Official California SDG&E Thread

[DaveEV]

OK, I get it. Thanks. It is unlikely that the second meter will be installed more than one month prior to getting the Leaf. So as long as I charge the vehicle once within the 30 day billing period after the meter is installed, the minimum charge would be met and there would be no charges above and beyond the cost of the electricity for the one charge. Did I get it?

Just about. Depending on the timing it might be difficult to charge the Leaf enough to use up $6 of electricity (worst case). Either way - It's not going to be more than $5 unless you have to wait more than a month in between getting the meter and getting your Leaf. You should make up for it by being able to charge at super-off-peak rates the first full month of getting your Leaf.

 

[Frank]

Depending on the timing it might be difficult to charge the Leaf enough to use up $6 of electricity (worst case). Either way - It's not going to be more than $5 unless you have to wait more than a month in between getting the meter and getting your Leaf. You should make up for it by being able to charge at super-off-peak rates the first full month of getting your Leaf.

Someone posted earlier that I could just invite a friend over with their Leaf to charge on my EVSE, before I get my Leaf. If I have to pay SDG&E $6 for a month of non use, why not just invite a friend over to the house to have a beer and charge their Leaf. Is this "permitted" or are there any restrictions in the EV Project agreement from allowing other EVs to charge up occaisionally?

 

[Coffee_Slurry]

SDG&E has said they will not charge for the second meter. They did not qualify this with some kind of restriction.

If they tried some kind of daily-fee-until-first-charge, I would call them on it. No meter charge means no meter charge.

You might be an EV Project participant that never charges at home. If my office had an L2 charger, I might never once use the SDG&E meter in a month.

 

[SanDust]

the issue was, if you were going to have any excess PV generation (beyond your household consumption), you were not going to be able to use it to charge your car. You would have to pay the bill for the meter upstream of your EVSE, and then apply under AB920 for reimbursement for your excess solar separately. And, at that time, one of the 3 experimental rates had a lowest (super-off-peak) rate far higher than the likely (wholesale) AB920 reimbursement rate. So you might end up using no net electricity, and still end up paying out of pocket. Which would undoubtedly skew any data they collected from your EVSE, because a rational consumer would then charge from the house account at L1 as much as possible to use their own electricity before buying any.
...
As to data collection - we'll still have a Blink, which will report to the project. They will know what our electric rate structure is, it just won't be one of the experimental rates. They will also be able to collect data from our charging habits at other project EVSE sites etc.
...
If you don't have solar, the super off peak experimental rates (6-7c per kWh) are super attractive, and I don't think there'd be any reason to turn down the (free) second meter and that rate structure.
...
I don't know if this option persists, but it's the configuration we are currently operating in - we got our Clipper Creek EVSE in December, our car in January, and we're now waiting for our Blink to take the place of the Clipper Creek

I'd think that if your solar system was producing more than you were using, knowing what we know now, you would be better off going on DR-SES for the house and using a separate meter for the EV. The proposed payout rate is $.08 for production in excess of use and I'm assuming you get credited at a higher rate for peak production.

If needed, you can of course use your home outlets to charge. In your case you'll have an extra Clipper Creek charger, so you could have one 240V charger on the house meter and the second 240V meter on the EV meter. Easy to pick using one or the other. I sort of set it up this way. I connected a separate standard household outlet using #8 wire with the idea that if prices for the chargers come down I can just change to 240V at the panel and add a second charging station which will be metered on the house. If you want to sell your old Clipper Creek charger let me know! LOL

 

[wsbca]

I'd think that if your solar system was producing more than you were using, knowing what we know now, you would be better off going on DR-SES for the house and using a separate meter for the EV. The proposed payout rate is $.08 for production in excess of use and I'm assuming you get credited at a higher rate for peak production.

If needed, you can of course use your home outlets to charge. In your case you'll have an extra Clipper Creek charger, so you could have one 240V charger on the house meter and the second 240V meter on the EV meter. Easy to pick using one or the other. I sort of set it up this way. I connected a separate standard household outlet using #8 wire with the idea that if prices for the chargers come down I can just change to 240V at the panel and add a second charging station which will be metered on the house. If you want to sell your old Clipper Creek charger let me know! LOL

Ecotality is definitely going to take the(ir) Clipper Creek back when they bring the Blink, we won't have a spare.

Once they eliminated the low-spread (.13 super off peak) experimental rate, you're correct that we would probably have been OK to go with the second meter, and for the duration of the Project, pay our car bill and then recover that money back with an AB920 reimbursement. It's possible that DR-SES would pay off for us by allowing positive usage for zero cost...but...(contrary to what I think you are suggesting), AB-920 applies only to real excess production, not Time of Use credits. Our original hope, which I'm still clinging too despite unanticipated charging inefficiency and things like the prospect of the Blink vampire load, was to truly zero out our raw total (house + car) usage, rendering both AB920 and DR-SES moot. We are still on DR (no TOU) right now. If we start to fall behind on production vs. usage, our next step would probably be (to look at) going to DR-SES, so TOU credits would allow us to consume more than we use and still have a zero (well, .17 a day minimum charge) bill. Again, in that scenario, no repayment from AB920 - they don't pay based on calculated TOU credits, only on raw overproduction.

For someone who wasn't overproducing to begin with, just offsetting a chunk of their house consumption, the second meter is the way to go for sure. For someone overproducing, but only, say, enough to cover half of their car usage, 2 meters could be a wash, but not because of DR-SES TOU credits on the house - the house credit to be used to then pay for car charging is only ever going to be that .08 cents (or worse - they were shooting for .06 or less).

As an aside, since we had solar in place for 6 months before getting the car, we built up a 1000kWh credit, which I believe we'll be able to carry forward at our true-up date, giving us some time to gather data and really figure out if it would help in the long run for us to go to DR-SES.

 

[syntaxerror]

SDG&E has said they will not charge for the second meter. They did not qualify this with some kind of restriction.

If they tried some kind of daily-fee-until-first-charge, I would call them on it. No meter charge means no meter charge.

You might be an EV Project participant that never charges at home. If my office had an L2 charger, I might never once use the SDG&E meter in a month.

Do you have a pointer to this promise? The published tariffs do not support this.

 

[syntaxerror]

FYI. I've passed multiple emails with an SDG&E individual who states
"Your decision regarding the EPEV-x rates and a second meter will have no effect whatsoever on receipt of your free charging equipment via ECOtality’s DOE-funded EV Project."

 

[wsbca]

FYI. I've passed multiple emails with an SDG&E individual who states
"Your decision regarding the EPEV-x rates and a second meter will have no effect whatsoever on receipt of your free charging equipment via ECOtality’s DOE-funded EV Project."

Yeah, this is more or less how some number of us were claiming it should be all last summer (the underlying question was "why can't we use our solar production to charge our cars")...I think someone eventually realized that even though SDG&E had applied for and been granted permission to perform their experimental rate study as _part_ of the EV Project, that did not confer on them total control of the DOE-funded infrastructure in their service area, and in that context it didn't make sense for them to be able to force people into potentially (randomly assigned) financially disadvantageous configurations. It was ending up looking like a penalty for people who had actually leaped ahead to the scenario that makes the most long term sense.

I had some long talks with them about it before the above became true, during which it was clear they thought we were a one in a million case, and I was just going to have to decide whether I wanted to comply and get the free EVSE, or not, which was OK with me - just not how I thought it should work, since I didn't think it was SDG&E giving me the EVSE (and it wasn't). As it turned out, there were more people in the same boat. Had there not been the inherent (and not intentional, just not accounted for) conflict between AB920 reimbursement rates and the low-spread experimental rate to begin with, it may not have been an issue. The amount of dollars involved actually isn't that great (which is why it would have made sense for me to go ahead either way), but the concept was bolluxed, and it was nice to see that ultimately being acknowledged.

 

[lonndoggie]

For someone who wasn't overproducing to begin with, just offsetting a chunk of their house consumption, the second meter is the way to go for sure.

That's us, and that's what I figured as well.

Also, that DR-SES thing. Our biggest electrical drain is our pool motor. I figure I can run it at night, except during summer weekends (need to run 'em while the sun is shining to take advantage of the solar water heating, oh the irony!), thereby creating more high-priced TOU credits to pay off low-priced TOU usage. I think.

As an aside, since we had solar in place for 6 months before getting the car, we built up a 1000kWh credit, which I believe we'll be able to carry forward at our true-up date...

Really? Great for you if so. In the past, all excess after true-up just dropped off the table--is this part of AB920?

Speaking of which--here it is 02/2011, and the excess generation repayment rate still isn't set (apparently). Folks whose true-up date have happened, or about to, who have net excess, have to wait until a figure is in place?

 

[garygid]

I had a true-up in January, and iy appears that the previous 2400 kWh excess generation and $500 of "credit" just "went away". No real clue to or explanation of what SDG&E did, or why.

 

[DaveEV]

I had a true-up in January, and iy appears that the previous 2400 kWh excess generation and $500 of "credit" just "went away". No real clue to or explanation of what SDG&E did, or why.

You should be able to get that to carry over to the next year. You better call them up...

 

[garygid]

Is this just a hopeful "should" or do you have some knowledge of SDG&E Net Metering with Excess PV generation that I should know about, please?

 

[DaveEV]

Is this just a hopeful "should" or do you have some knowledge of SDG&E Net Metering with Excess PV generation that I should know about, please?

AB920 makes it law that the utility must either allow you to roll over your excess credits indefinitely OR pay you an amount that the CPUC approves. I don't know if the latter has been done, so at the very least you should be able to roll those credits over.

The rollover doesn't apply if you are on a TOU schedule and have excess money credit. You can only roll over (or get paid) if you generated excess power (kWh).

http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=CA02R&re=1&ee=1
http://www.sdge.com/nem/questions_ab920.shtml

From the SDG&E page above:

How Will I Receive My Credit?
Although the details still need to be worked out in the upcoming proceedings, we believe that you’ll be able to choose either a rollover credit towards your next true-up period or a check. The method used to determine the amount of compensation will be established in the proceedings to be held in 2010.

 

[lonndoggie]

http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=CA02R&re=1&ee=1
http://www.sdge.com/nem/questions_ab920.shtml

From the SDG&E page above:

How Will I Receive My Credit?
Although the details still need to be worked out in the upcoming proceedings, we believe that you’ll be able to choose either a rollover credit towards your next true-up period or a check. The method used to determine the amount of compensation will be established in the proceedings to be held in 2010.

So...wonder how those proceedings held in 2010 went?

 

[DaveEV]

So...wonder how those proceedings held in 2010 went?

I believe that SDG&E proposed some rates for excess production. I don't know if they were approved by the CPUC or not. Doesn't really matter to me as I use more electricity than I generate but I'm sure someone with more skin in the game could call SDG&E and find out...

 

[SanDust]

I believe that SDG&E proposed some rates for excess production. I don't know if they were approved by the CPUC or not. Doesn't really matter to me as I use more electricity than I generate but I'm sure someone with more skin in the game could call SDG&E and find out...

The proposal from SDG&E would result in a rate of $.08 for last year. The benchmark would be the price of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) but since there isn't a market for this there is some reference. Note the off peak cost of a kWh with a separate meter on the experimental rates is lower than this.

You can either roll over the credit for the excess you've generated or take a check. The only trick is that the PUC hasn't approved the reimbursement rate so everything is on hold and you'll get to make this election later.

 

[hamster]

Skimmed this thread but did not find a clear answer.

Do I have to pay any money up front to SDG&E to install a second meter for the EV? Or do I pay for it only through an added monthly fee on my bill?

 

[Randy]

Hamster,
If you're in the EV project, everything is done at no cost to you (permit, EVSE install, 2nd meter install, all wiring, labor, etc.). Well, I should say that the EV project funds up to $1200 worth of labor, so if your install is complex you might have to pay the difference. But most people I know are getting everything for free.

There is no flat rate charge for the 2nd meter, just a 17 cent per day minimum associated with the EV TOU rate. So you get cheaper electricity during off-peak times and a free EVSE and installation. You can't beat it.

Randy

 

[jcesare]

I just got a call from an SDG&E rep reading a script congratulating me about getting an EV and wanting to install a 2nd meter as part of the EV project. They are sending me the info and I have a week to decide if I want it. Any good reason for not installing a 2nd meter? Am I correct to assume that the TOU would only apply to the 2nd meter or will both be subject to TOU?

 

[garygid]

SDG&E is offering to pull a permit and do Electrical modifications to your house?

Or, after you have the work done be somebody (maybe EVProject), they will attach their meter to the meter-ring you had installed?

Any info on where the 2nd meter must be located, or how it must be wired in?