Official Southern California Edison thread

smkettner said:

I am thinking you may as well use more super off-peak power. Can't imagine turning off solar would ever save money.

Dishwasher, laundry, air conditioning need to be on a timer to use power super off-peak. And by all means you may as well put some extra miles on the EV.

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Exactly. And if you're a net generator in any given month, using more power at SOP is a cheap way to reduce the baseline "credit" penalty, if that bothers you excessively. Since SOP usage costs 11 cents and the baseline penalty for over-generation is 10 cents, you may have the opportunity to use some power at a net cost of 1 penny/kWh.

Yes, I was wrong. I thought the Baseline line in the mwalsh bill was based upon total kWh. I reached this conclusion by misinterpreting "flat" to mean constant:

smkettner said:

Well the new TOU-A billing is far simplified.

Received my first bill today and there is no allocation of baseline. Just a flat 267 kWh x .10302 for -$27.51 as a single line credit.

Used net 301 kWh, total bill -$12.32 with $1.80 paid now and -$14.12 toward the annual net charges.

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It looked like the mwalsh Baseline kWh might be at its maximum absolute kWh, his Baseline cap, based upon the large kWh values. If so, it would be a constant not affected by an increment of either solar or consumption, and there would be the big change I postulated in $ if the net kWh moved through zero, flipping the sign of this constant.

Now I see that his Baseline kWh of -253 = his Net kWh, not total, -171-464+392 = -253. If the Baseline debit/credit is based upon Net kWh, it will go through zero when and if the Net kWh moves through zero, so there will be no sudden $ change when the sign flips.

I am cross-posting here a brief comment I made in the Grid Scale thread about how utilities view solar and what time of use pricing means to them.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=19398&p=425093#p425093

My next attempt to understand the effective marginal costs in this tariff:

Following my insight from the mwalsh bill, I claim the formula for the Baseline adjustment in $ is simply:

BaseAdj = (Onpk + Offpk + Soffpk)*(-.10)

where Onpk, Offpk, and Soffpk are net kWh for their respective TOU periods. Each of these can be separately negative or positive. For most of us, Soffpk will never be negative, but it could be negative if one had a wind generator operating overnight.

In my new understanding, there is no impact on marginal prices as BaseAdj passes through zero, where total production matches total consumption. Within each TOU period, a positive consumption kWh gets a price reduction, -$.10, and a negative production kWh gets a price adjustment of +$.10, which reduces its net marginal price, making it $.10 less negative. The Baseline adjustment moves both the net positive consumption price and the net negative production price $.10 towards zero.

The above formula for BaseAdj is valid as long as

-BaseAllocCap < BaseAdj < BaseAllocCap

If BaseAdj is outside of this range, the cap applies, either -BaseAllocCap or +BaseAllocCap
If out of range, the marginal prices revert to their normal values before Baseline adjustment because BaseAdj becomes a fixed value.

The above has good news for EV charging: the marginal rate for charging during Soffpk will be $.11 - $.10 = $.01 as long as BaseAdj is within the above range. Staying within this range should be easy for most folks. The downside of course is that the production credit will be $.10 per kWh less in each TOU period within this same range.

tbleakne said:

My next attempt to understand the effective marginal costs in this tariff:

Following my insight from the mwalsh bill, I claim the formula for the Baseline adjustment in $ is simply:

BaseAdj = (Onpk + Offpk + Soffpk)*(-.10)

where Onpk, Offpk, and Soffpk are net kWh for their respective TOU periods. Each of these can be separately negative or positive. For most of us, Soffpk will never be negative, but it could be negative if one had a wind generator operating overnight.

In my new understanding, there is no impact on marginal prices as BaseAdj passes through zero, where total production matches total consumption. Within each TOU period, a positive consumption kWh gets a price reduction, -$.10, and a negative production kWh gets a price adjustment of +$.10, which reduces its net marginal price, making it $.10 less negative. The Baseline adjustment moves both the net positive consumption price and the net negative production price $.10 towards zero.

The above formula for BaseAdj is valid as long as

-BaseAllocCap < BaseAdj < BaseAllocCap

If BaseAdj is outside of this range, the cap applies, either -BaseAllocCap or +BaseAllocCap
If out of range, the marginal prices revert to their normal values before Baseline adjustment because BaseAdj becomes a fixed value.

The above has good news for EV charging: the marginal rate for charging during Soffpk will be $.11 - $.10 = $.01 as long as BaseAdj is within the above range. Staying within this range should be easy for most folks. The downside of course is that the production credit will be $.10 per kWh less in each TOU period within this same range.

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Exactly. Spoken like a true rocket scientist.

Or more simply put: The baseline credit is ten cents times the net kWh usage at the end of each monthly billing cycle, up to a kWh limit of the baseline allocation for that month. The credit will become a charge instead of a credit if the net kWh usage is negative, ie a kWh surplus.

Boomer23 said:

Or more simply put: The baseline credit is ten cents times the net kWh usage at the end of each monthly billing cycle, up to a kWh limit of the baseline allocation for that month. The credit will become a charge instead of a credit if the net kWh usage is negative, ie a kWh surplus.

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Boomer, I had to struggle with the details in order to see how the marginal costs flow through to the final charge or credit. It was only then that I could see for sure that the marginal cost of charging your EV is truly only $.01/kWh as long as your net total is within the Baseline allocation. The more solar you produce, the wider is the window for the $.01 rate. This rate is ridiculously low, but I will take it, and this method for Baseline adjustment seems less complicated and than the old one with the allocation.

Received my May bill. I also show last year's May bill for comparison. In my case, with lots of extra driving, my Net total exceeds my Baseline.

2015
Consumption kWh
Onpk 25
Offpk 84
Soffpk 639

Generation kWh
Onpk -101
Offpk -282
Soffpk -1

Net total 2015: +364

Baseline Credit 313kWh x -$0.103 = -$32.25
I hit my Baseline cap of 313 kWh < 364 kWh Net total.

Total Energy Charge for month -$38.59
Cumulative Charge to date (4th Net Metering Month) = -$152.


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2014
Consumption kWh
Onpk 14
Offpk 272
Soffpk 311

Generation kWh
Onpk -300
Offpk -151
Soffpk 0

Level 1 allocation (apparently Baseline*1.3) = 313*1.3 = 407 kWh

Net total 2014: +147 kWh

Total Energy Charge for month -$16.57
Cumulative Charge to date (4th Net Metering Month) = -$106.

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Despite much higher EV charging than last year, I am ahead of last year in accumulated credit.

Increased Summer rates effective June 1st are upon us

Breaking even was so lame. Now back into earning a monetary credit.

TOU-A = 46 cents on-peak, 30 cents off-peak, and my favorite now.... 1 to 11 cents Super Off-Peak.

Annual usage 5,402 kWh. Annual cost $101.14

In the first week of August the three investor-owned CA utilities filed their proposals for Net Metering 2.0 with the CA PUC. The proposals are quite grim, much lower than true Net Metering. Those of us on this thread who have solar in place will be grandfathered in for true Net Metering and will be exempt from the new pricing. I am not sure about exemption from the monthly flat charges. If you upgrade your system later, however, you might lose the grandfathering.

I am OK with the 3$ per kW-month but $.08 per exported kWh is really low, not much above the bad deals in many other states. They are offering to pay this for generation, but nothing for distribution. Time of Use pricing is TBD.

At that price I would definitely want to charge my car while the sun is shining vs charging at night.

I have quoted below SCE-relevant comments from
http://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...-net-metering-20-fixed-charges-lower-payments

Monday’s proposals are the first to be filed under the compromise plan created by the 2013 law, which made several major changes to California energy policy. Under AB 327, the CPUC has until the end of 2015 to create a successor “NEM 2.0” tariff to kick in once the state’s big three investor-owned utilities, PG&E, SCE and San Diego Gas & Electric, reach a threshold of 5 percent of nameplate generation capacity under net metering, or in mid-2017 — whichever comes first.
>>>>>
California’s NEM 2.0 successor tariff won’t have caps like the current net metering regime does.
>>>>>
The new net-metering rules won’t apply to customers who are already net-metered or those who install systems before the utility caps are reached. But they will apply to all future installations.
>>>>>
SCE, in contrast, will assess a $3 per kilowatt-month “grid access charge” (GAC) based on the nameplate capacity of the distributed generation system involved.
>>>>>
they’re asking for permission to pay customers not at the retail rate, but at a reduced level based on the generation portion of that rate.
>>>>>
SCE’s proposal seeks to pay eligible customer-generators an “Export Compensation Rate” of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour.
>>>>>
comparisons are complicated by the fact that the CPUC has ordered PG&E, SCE and SDG&E to move all their residential customers to time-of-use (TOU) rates by decade’s end.
>>>>>
PG&E’s proposal explicitly seeks to put new net-metered customers onto TOU rates, while SCE’s doesn’t specifically call for that.

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SD&G proposal for comparison:

San Diego Gas & Electric was allowed to implement a new minimum charge of $10 per month, which will begin in November.

The company offered two potential new billing solutions. In one, the utility would buy all rooftop solar from customers at the wholesale rate of 11 cents per kilowatt hour and sell the power back to the customers at the retail rate of 23 cents per kilowatt hour. In the other scenario, the utility would allow solar customers to use their onsite generation, but would only credit them 4 cents per kilowatt hour for excess power they feed back onto the grid.

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Both of these options sound really poor.

The above source says this about distribution:

AB 327 set up a separate distribution resource plan (DRP) regime, one that will see the state’s big investor-owned utilities incorporate distributed energy resources like rooftop solar into their distribution grid plans. That regime may lead to alternative revenue potential for solar that serves a positive grid value, although there’s a long road ahead for setting up the rules that will turn that value into cash for solar owners.

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Well, it probably means more customers for Tesla Powerwall. Wondering if this was Elon's plan all along.

tbleakne said:

In the first week of August the three investor-owned CA utilities filed their proposals for Net Metering 2.0 with the CA PUC. The proposals are quite grim, much lower than true Net Metering. Those of us on this thread who have solar in place will be grandfathered in for true Net Metering and will be exempt from the new pricing. ...

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Thank you for bringing this news to our attention tbleakne. I also read much of SCE's actual proposal.

There is much to think about and decipher.

For the SCE case, there are at least three concepts whose impacts on a customer's rates are not clear to me.

a) The $3 per kW - month GAC (Grid Access Charge).

b) The 8 Cent payment per exported kWh.

c) SCE's insistence that it is essential that "netting" be eliminated from the rate plans. (i don't think that this was mentioned in the Green Tech Media story.)

a) The first one is relatively simple. SCE says that the monthly GAC will be calculated based on the nameplate AC capacity of the customer's solar installation. For my home system of about 5.2 kW DC, this would be about 4 kW AC. Is the calculation simply $3 per month times my 4kW AC generation capacity, that is $12 per month, every month? Or is it more complicated? SCE mentions "kW - month". Is this an actual unit like kW hour? And does the calculation change each month based on seasonal insolation and number of days per month?

b) How is the 8 cent payment calculated? Will they look at the net kWh used or sent to the grid by the customer and credit the customer 8 cents per kWh net sent to the grid at the end of the month and add that credit to the cumulative bill for the year that is accumulating? Or for every hour or quarter hour will they credit the customer 8 cents for each kWh sent to the grid and charge the customer the specified rate for every kWh pulled from the grid? They say something about the customer being able to use their generated power first, but I'm not sure what that means. Do we get to use all of our power generated in the month to offset all of our usage in the month? Or during periods when we have high solar generation and little household power usage and therefore we are sending power to the grid, do we get a credit of 8 cents for each kWh sent to the grid, but then later in the evening, when we are pulling power from the grid, we pay the specified rate? If the latter, we would have a net charge for the day even though we might have a balance of power generated and used for the day of zero,

c) If "netting" is eliminated in the new programs altogether, will we see no accumulation of credits from the summer months to offset our higher usage during the winter months, and no end of year "true up".

I hope that we'll be able to learn more about the answers to these questions.

Boomer23 said:

Thank you for bringing this news to our attention tbleakne. I also read much of SCE's actual proposal.

There is much to think about and decipher.

For the SCE case, there are at least three concepts whose impacts on a customer's rates are not clear to me.

a) The $3 per kW - month GAC (Grid Access Charge).

b) The 8 Cent payment per exported kWh.

c) SCE's insistence that it is essential that "netting" be eliminated from the rate plans. (i don't think that this was mentioned in the Green Tech Media story.)

a) The first one is relatively simple. SCE says that the monthly GAC will be calculated based on the nameplate AC capacity of the customer's solar installation. For my home system of about 5.2 kW DC, this would be about 4 kW AC. Is the calculation simply $3 per month times my 4kW AC generation capacity, that is $12 per month, every month? Or is it more complicated? SCE mentions "kW - month". Is this an actual unit like kW hour? And does the calculation change each month based on seasonal insolation and number of days per month?

b) How is the 8 cent payment calculated? Will they look at the net kWh used or sent to the grid by the customer and credit the customer 8 cents per kWh net sent to the grid at the end of the month and add that credit to the cumulative bill for the year that is accumulating? Or for every hour or quarter hour will they credit the customer 8 cents for each kWh sent to the grid and charge the customer the specified rate for every kWh pulled from the grid? They say something about the customer being able to use their generated power first, but I'm not sure what that means. Do we get to use all of our power generated in the month to offset all of our usage in the month? Or during periods when we have high solar generation and little household power usage and therefore we are sending power to the grid, do we get a credit of 8 cents for each kWh sent to the grid, but then later in the evening, when we are pulling power from the grid, we pay the specified rate? If the latter, we would have a net charge for the day even though we might have a balance of power generated and used for the day of zero,

c) If "netting" is eliminated in the new programs altogether, will we see no accumulation of credits from the summer months to offset our higher usage during the winter months, and no end of year "true up".

I hope that we'll be able to learn more about the answers to these questions.

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I have not read SCE's actual proposal, but here are what I believe about answers to your 3 important questions.

Qa) Yes, kW - month is a unit. It means that you will be charged 4kW * 3$ = 12$ per month, each and every month. The intent is to impose a grid infrastructure charge that scales with the size of your system, which sets the maximum of a demand-type charge. This infrastructure is static, and does not vary by the season. Although your usage of the grid will vary by season, to keep it simple this fee is fixed so it really is an annual fee divided by 12.

I said I was OK with this fee, but upon reflection it is pretty high. My array is about the same size as yours, but not oriented as well. At $.08/kWh, it would take 150 exported kWh to pay for $12. 150/30 = 5 kWh per day is about 1/4 of my daily summer production, and a larger fraction the rest of the year.

Qb) I also thought of the ambiguity you describe. My TOU bill currently shows total exported and imported kWh for the month separately for each TOU period. The magnitude of these values lead me to believe they are based upon the 15 min resolution, but I don't have proof of that. The current Net Metering rule means the price we pay or get credit for now is based only the monthly difference of export vs import, so the resolution does not matter now.

I totally agree that it would be much "fairer" to let us ="net meter" for at least 24 hours before applying the different prices, but if they are truly committed to "netting" being totally eliminated, it would seem this is a false hope. Perhaps the PUC will invite comments, which would allow us to lobby for such modifications.

At least this is not as bad as the SD&G proposal option that would require you to pay a retail price about twice the credit price even for generated kWh that you consume "behind the meter." SCE is not proposing to track solar kWh consumed when generated behind the meter.

Qc) I believe it might still be possible to carry over credits and settle up on an annual basis, but the total net amount in $ would be the same whether the settlement was monthly or annually, so they are not focussing on that question right now.

The Green Tech story says TOU is TBD except that everyone is going to be put on TOU at some point. Did you see any mention of TOU in the SCE filing?

It seems likely that this kind of thinking is going to encourage us to charge our EVs behind the meter during the daylight hours. Not good for working folks who have their EV at work during the day. If they were serious about wanting EVs to charge at times when emissions for generation are least, they would set the TOU price and period to encourage charging mornings, when solar and wind now take the biggest bite out of natural gas generation.

So just playing "what if" games, since my grandfathering expires in less than 12 years...

If we find that it's most cost effective for us to charge behind the meter because our cost is lowest (lost opportunity cost of only 8 cents/kWh vs lowest cost to charge of 11 cents at SOP rates), will we need to keep our charging amps low in order to avoid exceeding our moment-to-moment solar output? In other words, since my Level 2 charging rate for my BMW is over 7 kW and my peak solar output is only about 4 kW, will I always incur expensive SCE billing if I charge at Level 2?

And what incentives does the SCE proposal put in place for consumers in regard to GHG reduction or proliferation as regards the time of EV charging, as you've mentioned.

I'd like for we in the public to be able to understand SCE's proposal at this level of detail while the proposals are still being considered.

Boomer23 said:

If we find that it's most cost effective for us to charge behind the meter because our cost is lowest (lost opportunity cost of only 8 cents/kWh vs lowest cost to charge of 11 cents at SOP rates), will we need to keep our charging amps low in order to avoid exceeding our moment-to-moment solar output? In other words, since my Level 2 charging rate for my BMW is over 7 kW and my peak solar output is only about 4 kW, will I always incur expensive SCE billing if I charge at Level 2?

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Yes, I believe it would be to your advantage to charge yourBMW i3 during solar production, and yes you would want to dial back its charge rate to match the surplus solar you have available. Here the Tesla has the advantage because the car allows you to set its charge rate any current level less than or equal to the maximum for which the circuit is wired. However, I am believe the OpenEVSE and other EVSE can also be set to a reduced current level you specify.

Of course as the day progresses and other electric demands change within your house, the amount of surplus solar also changes. Right now I don't think there is any technology that will track that automatically and adjust your charge rate dynamically. For example, If a cloud goes over, you would want the charge rate to cut way back.

It would probably not be hard for Chris to modify the OpenEVSE to accept an input from a current transformer like your TED system so your maximum charge rate could track the surplus power available. It would really be a control loop, in which the control goal is to adjust the charge to keep the net power going to the grid right at zero.

Of course the big unknown for us right now is that these preliminary Net 2.0 proposals do not appear to address TOU pricing, which could certainly affect when you would want to charge. If the consumption price varies by time of day, shouldn't the production price change also? I have said before that I believe that the best time to charge from the utilities' point of view is mid morning, when everyone's solar, including the grid-scale solar, is ahead of the A/C demand for several hours. This conclusion is based upon the daily graphs at
http://www.caiso.com/Pages/default.aspx, and discussed in the first post on the grid-scale thread.

I would imagine that if they only pay 8c/kWh exported residential battery energy storage will become much more common than it is today, you can then use the extra energy produced when it is convenient and not when the sun is up.

My SCE billing cycle closes the 19th or 20th of each month, and I usually receive a statement about 5 days later. However, I saw no statement in August, and I thought maybe I had misplaced it in the mail. My September statement should have also closed by now.

Today I received an email from SCE, which reads in part:

Recently, SCE experienced technical issues that may have caused a delay in processing your monthly August and/or September statements. Therefore, you may not have received these bills, and your daily usage information may not have been available in My Account on SCE.com. When you do receive your statements, you will see charges for the affected bill periods.

We apologize for this delay, and we are working hard to correct this situation to deliver your bill as quickly as possible.

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I confirmed that there is currently no info in my sce.com online account. There is also a general alert that may be related:

We're making improvements!
As we continue to improve, SCE.com will be undergoing maintenance starting at 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 26 through 2 a.m. on Sunday, September 27. Please note that during this time you will not be able to view pages and will be unable to complete transactions. Thanks for your patience while we work to improve your experience!

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With my very high A/C usage during this period, this outage is unfortunate, since I may be facing a major bill next Feb for the first time since I began Net Metering.

Has anyone else had their statements delayed?

I got my statements as usual, but there was data missing for a couple of days last month in the web portal. Why do you think you might get a large bill in Feb? If the Aug/Sep data is completely lost then your increased AC usage that likely dominated solar output won't be accounted for, right? If it is not lost then it would also include your solar energy export once it is recovered.

My closing date each month is around the 8th. I always check my bill online and I've canceled paper bills. I noticed that there was a few days' delay on the posting of my bill this month, but it all seemed to be in order once it was posted. The good news for me was that my bill was a credit of $73 even though my month's usage was a net 71 kWh used. This reflected heavy AC usage for our household, although I'm sure it is a fraction of your AC usage. We typically turn on the AC to 76 or 77 degrees demand setting around 2 pm or sometimes earlier, and we turn off the AC around 8 pm and open windows. At night, we sleep with fans and open windows upstairs, as our AC system is useless for the upstairs bedroom.

This is my stats for the last billing period, I wonder if this is too good to be true and is some kind of error due to their system issues, but maybe not with the 10c/kWh credit for the baseline allocation on TOU-A and night-time charging. My bill for the same period in 2014 before we got solar was almost $500 :shock:

Yes, the ten cents credit up to baseline can provide a $30 or more credit. Since my net usage in Aug/Sept was 71 kWh, I only got a $7.10 baseline credit, but that added to my solar generation credit yielded a total $73 credit bill, and my net bill for the net metering year to date is about $450 credit balance.