Seeking Help from PG&E Customers to Understand True-Up

[Mike90250]

> I had calculated that by using the battery, I would be generating a small credit on the accumulated Monthly cost balance

Possibly, but

a) the PoCo hates paying $ to custermers

b) the wear & tear on your battery is much more expensive then the pennies you might have saved.

[scrambler]

The point of my original post is to find out if it does with PG&E supplying both generation and distribution. Still trying.

My understanding from all of the above is that regardless of if you use MCE + PG&E or PG&E alone, you can no longer reap the benefit of buying low and selling high at true up.
At True Up, whatever $ profit generated from that will be wiped out, not paid and not applied against anything.

At this point, the only revenue you can generate is with the Yearly Balance of kWh used/imported versus exported.
If with MCE + PG&E that will be paid around 7cent per kWh and if with PG&E alone around 3.5 cents / kWh

[scrambler]

>

b) the wear & tear on your battery is much more expensive then the pennies you might have saved.

I agree on principle.
That said, depending on your consumption pattern, using some of the battery may still be needed, so that you don't end up with a negative $ balance monthly because of exporting during part peak and using during peak. And if you use less than 30% of a Lithium battery daily, the wear should be be fairly small.

But at this point, given there is no collecting of buy/sell profit at true up, the goal should only be to prevent a negative buy/sell balance monthly. If that can be achieved without using any battery then you don't need to use the battery daily.

Except of course if you are benefiting from SGIP, in that case, you are required to use the minimum equivalent of 52 times your battery capacity over the course of the year.
So if you have a 10kWh battery, you must use 520 kWh from it during the year, which is less that 15% of the battery every day.

[toolworker]

My understanding from all of the above is that regardless of if you use MCE + PG&E or PG&E alone, you can no longer reap the benefit of buying low and selling high at true up.
At True Up, whatever $ profit generated from that will be wiped out, not paid and not applied against anything.

Not necessarily. If a system is sized so that it reduces the annual bill but doesn't "zero it out," then you're playing with dollars all the time, and can buy low and sell high. So that system sizing will return more value per dollar spent. But this becomes less true as tiered rates are phased out and peak periods move further away from peak generation times, so I can't say it's the right basis for sizing a new system at this time; I haven't done that analysis. However, with a battery you are not nailed down to generation times.

In any event, most people just want to generate everything they use. So they install larger, less cost-effective systems and then find out that when they were told that the utility has to pay them for excess generation, that statement was (in the words of my favorite quote from Absence of Malice) "... not true. But it's accurate."

At this point, the only revenue you can generate is with the Yearly Balance of kWh used/imported versus exported.
If with MCE + PG&E that will be paid around 7cent per kWh and if with PG&E alone around 3.5 cents / kWh

No, for two reasons: (1) You will never generate enough kWh to get to excess generation measured in kWh. (2) It's possible that MCE will be tossing away dollar credits that, if you were doing generation with PG&E, they would apply to distribution costs.

[scrambler]

Not necessarily. If a system is sized so that it reduces the annual bill but doesn't "zero it out," then you're playing with dollars all the time, and can buy low and sell high. So that system sizing will return more value per dollar spent. But this becomes less true as tiered rates are phased out and peak periods move further away from peak generation times, so I can't say it's the right basis for sizing a new system at this time; I haven't done that analysis. However, with a battery you are not nailed down to generation times.

Maybe I am not following what you are saying, or I was not clear in what I said.
What I understood from Ampster is that, if you indeed can buy low and sell high and get credit for that on a monthly basis and carry it over from month to month, at the end of the year at True up, if that balance is positive, you will not get that money, you will restart with a zero $balance.

No, for two reasons: (1) You will never generate enough kWh to get to excess generation measured in kWh. (2) It's possible that MCE will be tossing away dollar credits that, if you were doing generation with PG&E, they would apply to distribution costs.

(1) not sure why you say that if I use 8000kWh a year and have a system that generates 9000kWh, I will end up with a surplus of 1000 kWh sent to the grid, for which PG&E would pay me about 3 cents a kWh and MCE about 7cents.
(2)Not sure what you are saying, but if you are running a buy/sell profit on generation, you are likely running a buy/sell profit on distribution. It is possible that based on TOU rates that would not be 100% true but I cannot see that being of any significant dollar amounts, so no real advantage there.
My point was that the Buy/sell profit cannot be applied to fixed cost, which from what I understand is different from distribution calculated monthly with TOU rates.

[Ampster]

Maybe I am not following what you are saying, or I was not clear in what I said.
What I understood from Ampster is that, if you indeed can buy low and sell high and get credit for that on a monthly basis and carry it over from month to month, at the end of the year at True up, if that balance is positive, you will not get that money, you will restart with a zero $balance.

My situation is unigue because I end up consumming more that a megaWatt more energy than I produce and yet I have credit
balances on both the generation (SCP) and the distribution (PGE) portions the bill (ledgers). That is why my credit disappears. but the important thing it only disappears on the distribution ledger (PGE), On the generation ledger with SCP I actually got a refund at retail but next year it will only be at 2 times the wholesale rate. I still expect to get a smaller credit on the SCP ledger but none on the PGE side of things. That is why I am staying with my CCA as illustrated below.

_(1) not sure why you say that if I use 8000kWh a year and have a system that generates 9000kWh, I will end up with a surplus of kWh sent to the grid, for which PG&E would pay me about 3 cents a kWh and MCE about 7cents.

That scenerio would have at True Up a 1000 kWh production total which would produce a True up credit of of $30 on the distribution (PGE) ledger and and $70 on the generation (MCE) ledger. If one were to opt out of MCE you would have a production credit of $50 or $60 instead of the $100 you got when you had PGE and MCE. I using the rate examples from above. To be more precise one would have to use the exact rates but those are proportionally correct.

[toolworker]

My situation is unigue because I end up consumming more that a megaWatt more energy than I produce and yet I have credit
balances on both the generation (SCP) and the distribution (PGE) portions the bill (ledgers). That is why my credit disappears. but the important thing it only disappears on the distribution ledger (PGE).

Your situation is not unique; it is typical. Most properly sized systems will be net consumers measured in kWh, even if sized to be even or have a credit balance measured in dollars.

On the generation ledger with SCP I actually got a refund at retail but next year it will only be at 2 times the wholesale rate.

Next year, under SCP's NetGreen 2.0, you will get nothing because you are a net consumer measured in kWh.

From that document: "If, however, your system exported 1,000 kWh and you consumed 1,100 kWh annually, you would not receive net surplus compensation even if your NetGreen balance show credits."

NetGreen 2.0 is essentially the same change that MCE has made.

[Ampster]

Your situation is not unique; it is typical. Most properly sized systems will be net consumers measured in kWh, even if sized to be even or have a credit balance measured in dollars.



Next year, under SCP's NetGreen 2.0, you will get nothing because you are a net consumer measured in kWh.

From that document: "If, however, your system exported 1,000 kWh and you consumed 1,100 kWh annually, you would not receive net surplus compensation even if your NetGreen balance show credits."

NetGreen 2.0 is essentially the same change that MCE has made.

No worries. I knew that when I spoke in support of the motion at the Board meeting. I agreed with their philosophy that the $500,000 that they were spending on dividend would be better spent on incentives. The incentives I have received are a free EVSE charging station, a $5 per month rebate for letting them turn off my charger when the grid is stressed. I expect more in the future. They may be able to enroll me in aggregate load and I may get an incentive for puttting load on the grid at the belly of the duck curve by charging my EVs then.
I do not care about the dividend anyway. Next year I am going to run my hybid inverter at a grid zero setting and self consume as much of my solar production to reduce my NBCs, which I have under NEM 2.0.

I like being on Net Green. I haven't even done the math to see If I were on the lower percentage of Renewables with SCP whether I might get a dividend but that is not my objective. I get other benefits from being on SCP. By doing that I am also sending a message to PGE that I support market pricing and innovative incentives. PGE is getting as few of my dollars as I can manage.