Understanding PG&E E9A Electric Vehicle Electric Rates

This is generally a complicated subject, but in brief, here are the main highlights . . .

PG&E ELECTRIC VEHICLE (E9A) PLAN

OVERVIEW:

This Time of Use rate is for electric vehicle customers only who do not have a separate electric vehicle charging station. Your entire household usage will be charged according to this rate plan.

Save money by minimizing electric usage during peak and part peak hours, and only charge your vehicle after 9pm.

How it works:

On this rate the price of electricity changes by time of day.
• Prices are highest during weekday afternoons between 2 - 9 pm.
• Summer and Winter prices are highest on weekdays between 7am - 2 pm, and 9pm – midnight; Sat – Sun: 5 – 9 pm
• Prices are lowest during all other hours.

The price you pay for electricity is based on how much you use throughout the billing period. It starts out low and increases as you use more energy based on allowed baseline and higher tiered pricing.

The price you pay for electricity also changes by season. Prices are higher in the Summer and somewhat lower in the Winter.


For additional information on special EV residential electricity rates, go to PG&E's website here:

http://www.pge.com/myhome/environment/whatyoucando/electricdrivevehicles/

I saved a lot of money by running all my appliances on timers at night.

And when you have solar on your home and are selling electricity during the day, the E-9 rate makes that solar even more valuable. Buy low, sell high.

Win win!

I have been closely monitoring my electric bills for the last several months. Astonishingly, even with TWO EVs being charged periodically, from late Summer till now, my monthly bills have actually DECREASED compared to same billing months a year ago, while still on PG&E's regular "E1" residential rate plan. However, now that I am religiously scheduling all my EV charging during overnight or weekend "off peak" periods, at the lowest possible PG&E usage rates, I am saving money BIG TIME!

SeaMonster said:

And when you have solar on your home and are selling electricity during the day, the E-9 rate makes that solar even more valuable. Buy low, sell high.

Win win!

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Is that true SeaMonster? I have been considering solar, and if I can make back the E-9a peak rate (which is considerably higher than the standard residential peak rate), it REALLY makes sense to go solar. I am surprised that PG&E would go for this, actually. Wouldn't anyone with solar want to use the E-9a rate plan then? I mean, you don't HAVE to have an EV to go on this rate.

I went to the E-9a rate to get the low, off peak (overnight) rate to charge my RAV4, but you could make a case that going to the E-9a rate for the higher solar "credit" might make even MORE sense.

Do you know this for a fact? Are you seeing this on your bills?

The E-9 rate is NOT available to just anyone. You must have an EV to get it. (Of course anyone can claim they have an EV and I don't know if PG&E checks, but they could easily tell based on usage.) And then, yes, you sell solar power at peak E-9 rates. E-6 is the TOU rate for non-EV-owners.

Interestingly, the decision to switch from E-6 to E-9 was not obvious. The E-9 peak rate is higher, but the partial-peak rate is lower than the E-6 and I generate a lot of partial-peak. Winter has no peak, only partial-peak and off-peak, and in summer, E-9 has fewer peak hours during daylight on weekdays. And E-6 is much more forgiving if you need to charge your car in the morning after 7. In the end, I built a spreadsheet to figure it out and, based on my usage and generation, E-9 comes out ahead for me.

Interesting note on the PG&E site linked above:

Customers can request only one E-9 rate – either E-9A or E-9B – for their residence and can only change their rate plan once every twelve months.

Update: By late spring of 2013, the E-9 rate will be closed and replaced with a new electric vehicle rate, Schedule EV, which contains these same two options. The difference is that this new rate will not have a “tiered” structure like the current E-9 rate schedule. When Schedule EV becomes available, customers taking service on either option of the E-9 schedule may choose to stay on that rate schedule, or move to the new EV rate schedule. If no choice is made, they will remain on the E-9 rate until at least the end of 2014*, at which point they will transition to the new EV rate. Alternatively, they may also choose another applicable rate schedule if so desired.

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I am quite intrigued about this. PG&E uses tiered rates for all residential rate schedules, so I'm curious how this is going to work.

I'll second the motion to GO SOLAR. It is the perfect complement to owning an EV. I have two EVs on the E-9A rate plan. It definitely saves money by charging "off-peak".

Btw, another consideration for going solar, there is a 30% IRS tax credit you can claim for the total system cost, including the labor to install it. Also, there is the CA Solar Incentive (CSI) rebate program provided by the major utility companies. PG&E, in Northern CA, currently provides residential customers a one time rebate of $0.20/watt.

Petersen Dean, serving the SF Bay Area, was my solar system installer, and they did a great job! :mrgreen:

Dsinned said:

AND, there is CA Solar Incentive (CSI) rebate program provided by the major CA utility companies. PG&E in Northern CA currently provides residential customers a one time rebate of $0.20/watt.

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The CSI program is closed. The Federal rebate program is still in effect.

Have people compared the E-6 (time of use not requiring EVSE) and E-9A (time of use requires EVSE on the same meter as home)?

My understanding is that the time threshholds are somewhat different... as well as the rates.

The PG&E site has a handy tool to compare the various plans but it only operates historically - i.e. they have the last 11 months of my data (presumably at fine granularity) and can display what I would have paid on each of the rate plans (E-1, E-6, E-9A, and E-9B). Of course I didn't have an EVSE until a month ago .

I have used PG&E's comparative analysis tool, and it says I am MUCH better off on E-9A vs. any of their other rate plans. It suggests my monthly electric bill saving will be as much as $150. Of course, it is only an "estimate" and not particularly accurate since my monthly electric bill is generally much less than that. I also lack complete historical data going back a full year, since owning EVs, but have enough to go on to know E-9A works good for me, at least so long as still in effect and available from PG&E.

I have E7-TOU which is closed to new users. Looking at the rate plan I am best off to STAY on this old...but Great plan. The Peak is only Mon-Fri from 12-6. Glad to be grandfathered in...having had solar for 7+ years. I looked at the E9 rate...but I'm better off on E7.

I created a XLSX spreadsheet so that I could compare different rate schedules. The starting point is your SmartMeter data that can be downloaded from the PG&E My Usage web portal. From that data, the spreadsheet finds your usage for the given Time Of Use time periods or "bins". The next tab of the spreadsheet calculates your bill based on the TOU kWh quantities based on your selected rate schedule. I have the current rates already entered so you can just copy/paste the rates for E-1, E-6, E-7 and E-9A. All of these rates just went up on May 1, 2013 for Tiers 3, 4, 5. It looks like they all went up about a penny per kWh. Tier 1, 2 appear unchanged.

The spreadsheet is on Google Drive. It doesn't display or calculate properly in Google Sheets, so I suggest you just download it and look at it with Excel or Excel Viewer. It was created in Excel 2010. If I have some time, I will try to fix up the Google Sheets version.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2boNz94iJHhMTY5amRzR0tPZWM/edit?usp=sharing

There are 6 tabs in the spreadsheet. The first two handle the Binning and Bill Calculation, the next two are comparisons of my historical usage. The first comparison is from before I got my PV solar system. I compare E-1 without an EV (as the SmartMeter data shows), with 13kWh/day added for EV charging on E-1, and the same EV usage with the whole bill calculated on E-9. The second comparison is my February data with winter solar generation on E-6, with EV charging added on E-6, and the same on E-9. The last two tabs are the raw SmartMeter data pasted from the .CSV file downloaded from PG&E.

If you find any mistakes or think there is something strange in the spreadsheet, let me know here or by private message.

Disclaimers:
The calculations included in this spreadsheet are my personal interpretation of the published rate schedules. They are provided for educational purposes only.
These calculations are not Revenue Grade and do not correlate 100% to bills calculated by PG&E.

Here is a sample from the spreadsheet. This is the comparison between E-1 and E-9 for my house before I had solar or an EV.



You can see that even though the EV usage is added into the Off Peak only, you still end up paying more for your Part Peak usage. This is because the higher total usage pushes you into the higher tiers. Adding the EV usage of 13kWh/day (1000mi/mo, 30days/mo, 3mi/kWh, 85% charge efficiency) would add $141.51 to your bill on E-1. On E-9 the increase is only $45.13. This is relatively high household usage. At a lower household usage, the cost to charge the EV would be less.

miimura said:

Here is a sample from the spreadsheet. This is the comparison between E-1 and E-9 for my house before I had solar or an EV.

You can see that even though the EV usage is added into the Off Peak only, you still end up paying more for your Part Peak usage. This is because the higher total usage pushes you into the higher tiers. Adding the EV usage of 13kWh/day (1000mi/mo, 30days/mo, 3mi/kWh, 85% charge efficiency) would add $141.51 to your bill on E-1. On E-9 the increase is only $45.13. This is relatively high household usage. At a lower household usage, the cost to charge the EV would be less.

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Thanks for the chart data and your analysis on the rates. Since the E9-x are phasing out, perhaps doing a E1 vs. EV rates is more appropriate.

Thanks! I was on the phone with PGE several days ago trying to get a handle on how my bill will change next month and came to the conclusion that I needed to see the data on a spreadsheet to make sense of it all.

miimura said:

Here is a sample from the spreadsheet.

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snoltor said:

Thanks! I was on the phone with PGE several days ago trying to get a handle on how my bill will change next month and came to the conclusion that I needed to see the data on a spreadsheet to make sense of it all.

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Well, download the spreadsheet and put in your own numbers! It can also show you how a solar system will affect your bill too. If you want a solar generation profile to subtract from your household usage, I can probably come up with that too.

I just called to start E-9 also. I was surprised how little info they needed from me. They only asked for the account number, address confirmation, and what kind of car. They did not ask for a VIN, for permit information, or even a charging station model or current draw.

waidy said:

Thanks for the chart data and your analysis on the rates. Since the E9-x are phasing out, perhaps doing a E1 vs. EV rates is more appropriate.

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As soon as the EV rate is finalized I will add it in. It's not available as an active tariff yet.

miimura said:

waidy said:

Thanks for the chart data and your analysis on the rates. Since the E9-x are phasing out, perhaps doing a E1 vs. EV rates is more appropriate.

Click to expand...

As soon as the EV rate is finalized I will add it in. It's not available as an active tariff yet.

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Thanks, miimura.
The speculative EV schedule will/might be 25 cents (yuck) per kWh with no tier. It was speculated by a PG&E personnel in a PG&E talk at either a BAYLeaf or EAA gathering (can't remember). Unfortunately I can't remember whether he said there is peak or nonpeak rates, summer vs. winter, etc. My bad of not paying attention to the talk. Since I am a net energy producer I didn't have to worry about any rate, nor to worry about charging at peak or not peak. Now you started this "analysis" spreadsheet and get me interested in the "analyzing" prospect.

25 cents. Wow.....

waidy said:

might be 25 cents (yuck) per kWh with no tier

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