Are SCE Peak Time Rebate (PTR)/Save Power Days Credits "Real Money" under NEM?

[jasonvr]

Nice catch. Nicely done on the follow through.

Maybe some rate chasing lawyer reading this thread will do a class action lawsuit.

So when I emailed the judge to withdrawn my case, I made it a point to point out that SCE had told me that they are diligently working to remedy this for all affected customers. Since that should be a part of the public record, if it turns out they are not actually doing that, there is evidence of explicit deception an that they knew about the problem and chose not to remedy it. That should help out that rate chasing lawyer

Are you referring to the difference between NEM 1.O and NEM 2.0? Also, I an not sure what rate (tariff) you are on? Is it a TOU rate and which one? I have two systems under NEM 1.0 and one NEM 2.0 pending. All of these are with SCE and are TOU rates. One of those, TOU D/A has a baseline allocation credit and a minimum fixed charge regardless of how much you generate.

It should not be a difference between NEM1 and NEM2, which lies primarily in the NBCs as I understand it. I am grandfathered into NEM1 and I am on TOU-D-A. This issue had to do with participation in SCE's Smart Energy Program (2018) and Peak Time Rebate (2017). These are the programs where, when a flex alert is called, SCE can control your smart thermostat (like a Nest) to turn up the temp in the home to decrease stress on the grid. That program should work on NEM1 or NEM2 and basically on any rate as I understand it.

[Ampster]

Thanks that clarifies it for me. I didn't read the earlier part of this thread thoroughly enough to get the proper context.

I don't have anything that would qualify at my locations for that Smart Energy Program. I did try Ohm Connect for a while and got some money back.

[Ward L]

I have tracked my SCE tiered power bill with the addition of solar, a pool and now an EV. I have not switched to a TOU and I don't plan to switch. I did not opt for the smart energy plan or any peak saver plans. The first year (2015) without a pool, I had an excess of 5,144 kWh and at $0.082/kWh was paid $421. In 2016, I had an excess of 974 kWh and at $0.097/kWh was paid $94. In 2017, 1,485 kWh at $0.072 gave me $87. 2018 the excess was 3,028 kWh at $0.053 gave me $161. This May I will have had my EV for a full year and still expect to have excess power for the year. I will stay on my tiered plan because with excess power for the year, my EV consumed power is at a lower rate than being on a TOU plan or the rate for a separate meter for the EV.

I understand SCE will only pay me 3-4 cents kWh of excess power back to the grid over the year. The rate was $0.031/kWh last May. But then on top of that there was another $67 they credited our account for the previous year which brought the rate up to $0.053/kWh. The bills are almost impossible to understand and I wouldn't be surprised if I made a mistake somewhere. Besides confusing bills, my point is I'll be better off staying on my tiered plan to charge my EV when I have excess power to the grid.

[J.P.M.]

I have tracked my SCE tiered power bill with the addition of solar, a pool and now an EV. I have not switched to a TOU and I don't plan to switch. I did not opt for the smart energy plan or any peak saver plans. The first year (2015) without a pool, I had an excess of 5,144 kWh and at $0.082/kWh was paid $421. In 2016, I had an excess of 974 kWh and at $0.097/kWh was paid $94. In 2017, 1,485 kWh at $0.072 gave me $87. 2018 the excess was 3,028 kWh at $0.053 gave me $161. This May I will have had my EV for a full year and still expect to have excess power for the year. I will stay on my tiered plan because with excess power for the year, my EV consumed power is at a lower rate than being on a TOU plan or the rate for a separate meter for the EV.

I understand SCE will only pay me 3-4 cents kWh of excess power back to the grid over the year. The rate was $0.031/kWh last May. But then on top of that there was another $67 they credited our account for the previous year which brought the rate up to $0.053/kWh. The bills are almost impossible to understand and I wouldn't be surprised if I made a mistake somewhere. Besides confusing bills, my point is I'll be better off staying on my tiered plan to charge my EV when I have excess power to the grid.

I'm on tiered rates and plan to stay there unless/until an EV enters my life and a T.O.U. rate tariff with a super off peak rate is available when/if that happens. But, knowing rates and tariff schedules are not cast in stone, as are NEM rules, I'll play it as it lies.

In general, one of the best ways to kill the cost effectiveness of a residential PV system is to oversize it. Also in the mix is the consideration that super off peak rates of something like $0.05/kWh or so do not help PV economic break even points or ROI.

[Ampster]

I'm on tiered rates and plan to stay there unless/until an EV enters my life and a T.O.U. rate tariff with a super off peak rate is available when/if that happens. But, knowing rates and tariff schedules are not cast in stone, as are NEM rules, I'll play it as it lies.
......

I am in PG&E territory with solar and NEM 2.0 and have no choice but to be on a TOU rate. I do have electric cars so I get a super off peak rate of $0.14 that I use to charge my cars. I am also in a Community Choice Aggregation plan so I pay PG&E for the distribution and Sonoma Clean Power for the generation. I got an EVSE (Charging Station) almost for free through a program with Sonoma Clean Power and I signed up for Grid Savvy which gives me a $5 credit per month and that lets them turn off my charger when the grid is stressed. That might be similair to what Jasonvr has for his AC with SCE.

I also have some investment property in Southern California and two of those buildings have solar. All of them are on a TOU rate with SCE. I just got notified that SCE is changing their TOU rate periods in March and the new super off peak rate will be from 8AM until 4PM instead of 11PM to 7AM. That will impact me because most of my consumption for house loads on those buildings is for night lighting.In addition I have installed EVSE's for three of my tenants who have electric cars and set the timers to run from 11PM until 7AM. The change in the rates is insignificant but the change in the TOU periods will have significant impact on the numbers. I will have to do some number crunching and change the timers and possibly consider charging some of those tenants for electric car charging if the numbers don't work out. The biggest impact will also be on the return on investment of a possible addition of solar on a third building, Since the majority of the sunny part of the day will be at a time when the reimbursement rate will be the lowest, the ROI will be reduced. NOTE: These properties are on a commercial rate and the change in TOU periods may only apply to commercial rate plans.

All of the above is an illustration of how three different locations in three different utility districts can have such different rates when we are all within the same state and in essentially the same market for energy. I haven't made sense of that yet. In addition PG&E has declared that they are filing for bankruptcy at the end of the month. So far my only take away is that one needs to be flexible if you want to reduce your costs for energy.

[Ward L]

SCE has 18 cents /kWh for the first Tier and 23 cents for the second Tier. The lowest TOU or separate meter for EV charging is 12 cents to 3 cents /kWh. Like said above, need to keep evaluating to see what is the best rate for your personal needs. With my oversized system and excess power, my incremental rate is 3-4 cents per kWh.

As far as the oversized system killing my ROR (JMP has said this many times), I've had my 10 kW system 4.5 years, it has saved me over $16k. It cost $26k after tax credits and I will have my money back in less than 8 years. This is an AFTER TAX ROR of over 10%! Hardly dead and really no homeowner can expect to install any other project and get such a payback. Maybe I could have installed an 8kW system for $21k and have an even higher ROR, but I am happy with my excess power for the first EV. Based on the news about Detroit converting to EVs ASAP, we better all install extra panels for the second EV! JMP, in general, maybe you want to rethink your statement?

The worst part about my wife's EV is I still have to drive my old ICE! The EVs are amazing!

[Ampster]

..........

The worst part about my wife's EV is I still have to drive my old ICE! The EVs are amazing!

Similar story here except our second car is also an EV. She drives the Tesla and I drive the Fiat 500e. I can't wait until the lease is up on the Fiat in July. There are some nice EVs coming out in the Spring.

[J.P.M.]

SCE has 18 cents /kWh for the first Tier and 23 cents for the second Tier. The lowest TOU or separate meter for EV charging is 12 cents to 3 cents /kWh. Like said above, need to keep evaluating to see what is the best rate for your personal needs. With my oversized system and excess power, my incremental rate is 3-4 cents per kWh.

As far as the oversized system killing my ROR (JMP has said this many times), I've had my 10 kW system 4.5 years, it has saved me over $16k. It cost $26k after tax credits and I will have my money back in less than 8 years. This is an AFTER TAX ROR of over 10%! Hardly dead and really no homeowner can expect to install any other project and get such a payback. Maybe I could have installed an 8kW system for $21k and have an even higher ROR, but I am happy with my excess power for the first EV. Based on the news about Detroit converting to EVs ASAP, we better all install extra panels for the second EV! JMP, in general, maybe you want to rethink your statement?

The worst part about my wife's EV is I still have to drive my old ICE! The EVs are amazing!

What rate schedule are you on with SCE ? I'm a bit confused about the details you provide above. They look incomplete, or maybe winter rates. A little rate education might serve you well.

As for the cost ineffectiveness of oversizing, or cost analysis of energy systems in general, Part of what I did before retirement was to use engineering economics and cost analyses to justify proposed energy production and heat recovery systems' costs to clients. I simply shifted that interest over to alternate energy before retirement. I've been working with such issues for many years. I'm still thinking and rethinking such things, mostly because I'm cheap.

Without oversimplifying too much (but probably much simpler than generally accepted methods of cost analysis would allow), in general, at least in CA and many other areas from what I've seen, if you are charged less for power, or if you are paid less for any over generation, the cost effectiveness of a system as f(incremental system cost/incremental energy cost) goes down as either system cost goes up or as incremental energy cost goes down.

So, if you're charged less for some power at some times than others (like super off peak T.O.U. rates) or for some conditions (like the first tier(s) in a tiered rate schedule), or if adding PV capacity to intentionally overgenerate power at a what's usually a much lower reimbursement rate than the one charged by the POCO to buy power, if a residential user wants to maintain the same cost effectiveness (as measured by $/installed STC W, or ROI, or some other measure of merit) for that lower cost power, whether that lower price be from lower incremental POCO rates charged, or from lousy overgeneration reimbursement rates, the added incremental PV system capacity/STC watt must be lower in cost than cost/STC watt of the rest of the original, or "base" system. Otherwise, the system cost effectiveness will be dragged down by the lousy ROI on the lower purchase rate or lower overgeneration reimbursement.

Oversize to your heart's content - not my $$/life/business. It's a choice that some make. I've no beef with that - don't care. My point is that most folks are clueless about how much money they are leaving on the table, and if they knew what I think I might know about solar process economics and NEM policy, there might be fewer oversized residential systems on roofs. That the number of very oversized systems is, IMO, large, seems somewhat ironic to me when I see, hear and read how often folks are squeezing vendors over pennies/W on an install but willingly and/or ignorantly add maybe 10 - 20 % or more to the total system price by not doing their homework and so either getting screwed by vendors in an oversize, or not being aware of the ways and to the extent they are shooting themselves in the foot and working against the usual and common goal of "shortest payback time", or some other economic figure of merit, however they choose to define it.

[Mike90250]

hii ketovian.....

Bye

[Ward L]

Oops, I have a typo. I am on the normal SCE tiered rate plan. The first tier is 18 cents and the second tier is 23 cents in the winter. SCE doesn

[Ward L]

I stepped away from my computer for an hour and lost most of my post, twice. RATS! I was going to say SCE doesn

[SunEagle]

I stepped away from my computer for an hour and lost most of my post, twice. RATS! I was going to say SCE doesn

Try not using the "apostrophe" in your post. The anti-spam software treats it like a threat and clips off the post.

[Ward L]

Let me try again. I am on the SCE Tiered rate plan of 18 cents kWh for the first tier and 23 cents for the second tier in the winter. Edison offers a TOU with the lowest rate being 13 cents. That is also the special EV rate with a separate meter, 13 cents per kWh. Since I have over capacity in my solar system, I can charge my EV for the cost Edison would pay me for the excess power. As I said before, I expect the excess solar capacity to be consumed with my EV over the year. I didn

[J.P.M.]

Let me try again. I am on the SCE Tiered rate plan of 18 cents kWh for the first tier and 23 cents for the second tier in the winter. Edison offers a TOU with the lowest rate being 13 cents. That is also the special EV rate with a separate meter, 13 cents per kWh. Since I have over capacity in my solar system, I can charge my EV for the cost Edison would pay me for the excess power. As I said before, I expect the excess solar capacity to be consumed with my EV over the year. I didn

I think you're confused, but I'll wait until you're able to complete a post based on the possibility that you've more to add than what's above. BTW: question - when you write "Edison", you are referring to Southern California Edison, right ? Also, assuming SCE is your POCO, What rate plan are you on ? Knowing that will help me better understand your complete rate picture. Your information is incomplete as you've written it.

[jasonvr]

I think you're confused, but I'll wait until you're able to complete a post based on the possibility that you've more to add than what's above. BTW: question - when you write "Edison", you are referring to Southern California Edison, right ? Also, assuming SCE is your POCO, What rate plan are you on ? Knowing that will help me better understand your complete rate picture. Your information is incomplete as you've written it.

Not quite sure how my thread turned into this, but... Sounds like Ward is on the standard tiered residential rate. 18 cents/kWh up to baseline, 23 cents/kWh up to 400% baseline. It is the standard SCE rate, at least until people are forced into TOU

https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Standard-Residential-Rate-Plan

I am struggling to see how anyone could feel they are better off on a tiered rate than TOU, but that is probably heavily skewed by my personal experience. For the 1.5 years I've had my solar I have been keeping a spreadsheet that is comparing TOU-A, the standard tiered rate - with and without solar (it originally also kept TOU-B and TOU-T, but I quickly figured neither was beneficial for me and it just made the spreadsheet huge). I keep this mainly to track my payoff time (difference between actual bills and estimated tiered rate without solar). Since I also track what tiered with solar would cost, I can see that I am SIGNIFICANTLY better off on TOU - on the order of $40 to $60 per month.

On a tiered rate, it would seem that if sized properly, you would always stay in Tier 1. What I don't know is what happens if you severely overproduce? Is there a tier 2 on overproduction (i.e. beyond 100% of negative baseline), or is all "sell back" always at tier 1 rates? Or maybe if you use enough net to hit tier 2, sell back at that point is at tier 2 rates as well, possibly pushing you back into tier 1?? I just don't know