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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

OK, I finally have a resolution on this. ...... so here it is

The 2017 program provided credits based on kWh reductions only. ................

However, the 2018 program changed things up.......

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.

[J.P.M.]

OK, I finally have a resolution on this. I did get assigned an administrative law judge for my formal complaint and had a hearing scheduled. That prompted the regulatory affairs department of SCE to contact me and finally give me an explanation, so here it is

The 2017 program provided credits based on kWh reductions only. Everything based on a per kWh charge is meant to roll into the yearly energy charge. As such, those numbers were always meant to be rolled into the yearly energy charge (what I call virtual money above). Thus, it should have disappeared at the end of the relevant period, which it did. So, that program was basically useless for anyone who had a net credit of virtual money at the end of the year.

However, the 2018 program changed things up. There is a component that is purely based on participation - $0.3275 per day. There is also a per kWh reduction element when an event is called - $0.07/kWh. Since the first part is NOT based on a per kWh measurement, it should NOT be rolled into the virtual money pool As such, that component should always be "real money". The per kWh component still rolls into the "virtual money" pool and, again, is basically useless for anyone who has a net credit at the end of the relevant period. What this works out to is that everyone who is part of the program should receive $39.96 in real money credits just for participation (122 days in the program period at $0.3275).

At this point, I have now received my $39.96 in real money credits (random extra "bills" with no explanation). They also, as a gesture of goodwill, gave me the disputed amounts under the 2017 program. It turns out that I am the ONLY customer who noticed the discrepancy and the goodwill was their way of basically acknowledging my efforts and time spent to bring it to their attention

What they also told me is that their billing system can't actually handle this automatically. As such, it will require a manual process to credit each and every customer this affects. They are apparently overhauling their billing system, but that won't be ready until March 2020, so until then, it's totally manual. There appears to be one guy who is taking care of this manual process (Keith)

Nice catch. Nicely done on the follow through.

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

[Mike90250]

WOW ! Thanks for being a trail blazer on this. I knew they were mucking around, re-defining the peak hours to negate any solar PV savings.

[jasonvr]

OK, I finally have a resolution on this. I did get assigned an administrative law judge for my formal complaint and had a hearing scheduled. That prompted the regulatory affairs department of SCE to contact me and finally give me an explanation, so here it is

The 2017 program provided credits based on kWh reductions only. Everything based on a per kWh charge is meant to roll into the yearly energy charge. As such, those numbers were always meant to be rolled into the yearly energy charge (what I call virtual money above). Thus, it should have disappeared at the end of the relevant period, which it did. So, that program was basically useless for anyone who had a net credit of virtual money at the end of the year.

However, the 2018 program changed things up. There is a component that is purely based on participation - $0.3275 per day. There is also a per kWh reduction element when an event is called - $0.07/kWh. Since the first part is NOT based on a per kWh measurement, it should NOT be rolled into the virtual money pool As such, that component should always be "real money". The per kWh component still rolls into the "virtual money" pool and, again, is basically useless for anyone who has a net credit at the end of the relevant period. What this works out to is that everyone who is part of the program should receive $39.96 in real money credits just for participation (122 days in the program period at $0.3275).

At this point, I have now received my $39.96 in real money credits (random extra "bills" with no explanation). They also, as a gesture of goodwill, gave me the disputed amounts under the 2017 program. It turns out that I am the ONLY customer who noticed the discrepancy and the goodwill was their way of basically acknowledging my efforts and time spent to bring it to their attention

What they also told me is that their billing system can't actually handle this automatically. As such, it will require a manual process to credit each and every customer this affects. They are apparently overhauling their billing system, but that won't be ready until March 2020, so until then, it's totally manual. There appears to be one guy who is taking care of this manual process (Keith)

[jasonvr]

So here's some fun

Since I never got a response, I ended up filing a formal complaint. I then informed the person who was working my informal complaint via email and again, no response

However, 3 days later I got a random bill notification from SCE. It was a bill credit of 9.17. At first I thought it was my SONGS Settlement credit, but I couldn't tell, so I called the NEM department. As I was on the phone with them, it dawned on me that 9.17 was the exact amount of SEP credit from my June bill! The NEM agent then further dug into it and found a note on my account clearly indicating it was a credit for the incorrectly forfeited SEP credit! And it was applied by Consumer Affairs - the department I had been working with. The note clearly stated that this was a credit as the money never should have been forfeited and this was a temporary measure until the problem can be fixed!

So, I sent another email (not that I expect to get a response) indicating that all the 2017 credits are still missing (another ~$33).

So what does this all mean? Well, I can't imagine this is an isolated case. What are the odds this is only happening to my account? What this probably means is that SCE is systematically overcharging NEM customers who also participate in the Save Energy Program (and it's predecessors)!

If you fall in both camps, take a look at your bills and see if you are affected

and...I just got a read receipt on the email I sent to Consumer Affairs a few minutes ago as I was typing this

[jasonvr]

Amazingly I am still fighting with SCE. I submitted my informal complaint and got a response back pretty quickly. I had to explain the issue several times and the closest answer I got was that I was eligible for the program.... Well of course I was! Then I explained again and the SCE rep was supposed to have the program manager call me. When no one called me, I called her back and was told to write everything down so it could be submitted in writing tot he program manager. I did that on August 1 and was told I'd have a response within 3 business days.

That deadline came and went, contacted her again and got "should have a response soon". That was August 8. On August 16 I sent another email asking for an answer giving a deadline to hear back of COB Monday August 20. No response by that morning so I called a couple of times and got a "just saw your email" and still didn't have a response......

At this point I'm not sure what to do. I guess the next step would be to go to a formal complaint but that seems like a real pain in the @ss.... But maybe it would actually light a fire under them.

For those that are interested, here is the detailed explanation I submitted

First, I'm going to define some terms I'll use in my explanation and question.

Real Money:
Amounts that appear as a bill credit on my bill that can be used to pay a bill from SCE that would otherwise be deducted from my checking account on a monthly basis

Virtual Money:
Amounts adding to the running total referred to as "year-to-date energy charges" on my monthly bill and totaled to $897.47 for my first relevant period which ended in June 2018. Basically any credits on my monthly bills that are not applied against an amount I owe to SCE in that month.

Explanation/Question:
During the 2017 calendar year I participated in the Save Power Plus Days (DLC) Incentive Program which is the precursor to the current (for 2018) Save Energy Program (SEP). During 2017, I accumulated $33.75 in credit from that program spread across my June, July, and August bills. That $33.75 was rolled into year-to-date energy charges making it virtual money at that point, i.e. it did not offset the amount I had to pay to SCE in those months. These amounts are listed as PTR Credits on my bills.

During 2018, I had one month (June) which fell within my relevant period and my bill showed a $9.17 program credit. Again, that amount rolled into my year-to-date energy charges and was virtual money.

Within my relevant NEM period (June 2017-June 2018) I also received my two California Climate Credits of $31 and $36 in October 2017 and March 2018 respectively. Again, on those bills, those amounts were rolled into my year-to-date energy charges making them virtual money at that point.

Finally, in June 2018, at my annual true, I was a net producer by 354 kWh meaning I received Net Surplus Compensation of $10.90. That was treated as real money and became a credit on my SCE account. That credit was subsequently applied against my July 2018 bill which I just received.

At the same time, my California Climate credits, which up until this point had been treated as virtual money, were converted to real money. The total of $67 dollars was applied to my account and used to pay my June bill of $9.80 (composed of 29 days of the 3.1 cent basic charge and $8.90 to meet the minimum monthly charge). Since that still resulted in a credit, SCE issued a physical check for the difference of $57.20 ($67-$9.80).

I expected that at my annual true up my PTR Credits and SEP Credits would convert to real money just like the California Climate Credit did. Instead, they remained virtual money and completely disappeared when my relevant period ended at the end of June 2018 and my year-to-date energy charge total reverted to 0 to start my next relevant period. Since these are referred to as "Bill Credits" I would like to know why these amounts are not being converted to real money (either as a bill credit like my Net Surplus Compensation or as a refund check like the California Climate Credit). The only answer I have received (when I contact the NEM department by phone) is that because I was a Net Producer for the year, I am not eligible to receive my PTR/SEP credits. I can find nowhere in the terms for either the old or new programs that indicates that is true. Ms. Deon Hall has confirmed that I am eligible for participation in the programs. The 2017 program unfortunately has very little formal documentation. However, the new program has a formal tariff document (Schedule SEP). Nowhere in that tariff document does it exclude payment if a customer is a Net Generator.

So, to reiterate, I would like to know why my PTR Credits and SEP Credits, which are referred to as Bill Credits under the program terms, were not converted to real money when my relevant period ended in June 2018.

[jasonvr]

Well, I've scoured SCEs site and the tariffs and can't find anything that would disallow the credits, so now I've filed an informal CPUC complaint to see if that gets traction