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Not claiming complete, but ready to have anyone willing take a look at my spreadsheet. Here's a couple notes:
1. It is xlsm because it contains some VB code for holiday calculations; for TOU you need both weekends and holidays to be at a different rate. I realize this might concern people who are particularly sensitive to downloading from unknown sources. Not much I can do for you other than assure you that it's legit and you can make your own choice!
2. I tried to generalize all the inputs with the standard Excel orange/beige background with blue text
3. To try your own data, you'd have to fill in the following:- Day of month that your bill starts
- 12 months of hourly dates, unless your data works with my dates. I started Nov 16, 2014 and took it to Nov15, 2015.
- Hourly generation numbers, in kW
- Hourly NET numbers, in kW (My output is NET to grid, so I have to calculate USE by adding NET + GEN, where GEN is negative
- Appropriate Rate schedules; I have tabs for each and have 4 schedules modeled, in many cases there aren't too many inputs (on the right side, again, the special color and format will help you id the inputs)
That's it in a nutshell. I don't know if anyone will actually look at this, it was great for me. I'm not going to pretend it's elementary, or easy to adopt to someone else's data or POCU. I hope it's interesting and/or helpful to some.
Here's the link on Google Drive:
Solar_TOU_Rev_M12.xlsmLeave a comment:
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Here's a good visual for the full year effect of each TOU for my usage...Kind of interesting, if you look a the red (TOU-D-B) that plan has a $16 flat rate associated with it, and you can see those ratchets knock the graph quickly up every month. Clearly, that doesn't improve my situation much over my standard RATE-D tiered plan I'm on now.
tou_analysis_cum_2015.03.07.JPGLeave a comment:
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That last graph was incorrect, I did it a little differently this time and replaced it, so click on it again if you care... It's more of a "peanut butter" approach in that it spreads the $258 credit evenly in dollars over the 12 months. That buys you a little less in the Summer time as rates are higher, but it allows me to have extra kWh even in Dec when I am running high usage vs production....
Also, I'm working on kind of a neat chart, but it's a pain in the @$$ because Excel really doesn't want me to do it. I wanted to take the one that shows the composition of kWh used/gen each month by type/rate and add in the actual $ value. The graph is scaled to kWh, but I wanted $ to appear within the color portion. I'm starting to do it, I'm attaching a preview. I've only done it for Jan/Feb and then I jumped to August to see if it is comprehensible...not sure, what do you guys think? The idea is that 215kWh can be worth $98.86 (Aug, on-peak, gen), yet 306kWh can be worth $91.69 (Aug, off-peak, Used). Take a look, the graph wants to show the kWh for labels (that's what you see for most), but I've started to replace them with a link to the actual $ equivalent.
tou_analysis_2015.03.07.JPGLeave a comment:
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Yes, I will....thanks for the push.
I've talked to SCE a couple of times now to see if they could answer some TOU questions. I don't feel I necessarily got the correct answer, although they did give me an answer. Once, after being transferred to a "solar expert" they put me on hold to go ask yet someone else because "I've never been asked that before". That question was in regards to TOU-D-A, regarding the $0.10/kWh credit. I asked since they cap the CREDIT once I exceed my baseline when I'm consuming more than my baseline.... if there was also a cap if I over produce (ie. If I produced more than my baseline, would they "cap" my $0.10/kWh "charge"? Or do I always get charged $0.10/kWh?) Probably will never happen, but I wanted the spreadsheet to accurately handle the math. Anyway the answer was that once I overproduce beyond my baseline, the "credit" (which is really a "charge" for generation) stops.
The other thing I asked is if on TOU-D-T, once I exceed the 130% baseline and move into "level 2" (tier 2), does that apply for production? (Ie if I had a low production month, found myself being charged at level 2, but then had a good hour during sun peak and saw a net production, would I earn the level 1 or level 2 credit?). The answer was that, yes, I can get level 2 credit for over production if that's where I am against my baseline.
Anyway, I think I've got all my stuff in order. I did a spot check on a couple months and manually tried to calculate them in a completely different spreadsheet and have convinced myself that my TOU-D-A calcs are in fact correct. I have not done the same check for the others. I am still very surprised that the other TOU are NOT as nice to me. I'm still tinkering, but I've more or less made up my mind to switch to TOU-D-A. My spreadsheet shows that it is ALWAYS better.
Here's some more eye candy.....
tou_analysis_2015.03.06.JPGtou_analysis_b_2015.03.06.JPGtou_analysis_additional_usage_2015.03.07.JPG
The last one shows if I didn't want to have a credit a the end of my 12 month true-up period, how much more usage I could have (at peak rates) and still owe SCE nothing. Kind of a "margin" or opportunity to run more A/C, etc. [Fixed last graph, it was originally incorrect]Leave a comment:
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Exactly right.
I apologize for being a little sloppy lately with my posts...
When we are trying to get a handle on the specifics of different rate schedules I should be more accurate with my comments. I have been concentrating most of my efforts of late on TOU-D-A which is the only schedule with a $0.10/kWh credit for up to baseline.Leave a comment:
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That's for TOU-D-A only!!!
TOU-D-T is 2 tiers system without $0.1 baseline allocation credit.
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well the good news is my spreadsheet was calculated correctly. Having the conversation with SCE today brought to my attention to look at how I had calculated the credit. But I found that on many months, in my spreadsheet, I had a net production which resulted in a net negative credit or actually it cost to me. this is a double negative and thus confusing but makes mathematical sense. so the good news for me is it does not change my current assumptions that the time of Use Plan is better for meLeave a comment:
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A lot of the recent posting to this thread seems to sort of agree with my conclusions and suggestions that starting with the POCO tariff schedules and diving into a study of how any POCO constructs their rates is one way, albeit a real PITA, to get things more correct and avoid costly errors. My observation and opinion that POCOs do less than nothing to clear up the confusion and thus make the task harder doesn't help. I'm not blowing my horn, I make more than my share of errors, but after farting around with CPUC/SDG & E/tariff schedules/etc for 7 or 8 years, I've made more errors, and spent more time correcting them than I would have if I had not made such simplistic assumptions about rates and tariffs in the first place and simply bit the bullet, started at square one and iterated my logic until it matched reality.
Just my $.02. Take what you want of it. Scrap the rest.Leave a comment:
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well I'm going to definitely have to adjust my numbers in the spreadsheet. I just got off the phone with SCE. one of the considerations I had missed but I just found out was that on the tou - d "credit".... if I have over produced for the month I will actually be charged $0.10 per kilowatt hour. That's going to make a difference in my calculations..Leave a comment:
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