PG&E eliminates E-7 rate plan effective March 1 2016

[longrangeview]

Zap! There goes another great electric rate plan. PG&E will eliminate the E-7 rate plan effective March 1, 2016.

Looks like I will choose E-TOU until 2022. Everybody has a slightly different situation. I have solar panels that were installed in 2002 when E 7 was in effect. I opted out of a smart meter. I have a time of use meter. I have permanently installed electric heating for my house. Of course I can program my car to charge off peak between midnight and 10:00 AM which I have been doing lately.

Have any other northern Californians gotten the letter from PG&E yet? What's your experience so far with the best rates for solar panel owners with an EV in Northern California?

Thanks in advance!

 

[arnolddeleon]

You probably want to E-6 at least in the short term.. It will close to new enrollments on March 1, 2016. The rates for ETOU-A and ETOU-B are not available yet so you can't do a proper comparison. There is a chance that EV-A will be better. In short run a rate comparison in case E-6 is the correct rate since it too is being phased out.

arnold

 

[longrangeview]

[=Equote="arnolddeleon"]You probably want to E-6 at least in the short term.. It will close to new enrollments on March 1, 2016. The rates for ETOU-A and ETOU-B are not available yet so you can't do a proper comparison. There is a chance that EV-A will be better. In short run a rate comparison in case E-6 is the correct rate since it too is being phased out.

arnold[/quote]

The residential E-TOU option A rates are shown on the pge.com site on the pdf ELEC_4769-E. The cover letter is dated February 1, 2016 and it is titled Advice Letter 4769 from Edward Randolph Director Energy Division State of California Public Utilities Division to Erik Jacobson PG & E. I entered the search phrase: 'electric rates schedule' under the residential tab.

The E-6 rates were nearly the same as the E-TOU rates.

The E-6 use times are complicated: Summer Partial Peak is M-F 10am-1 pm and 7 pm to 9 pm and Sat. and Sun. 5 pm to 8 pm. Peak is M-F 1 pm to 7 pm.
Winter Partial Peak is M-F 5 pm to 8 pm. With 8 holidays listed. The daylight savings adjustment is between the 2nd Sunday in March to 1st Sunday in April and between the last Sunday in October and first Sunday in November.

the E-TOU use times are simple: Peak is 3 pm to 8 pm Monday thru Friday Summer and Winter. All other times are off peak.

 

[longrangeview]

Here is the link to the source of the rates:

http://www.pge.com/nots/rates/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_4769-E.pdf

See pages 9, 10, 17, 18. 19.

 

[arnolddeleon]

Thanks! When I went searching last week I couldn't find the rates. When I called the PG&E Solar Hotline they said the rates were not available and the person was confident that E-6 was the better choice. BTW FWIW I didn't get my letter from PG&E about the rates changing until a couple of days ago.

If I get some time I will see if I can plug in the proposed E-TOU rates in a spreadsheet for comparison.

arnold

 

[miimura]

For anyone that charges an EV and can do it after 11pm or midnight, Schedule EV is almost certain to be cheaper than E-6. I will have to put the E-TOU rates in my spreadsheet to see how that turns out.

Edit: Nevermind. I just looked at the tariff. The rates are "Total Usage less baseline credit". That doesn't fit my existing calculation scheme, so I will have to think about how to make that fit into my spreadsheet.

 

[longrangeview]

Thanks arnolddeleon and miimura! PG&E does not make it easy to compare outcomes between the rates for E-TOU A or B or E-6. I just looked at the tables, picked my region:T and looked at the columns under Code H for All-Electric Quantities since I have electric heating.

E-TOU option A tier 1
Summer 8.2 cents per kW and Winter 14.1 cents per kW

E-6 tier 1
Summer 8.3 cents per kW and Winter 14.9 cents per kW

Of course many other factors may come into play. What does tier 2 look like? Is my electric vehicle charging putting me into tier 2 or tier 3? What else affects my expenses?

By the way, the letter I got on 2-13-16 told me I would be put in E 1 and charged on the total amount of electricity I used. If I did not want that then the two choices they presented to me were: E-6 (and I must choose that before 3-1-2016) or E- TOU option A or option B. E-TOU is not available until 3-1-2016. The advice letter mentions that time of use meters may become obsolete and the residential customer must bear this expense. I would like to get a little more use out of mine before it becomes obsolete.

B is for high usage. Does my usage fall into high usage? Initially, I thought they meant really high usage like a business operation might experience.

They did not offer me an EV rate.

 

[miimura]

I re-read the tariff again and it's not as complicated as I thought. Basically, the E-TOU-A is a two-tier system with a Baseline price/kWh and a higher price for all the rest of your usage. E-TOU-B is fixed pricing regardless of usage. So, it will be very easy to put into my spreadsheet.

@longrangeview: You were reading the tariff wrong. The things you thought were prices were actually baseline allocations.

If you are Territory T and All Electric, here is the situation:
Summer Baseline 8.2kWh/day = 246kWh/mo (30 days)
Winter Baseline 14.1kWh/day = 423kWh/mo (30 days)

E-TOU-A
Tier 1 (up to Baseline): (Baseline Credit = $0.08174/kWh)
- Summer Peak = $0.26894/kWh
- Summer Off-Peak = $0.19336/kWh
- Winter Peak = $0.15528/kWh
- Winter Off-Peak = $0.14099/kWh
Tier 2 (over Baseline):
- Summer Peak = $0.35068/kWh
- Summer Off-Peak = $0.27510/kWh
- Winter Peak = $0.23702/kWh
- Winter Off-Peak = $0.22273/kWh

I would do a quick comparison here, but the time periods used for E-TOU are so different from the other schedules that it doesn't make sense to do any comparison until I implement it all in the spreadsheet.

 

[longrangeview]

Thanks, Miimura! I was certainly reading the E-TOU option A chart incorrectly. My usage will be in tier 2 and the costs per kWh will be between 22 and 35 cents each.

The formula for calculating Option A TOU customer costs is confusing to me: (Advice Letter 4769 page 14)

"Total bundled service charges shown on customer’s bills are unbundled according to the
component rates shown below. Where the minimum delivery bill charge applies, the
customer’s bill will equal the sum of (1) the minimum delivery bill charge plus (2) the
generation rate times the number of kWh used. For revenue accounting purposes, the
revenues from the minimum delivery charge will be assigned to the Transmission,
Transmission Rate Adjustments, Reliability Services, Public Purpose Programs, Nuclear
Decommissioning, Competition Transition Charges, Energy Cost Recovery Amount, DWR
Bond, and New System Generation charges base on kWh usage times the corresponding
unbundled rate component per kWh, with any residual revenue assigned to Distribution.*"

This looks like the same way of charging me that I experience now with my solar panels.


On January 1, 2020 the Option A TOU time periods (peak is 3:00 pm to 8:00 pm) will be identical to the time periods shown for Option B. The Option B peak periods are 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Option B is non-tiered. It is limited to 225,000 customers.

PG&E is shifting toward fewer tiers of usage with most households paying more money especially during hours of peak demand. Using battery storage of solar electric generated power can relieve demands for electricity at night. Like most Californians with solar panels, I use a considerable amount of electricity in the evenings. I will not be able to escape that usage pattern.

Have any forum members installed the big battery packs yet? What is your experience with your expenses for using these for power during times when solar panels are not generating much electricity?

 

[miimura]

I don't think batteries will be cost effective until Net Metering is significantly changed. For example, if they separated the generation from the distribution and only paid you for generation on solar feed-in, then you would get a lot less value for your daytime generation. At that point, a battery would make a lot more sense. However, I don't think anyone that currently has solar will be affected by something like that soon because we are guaranteed at least 20 true-up cycles on the current Net Metering scheme.

All of PG&E's rate schedules had the minimum charge increased by about $6/mo to just over $10/mo in the Fall of 2015. This really only affects people that have true-up totals less than $135. My solar system is too small and I have a significant true-up bill, so it doesn't affect me. These minimum charges are subtracted from the true-up when they calculate the final amount due.

From my point of view, this is a whole lot of hand wringing for nothing if you have an EV that you charge overnight. Schedule EV will likely be much cheaper for you than E-6, E-7 or these new E-TOU plans. The fact that they did not offer EV when changing you off E-7 doesn't surprise me because you have to tell them that you have an EV in order to get the EV rate plan.

 

[longrangeview]

The fact that they did not offer EV when changing you off E-7 doesn't surprise me because you have to tell them that you have an EV in order to get the EV rate plan.

OK. I will remind them that I have an EV. PG&E required me to wait for their inspection of my neighborhood
electric infrastructure before I could install my home EVSE. However, that PG&E department may not be relaying information to any other PG&E department. So I will request the EV rate. I will post results when available. Thanks!

 

[longrangeview]

Here is the link to the EV rates:

http://pge.com/tariffs/ERS.SHTML#ERS

The pge solar dept. told me to call pge building and renovation dept. at 877 743 7782. The helpful person there gave me the url for the ev rates. I signed up for the ev rates on the phone immediately. Off peak rates range from 10 to 11 cents per kWh again!

Partial Peak 7:00am to 2:00pm and 9:00pm to 11:00pm Monday thru Friday.

Peak 2:00pm to 9:00pm Monday thru Friday and 3:00pm to 7:00pm Saturday and Sunday.

Thanks miimura!