SDGE True Up is complete -- non-bypassable and minimal charges mystery continues

[CharlieEscCA]

So, I just got my true up bill.

Total charges for the year (after adding back in an automatic payment that was made on my first bill) was $58.76.

Adding back in the two CA climate credits of $63.12, the total bill (without the credits) would have been $121.88.

The minimal daily charge of $0.329 times 365 days would be $120.08.

I'm now back to not understanding a) how NBC charges are calculated, and b) whether they are in addition to daily minimal charge.

I'm happy about my first years bill being $58.76.

By my own spreadsheet of daily use (getting data from the Watt Node on consumption, and production data from SolarEdge), I used roughly 12.2 MWh for the year which at the SDGE tiered rate structure would have been over $4200 of electric bills. Note my 12 months prior to solar bills were about $3100 on a use of 10 MWh -- the higher use this past 12 months was not being afraid of running the air conditioner, which dramatically improved my life as my wife was much happier.

sdge 2018 true up.JPG

[CharlieEscCA]

I should also note that I went back in my spreadsheet and ran the entire 12 months at the new grandfathered time of day rates where there is one month less summer rates (no earning big peak credits in May) and the peak and semi peak kWh rates are the same, thus taking away significant portions of the TOU favorability. If production and use is identical this year (which they won't), I would still end up a negative "remaining credit", i.e. my annual bill would be roughly the same amount.

Do the slowness of my new house build process, I'm likely in my current house until early next year, so I expect I'll be saving another 3K this year with solar vs what my bills would have been. Thus, my after tax credit cost of 15.9K for the ground mount system will have saved me over 7K in the 20 months of ownership. While I can never show the benefit (or cost) in terms of my house sale price, I am confident (in the San Diego house market) I will recover my full solar investment.

[DrChaos]

It looks like to me NBC charges are included as counting toward minimum. I'm guessing the 'minimum' is aggregated per billing period, which is about a month.

Think about it this way---if you had no solar, how would it work? You would have to incur 0.329 * #days in billing period with service in $$$>

So if you net consume equal to production, then the smallest bill you could get, in real money is about $60, the ~$120 from the minimum per day minus climate credit. That looks about like what you have.

I think it's only going to get worse in the future, SDG&E hates solar, proposed new rates have higher and higher basic connection charges, like a minimum $10 basic charge per month plus a higher minimum bill per year.