SRP (Arizona POCO) hits solar customers with $50/month fee. APS next?

[J.P.M.]

I feel it comes down to how it's broken down. I have this conversation going on on another forum and as someone pointed out there...

"Personally I think the utilities are approaching this all the wrong way. The rates for grid maintenance and usage should be separated from the generation completely. Then each user of the utility system gets a fair shake at the cost of attachment. Actually this should be fairly easy to accomplish. The cost for grid maintenance is really easy to separate out from generation. Now that would be fair and probably raise my utility bill a fair amount. Another upside of this method would allow for the deregulation of the generation and the possibility to buy from any generation source (or be your own generator). The grid then becomes truly a distribution system. Could they then allow private generation onto the grid to compete with the utilities. The utilities are pretty fat here, new trucks every other year, fancy office buildings, lots of fat in the employment."

Right now the bill is all jumbled up and even though there are two lines that say they are for generation making it as if every other line on the bill is for everything else but generation, but I'm sure that all the prices are subsidizing the generation.

In the end it would probably cost the same to solar users, maybe more, maybe less...but like the other person mentioned, they are approaching it the wrong way. It should be split up and then people would understand.

Not only is a breakdown easy to accomplish, it's a matter of fact in CA, at least for the IOU's. For those who want to take the time to look at a tariff sheet or two, the tiered rates, and the T.O.U. rates for residential tariffs, are broken down with a separate charge for the "energy portion" of a bill - and also clearly visible on a monthly bill, at least for SDG & E customers.

Part of the rub with that, at least for me, is how much faith do I put in what I'm told is an actual energy charge of say, ~ $ $.07/kWh in winter and ~$.14/kWh in the summer ( as of 02/01/2015, CPUC sht #'s 25896 - e, et seq.), and an implied straight pass through, and constant, regardless of tier when, on the very same bill - sometimes the very same sheet of the same bill, the POCO tells me that the POCO will only reimburse excess generation at something called "avoided cost", and another implied straight pass through of something like $.045 to $.055/kWh - W.T.F. is up with that ?? Makes their indecipherable games and obfuscation all the less likely to be believed, and another reason for their bad, self inflicted PR and self image.

Some of AB 327's mandate is to put a reasonable and realistic value on the energy that solar electric really provides - something still to be worked out and another reason to pay attention but avoid the fear mongering by the solar peddlers that is heating up as I write this.

[silversaver]

HX_Guy explains it pretty well. The fundamental difference compared to what I gather to be California's approach is that we get kWh offset on a monthly basis and bank over production starting in January and draw from the bank during the summer months. In my case, I have gas heat so my peak summertime total monthly usage runs around 3100 kWh compared to my lowest total usage in November and February of around 800 kWh. With that usage profile, it's impossible, using solar, to both cover all your high cost summer usage and not wind up with a significant amount of banked kWh in December that get bought @ $0.029/kWh. My system is sized to provide 2/3 of my total annual usage and as it works out using the TOU plan, I manage to cover all my on-peak needs throughout the year but wind up paying for a lot of off-peak kWh late Spring through summer and also having significant on-peak banked kWh to be bought back in December. I'm happy enough with that but a switch to April trueup would really upset the apple cart.

Yes, if the billing offset on monthly basis, that will be really bad. my account has about $188 balance, but I only pay less than $2 each month. I got whole year to bring that balance down with over generation.

The only people getting screwed are your neighbors paying artificially higher electric rates to pay for your luxury and comfort. Time for you to start paying up and carry your own weight. You can afford to pay your own way without your neighbors help.

I wont worry about my neighbors, they have their own plans and so am I. The world will not change for you, the other way around.

[HX_Guy]

The only people getting screwed are your neighbors paying artificially higher electric rates to pay for your luxury and comfort. Time for you to start paying up and carry your own weight. You can afford to pay your own way without your neighbors help.

I feel it comes down to how it's broken down. I have this conversation going on on another forum and as someone pointed out there...

"Personally I think the utilities are approaching this all the wrong way. The rates for grid maintenance and usage should be separated from the generation completely. Then each user of the utility system gets a fair shake at the cost of attachment. Actually this should be fairly easy to accomplish. The cost for grid maintenance is really easy to separate out from generation. Now that would be fair and probably raise my utility bill a fair amount. Another upside of this method would allow for the deregulation of the generation and the possibility to buy from any generation source (or be your own generator). The grid then becomes truly a distribution system. Could they then allow private generation onto the grid to compete with the utilities. The utilities are pretty fat here, new trucks every other year, fancy office buildings, lots of fat in the employment."

Right now the bill is all jumbled up and even though there are two lines that say they are for generation making it as if every other line on the bill is for everything else but generation, but I'm sure that all the prices are subsidizing the generation.

In the end it would probably cost the same to solar users, maybe more, maybe less...but like the other person mentioned, they are approaching it the wrong way. It should be split up and then people would understand.

[Sunking]

The only people getting screwed are your neighbors paying artificially higher electric rates to pay for your luxury and comfort. Time for you to start paying up and carry your own weight. You can afford to pay your own way without your neighbors help.

[Ian S]

Ian,

Are you saying generation/consumption at different rate/price? Or are you saying:

For the month, if your solar generation is higher than what your consumption, POCO pays you $0.029/kWh

For the month, if your solar generation is less than what your consumption, POCO charges you at TOU/Tier rate.

In CA, regardless of what plan you had, it shows dollar value on your monthly statement. It add up to 12 billing cycles. If you have overgeneration at trueup, POCO pays your $0.049/kWh. If your solar generation is less than what your consumption, you pay the final dollar value at end. It is not 1kWh to 1kWh offset too.

For example:

Tier system, Tier 1 @ $0.15, Tier 2 @ $0.19, Tier 3 @ $0.26 and Tier 4 @ $0.32

if you bank 100kWh each month for the first 11 months for total of 100kWh X 11 months = 1100kWh, POCO only credit your account 1100kWh X Tier 1 rate of $0.15 (at tier 1 rate of 0.15) = $165 credit bank.

If your last month you used 1100kWh from POCO, then they are chargin you at

Tier 1: 296kWH X 0.15 = $44.4
Tier 2: 88kWH X 0.19 = $16.72
Tier 3: 207kWh X 0.26 = $53.82
Tier 4: 509kWh X 0.32 = $162.88

Total of $277.82

You still need to pay $277.82 - $165 (bank credit) = $112.82

HX_Guy explains it pretty well. The fundamental difference compared to what I gather to be California's approach is that we get kWh offset on a monthly basis and bank over production starting in January and draw from the bank during the summer months. In my case, I have gas heat so my peak summertime total monthly usage runs around 3100 kWh compared to my lowest total usage in November and February of around 800 kWh. With that usage profile, it's impossible, using solar, to both cover all your high cost summer usage and not wind up with a significant amount of banked kWh in December that get bought @ $0.029/kWh. My system is sized to provide 2/3 of my total annual usage and as it works out using the TOU plan, I manage to cover all my on-peak needs throughout the year but wind up paying for a lot of off-peak kWh late Spring through summer and also having significant on-peak banked kWh to be bought back in December. I'm happy enough with that but a switch to April trueup would really upset the apple cart.

[HX_Guy]

So your POCO actually credit you by kWh instead of dollar value? if so, that will be 1 to 1 kWh credit/debit.

We have the option of either, we can choose credit by kWh or by dollar value, but the dollar value is so low ($0.029/kWh) that it's not worth it because they sell it to you at $0.094/kWh).

So in Summer months, POCO offering tier rate true? But you are getting same tier rate for credit....Is that because Arizona is hot, so most likely your generation is lower than your consumption so you might be paying higher rate at Summer and use low Winter creidt to offset. Right?

If you choose the Standard plan, then yes, it's tiered. If you do a Time-of-Use plan, then no, it works the same as the 1 to 1 credit/debit outlined before (with a separate "bank" for on-peak and a separate "bank" for off-peak").

If you do go with the Standard (which I switched to), then the summer looks like this...

summer (may-october billing cycles)
1-400 kWh $0.09687
401-800 kWh $0.13817
801-3000 kWh $0.16167
3001 kWh+ $0.17257

So it's still a 1:1 kWh credit/debit, and then whatever you end up using from the POCO is charged at the above rates.

[silversaver]

So your POCO actually credit you by kWh instead of dollar value? if so, that will be 1 to 1 kWh credit/debit.

So in Summer months, POCO offering tier rate true? But you are getting same tier rate for credit....Is that because Arizona is hot, so most likely your generation is lower than your consumption so you might be paying higher rate at Summer and use low Winter creidt to offset. Right?

[HX_Guy]

Whoa. That's completely different than here, though I think APS locally has a net billing plan but no one signs up for that one as you get a lot more benefit from net metering here.

The way it works here would be like this (we'll use a non summer month as they charge a flat fee and no tiered system like they do in the summer).

March 2015

House use: 1150kWh
Solar production: 1575kWh
Net: -425kWh

Bill = $0 for energy consumption + $X.XX for service charges

That net 425kWh gets rolled over to the next month, it gets "banked" in your account. Just like rollover minutes work with cell phones (or did before it all went unlimited pretty much).

Now say you produced less solar than you used...

House use: 1150kWh
Solar production: 800kWh
Net: 350kWh

Bill = $32.96 for energy consumption (billed at $0.09417/kWh) + $X.XX for service charges

The following month is a fresh start.


Now lets say the end of the year comes around. If your "bank" still has credits in it, then they pay you out at $0.029/kWh. And that's all there is to it.

[silversaver]

In California, do you sell and buy all your solar? Or does your house use what it needs and the POCO only sees the remainder?

In CA, only 1 meter. POCO sees your net after consumption during solar production. Simple and straight forward. Regardless of rate plan, whatever they charges you and whatever they pays you as credit. Only at trueup, they pay you $0.049/kWh for your overgeneration.

POCO credits you the same way they charging you. For March 2014, I was on vacation and has over 700kWh banked, SCE pays me: (see picture)

[HX_Guy]

In California, do you sell and buy all your solar? Or does your house use what it needs and the POCO only sees the remainder?

[silversaver]

Ian,

Are you saying generation/consumption at different rate/price? Or are you saying:

For the month, if your solar generation is higher than what your consumption, POCO pays you $0.029/kWh

For the month, if your solar generation is less than what your consumption, POCO charges you at TOU/Tier rate.

In CA, regardless of what plan you had, it shows dollar value on your monthly statement. It add up to 12 billing cycles. If you have overgeneration at trueup, POCO pays your $0.049/kWh. If your solar generation is less than what your consumption, you pay the final dollar value at end. It is not 1kWh to 1kWh offset too.

For example:

Tier system, Tier 1 @ $0.15, Tier 2 @ $0.19, Tier 3 @ $0.26 and Tier 4 @ $0.32

if you bank 100kWh each month for the first 11 months for total of 100kWh X 11 months = 1100kWh, POCO only credit your account 1100kWh X Tier 1 rate of $0.15 (at tier 1 rate of 0.15) = $165 credit bank.

If your last month you used 1100kWh from POCO, then they are chargin you at

Tier 1: 296kWH X 0.15 = $44.4
Tier 2: 88kWH X 0.19 = $16.72
Tier 3: 207kWh X 0.26 = $53.82
Tier 4: 509kWh X 0.32 = $162.88

Total of $277.82

You still need to pay $277.82 - $165 (bank credit) = $112.82

[Ian S]

I'm not follow on this one. Unless the Net metering is total different in Arizona as California. In CA, regardless what month your trueup start, you get full 12 months for your net metering. It doesn't really matter which month it starts becasue you got full 12 months to cover. Your net is base on whole year so what different does it make if your trueup starts in Jan or Sept?

The only affect I see if you start your solar in Winter and every solar trueup ends on April and your might not have enough time to build up your credit for Winter usage. But again, that will only affect the 1st year, after that you get full 12 months regardless.

Arizona IS different. Our billing period is monthly. Every month, APS either draws from your banked solar, adds to it or if there is none, charges you for electricity you pulled from the grid. Whatever is left of banked solar at trueup in December gets bought for $0.029/kWh. You can't use the excess to go back and offset your grid usage earlier in the year.

[silversaver]

I assume you are saying all net metering trueup in April correct? or everyone's trueup in different month but POCO reset bank in every April?

[HX_Guy]

In Arizona, SRP's trueup resets in April like was mentioned and APS at te end of the year.

With APS, you get to "bank" credits from Jan - May that you then use in June-Sept as the solar typically doesn't produce enough power to cover the summer electric usage. After th summer, you're at roughly net zero and the rest of the year the solar more or less produces enough to cover your usage for the remainder of the year.

With SRP, they reset you "bank" in April, so you don't get a chance to accumulate credits for the summer and end up buying a lot more from the grid. Yes after summer you end up accumulating more credits but the value isn't really in getting them cashed out, but in using them to offset the usage from the grid.

[silversaver]

Oh, and let's not forget how SRP does their trueup in April so that your ability to bank Kwh before the summer heat is limited. Of course after summer is over your excess production builds up over seven months so you can sell it back to SRP for $0.04/kWh. Nice!

I'm not follow on this one. Unless the Net metering is total different in Arizona as California. In CA, regardless what month your trueup start, you get full 12 months for your net metering. It doesn't really matter which month it starts becasue you got full 12 months to cover. Your net is base on whole year so what different does it make if your trueup starts in Jan or Sept?

The only affect I see if you start your solar in Winter and every solar trueup ends on April and your might not have enough time to build up your credit for Winter usage. But again, that will only affect the 1st year, after that you get full 12 months regardless.