TOU for SCE in Southern California analysis

[J.P.M.]

You still have about 300kWh generated credit towards your account, I used almost all my solar generation.... Summer is not even here......

Not as good solar weather. Turn up your thermostat. According to some weather slug in S.D., NOAA long range says El Nino's supposed to be good through at least summer --->>> not as much sun in SO CA.

[silversaver]

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The big news for me is that I am now on the "Summer " billing schedule. Everything pretty much stays the same, except for "Peak Generation" rates, which nearly doubled on June 1st.

Had my whole month been on these rates, my monthly credit would have been about $40 higher.

As my consumption during "Peak " is very small, due to the TOU-D-T scheduling, there is little downside to this rate increase.

Things continue to go well..... heading into summer.

I am looking forward to having a freezing cold house, every ( 100% off peak) weekend!

You still have about 300kWh generated credit towards your account, I used almost all my solar generation.... Summer is not even here......

[Alisobob]

solar112.JPG

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The big news for me is that I am now on the "Summer " billing schedule. Everything pretty much stays the same, except for "Peak Generation" rates, which nearly doubled on June 1st.

Had my whole month been on these rates, my monthly credit would have been about $40 higher.

As my consumption during "Peak " is very small, due to the TOU-D-T scheduling, there is little downside to this rate increase.

Things continue to go well..... heading into summer.

I am looking forward to having a freezing cold house, every ( 100% off peak) weekend!

[Alisobob]

Thanks for the update.....

[insaneoctane]

I just wanted to update last months data on my new TOU-D-A plan. My bill ending 5/18 was -$78.97. It would have been ~-$42.99 on standard tiered (RATE-D), so TOU-D-A continues to prove to be a better plan for my household. I have not quite made up for my winter usage; I still owe SCE $3.74 for my relevant period. I'm hoping I'll build a small margin in preparation to being able to use A/C more than we usually have in the past. I will certainly not think twice about turning on the A/C past 10pm at $0.11/kWh. Southern California normally has cool evenings, but occasionally we have a heat wave come through where evenings don't cool down like normal and while I might suffer through some of it throughout the day, if by 10pm things haven't cooled down....close the windows and turn on the A/C! Anyway, I'll probably keep this thread more or less updated through the 12 months of my changing to TOU to keep reporting my experience on analysis and switch.
2015.05 SCE snip.JPG

[solarfrank]

As JPM mention rates also increase over the time but also in some years rates has been drooped, attached are graphs with trend line from calseia.
pge-rate-increases.pdfsce-rate-increases.pdfsdge-rate-increases.pdf

[J.P.M.]

InsaneO: Thanx for the update.

[silversaver]

Sorry for the delay, life's been in the way....
Anyway here is my bill for period ending April 18th. TOU was fantastic for me and has helped me make serious progress towards what I owe SCE for my winter usage...
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In case you don't want to read the actual bill, I got a $149.96 credit this month. It was a perfect storm of things: $29 bi-yearly CA Climate credit + 1 week of being on vacation while solar rocked it (I think I produced ~1,000kWh in this period), and my lowest usage on record (since I've been keeping track for 8 years now) with just under 600kWh used. Anyway all that plus TOU which is working well for me so far and voila! $149.96 credit. I'll keep you guys posted how next month turns out. I'm not as optimistic; next cycle is half way through, I just had about 1 week of "Seattle" style weather (yet, not rain to clean the panels), no CA climate credit, and no vacations....I'm currently at -$22 so far.

Glad to find the answer I'm looking for. The baseline allocation credit of -$0.1/kWh does cap at each month's baseline. So it should be max charge of $3x per month if generated more than baseline or getting extra credit if consume from SCE

[insaneoctane]

Sorry for the delay, life's been in the way....
Anyway here is my bill for period ending April 18th. TOU was fantastic for me and has helped me make serious progress towards what I owe SCE for my winter usage...
TOU-example-best-bill.JPG

In case you don't want to read the actual bill, I got a $149.96 credit this month. It was a perfect storm of things: $29 bi-yearly CA Climate credit + 1 week of being on vacation while solar rocked it (I think I produced ~1,000kWh in this period), and my lowest usage on record (since I've been keeping track for 8 years now) with just under 600kWh used. Anyway all that plus TOU which is working well for me so far and voila! $149.96 credit. I'll keep you guys posted how next month turns out. I'm not as optimistic; next cycle is half way through, I just had about 1 week of "Seattle" style weather (yet, not rain to clean the panels), no CA climate credit, and no vacations....I'm currently at -$22 so far.

[insaneoctane]

Hi I am new to this site. Been in the Solar Business for a year and excited to be a member.

Welcome

[TLG4]

Hi I am new to this site. Been in the Solar Business for a year and excited to be a member.

[J.P.M.]

I don't see the difficulty. Just add the net energy the POCO fed you, to what the
inverters generated, and you have your usage. If you can't get inverter readings
to sufficient accuracy, you could insert a revenue grade meter in the inverter output
path. There are several around here. Bruce Roe

Bruce: I think that's the conclusion we're all headed toward. Part of the issue here, among other things, seems to be the ignorance surrounding the inaccuracies/quirks of vendor supplied monitoring.

[bcroe]

Usage

I don't see the difficulty. Just add the net energy the POCO fed you, to what the
inverters generated, and you have your usage. If you can't get inverter readings
to sufficient accuracy, you could insert a revenue grade meter in the inverter output
path. There are several around here. Bruce Roe

[sensij]

Just keep in mind the TED5000 is not revenue grade, so what looks like an all time low might not be, once you account for the potential error. For about the same price as the TED, I'm going with a revenue grade meter from EKM metering. I too miss having the consumption feedback that was available before adding generation into the mix, and the data coming from the Solaredge inverter is clearly inaccurate.

[J.P.M.]

As typical with my quick replies, I am not sure I successfully made my point. I am not irritated by any accuracy issues, but rather the loss of information. Once I added energy generation to the picture I lost the ability for the PUC to Measure my actual consumption. Thats all. The PUC used to be able to send me a bill and I could use that to evaluate both my consumption and the cost. Now they only tell me what they provide me, which is no longer my consumption. The best example of this is this month's bill is about - $130 but the bill can't tell me the whole story anymore... if that's due to heavy production or decreased consumption? Because my true consumption is missing from the bill. Because I have my TED5000, I am able to figure this out luckily. My usage over the last two months has been at an all time low as compared to the last 8 years. I am glad I have the equipment to know this, but my bill can no longer tell me this.

Understood.