Each month the Baseline allocation for your microclimate will be spread among the 3 TOU periods, allocated proportional to the absolute value of the net usage/production in each TOU period, just like now. Let S denote the sum of these 3 absolute values. S, not the overall net consumption, will control your prices for that month:

1. If S <= baseline, all 3 TOU prices will be effectively $.10 less, including only $.01 for Super-Off-Peak marginal rate. One way this could occur is if your net consumption in positive usage TOU equals a value C < baseline/2, and your net production in a negative TOU period is -C. Then S will be equal C + abs(-C) = 2C < baseline, and you won't be using all your baseline. This case will be very rare, even for folks with large arrays, because the absolute value of their net production in Off-Peak and On-Peak will push S well above the baseline.

Another unlikely way to get more benefit from your baseline would be if your net consumption for On-Peak and Off-peak were both zero, so all of your baseline would be allocated to Super Off Peak. You then could drive your full baseline allocation for that month at $.01/kWh.

2. In the normal case S will be greater than baseline, and the baseline allocation will be spread among the 3 TOU periods like we have become used to, with 2 price levels for each TOU period. As S increases due either to more production in a negative TOU or more consumption during a positive TOU, the average price for each TOU rises, and you no longer have the $.01 marginal cost for the last kWh of charge into car for that month. However, some of your charging for that month will always be at the $.01/kWh rate, so you are getting some benefit from the baseline rate.

So what is the marginal cost for charging your EV each month? Since it is the last kWh of charge for the month that determines your marginal cost, it will almost always be $.11/kWh. However, what really counts is the net $ credit or debt in your account at the end of the annual true-up. If you have a net credit in $ but not in kWh, your marginal cost for driving your EV for the year is zero, because the credit will be zeroed. What happened during particular months does not really count.

If you have a net debit at the end of the annual true-up, so you owe SCE, then your marginal rate for driving your EV will be positive.
Your average rate for charging the car will be somewhat different for each month, but since the rate for the last kWh each month will always be $.11, your marginal rate for driving the car more will be a flat $.11/kWh throughout the year, so don't worry about it. Let me know if I have made some serious error in this reasoning.

 

[Valdemar]

So I dug a bit deeper into the NEM aggregation for the 2 meter setup, and the second meter is not looking as good as I originally thought, actually while it is I think a fair system it is looking pretty bad. Basically what they do is they distribute excess generation across all accounts proportionally based on the ratio of individual account usage to cumulative usage, because EV rates are lower you potentially end up exporting some of the energy at lower rates than if you had a single meter TOU domestic plan, the longer off-peak window which I thought was a good thing is actually a killer as you'd be exporting parts of the energy at $0.11c/kWh until noon. Am I interpreting the below statement correctly?

How will the bill credit be calculated for the NEM Aggregated arrangement?

The electrical consumption of kilowatt-hours (kWh) registered on each aggregated account’s meter will be reduced, for NEM billing purposes, by a proportional allocation, at the 15-minute interval level, of the electricity generated by the REGF that is exported to our grid. The proportional allocation is determined per billing period based on the cumulative consumption of each aggregated account compared to the cumulative consumption of your NEM Aggregation arrangement since the start of the relevant period, and the cumulative generation exported from the REGF since the start of the relevant period.

 

[tbleakne]

I called SCE last week, and the lady told me my April bill, which closes on the 20th, will be the last one on the old TOU tariff. I generated a net credit of -$28 on the march bill, so I have some cushion with which to start off the new tariff.

 

[pchilds]

I was changed to the new TOU-D-A on 4/9/15. Went from 20kWh on peak generation on 4/8 to 4.5kWh on 4/9. The free ride is over.

 

[chris1howell]

Since SCE changed TOU and now they only buy back excess solar generation at $0.10, I figure I might as well use it instead of buying the power back the power later for more...

I thought the old rate was good for everyone as it encouraged good behavior, using in the middle of the night when power is plentiful and generating as much as possible during peak times. I think I did a pretty good job.

But SCE sees it as using their grid as a battery for free...

So here is my solution. Using OpenEVSE and Open Energy Monitor I am reading solar output and then dynamically adjusting the charging rate to soak up as much solar as possible.

Once available power is too low to support charging at the J1772 minimum OpenEVSE goes to sleep.

 

[smkettner]

We are now competing with grid scale solar power. The fossil fuel peak demand has moved to later in the day and peak TOU rates along with it.
IIRC, SCE even claims in a few more years of additional solar the grid may not be able to absorb it all during the day.

We could all be back on schedule D by next year :|

http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx#SupplyandDemand

 

[Boomer23]

I just found a page on SCE's site that is new to me, that explains how the baseline credit works in TOU-D-A, and I'm kind of floored by something they state:


https://www.sce.com/wps/wcm/connect/edc01054-c02e-4295-8d21-30c263b0b4e1/PEV_NEM_FAQs+v3_EP.docx?MOD=AJPERES" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Basically they ARE going to CHARGE us solar customers the ten cent per kWh baseline credit amount for months in which we net generate power! So if we end a month with a net generation total of 100 kWh, there'll be a CHARGE on our bill for ten cents per kWh = $10 for having sent SCE 100 kWh of power! I still can't quite believe I'm saying that, but it's as plain as day in the example.

Now I think that if we still do our charging and as much of our power usage as possible Off Peak and Super Off Peak, in those months when we net generate, we still get the full retail rate of our Peak and Off Peak generation credits, so there's likely to be a credit earned at up to 45 cents/kWh for our generation. But the baseline "credit" of ten cents which becomes a CHARGE will eat into that credit balance, resulting in a smaller credit.

It still looks like it will be in our best interests to charge overnight and to use as little power as we can during Peak hours for the same reasons that's always been the case, but for the spring and early summer months when we've been used to banking credits to offset usage for the coming fall and winter, not only will our earned credits be reduced by the shift to later Peak hours, but the credits that we do earn will be further REDUCED by the double negative of the ten cent reverse "credit" up to the amount of our monthly baseline.

To be fair, the GOOD NEWS is that for those winter months when we are net users of power, we DO get the ten cents per kWh credit up to our baseline amount. So if we net use up to say 300 kWh in a month, we get a credit of $30 for that month that'll offset some of the pain from being charged for sending SCE power in the summer.

The only strategy I can think of to make the best of this situation is to continue to use as little power during Peak hours and shift as much usage as possible to Super Off Peak. And for those who are pretty much forced to use a lot of power for home air cond during the new Peak hours, you're screwed because you'll eat up all of your valuable Peak credits that your solar gives you, you might still net generate kWh for the month during less lucrative Off Peak hours, and then SCE will eat up some of those meager credits with a ten cent per kWh "reverse credit".

And Chris Howell, I think your ramping project is great. But I dont think the idea of shifting charging to Peak solar hours will give you a lower bill. With the current net metering rules, we still get full retail credit for net generation during Peak at rates that far exceed the 11 cents per kWh that SOP charging costs. So charging at night will still give you the lowest bill .

 

[cwerdna]

I just found a page on SCE's site that is new to me, that explains how the baseline credit works in TOU-D-A, and I'm kind of floored by something they state:


https://www.sce.com/wps/wcm/connect/edc01054-c02e-4295-8d21-30c263b0b4e1/PEV_NEM_FAQs+v3_EP.docx?MOD=AJPERES" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Basically they ARE going to CHARGE us solar customers the ten cent per kWh baseline credit amount for months in which we net generate power! So if we end a month with a net generation total of 100 kWh, there'll be a CHARGE on our bill for ten cents per kWh = $10 for having sent SCE 100 kWh of power! I still can't quite believe I'm saying that, but it's as plain as day in the example.

I wonder if that's related to/due to the work of ALEC (http://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/23/alec-coming-for-home-solar-power/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. :roll:

ALEC, a group of about 800 people that includes such notables as ex-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, appears to be going after any and all things related to renewable energy, and that includes people who install their own home solar panels and sell their excess power back to the grid. In fact, ALEC not only is saying these people shouldn't be paid for the energy, but believes they should pay for the privilege of sending energy back to the grid because they don't have to pay for the grid's infrastructure.