TOU Rates

[DanS26]

If you are willing to do some work and spend a little money (well maybe a little more than a little) then I would suggest you install an electricity monitoring system that can calculate your bill exactly as done by the POCO. I use the TED system, here's what I do.......

1. Set up the TED to calculate the TOU rates to replicate the POCO bill. TED has this ability and can calculate TOU in fairly small increments. It is best to have the POCO and TED on TOU for a few months so you know that the internal TED setup exactly matches the POCO system. A great process to master and you will learn a lot.

2. After you are satisfied that your TOU calcs are accurate then switch your bill as calculated by the POCO using the normal flat or seasonal rates.

3. Compare calculations for a few months and you will quickly see which plan is best for your usage patterns. Note that there are big differences in seasons at least for my household. I have been using the TED system for over eight years and recalculating the POCO bills to the penny each month. Of course solar adds to the analysis but it is very doable.

Now if you don't want to go this route, then you might want to ask your POCO to recalc past bills. If you ask very politely they may help you out. Most POCO's will not do this since it is time consuming in both people and machine time.

Good luck.

[ajzwilli]

If I needed that, for free, I am able to download hourly usage from my POCO or my net data from my solar monitoring hardware is close enough as well. I can also easily download hourly pricing data and do a sumproduct formula in excel/google sheets to get daily supply cost. Even without that data, a quick and simple way is to take total supply cost / total usage on the bill and if that is lower than the fixed rate, then TOU is better. Like I've shared, my cost under TOU was around 2 cents and my fixed rates was around 5.

With my POCO, once you go off TOU, you can't got back on it for 12 months.

[ajzwilli]

Back to the point of the thread - I read an article that wholesale prices in TX surged to $9,000 MWh, so the $9 kWh blows out the peak of 47 cents I saw. The article mentioned "normal" costs for TX are around $50 MWh, which is simar to the 5 cent kWh prices seen here in IL.

[ajzwilli]

JPM - any comments after your review of the information I posted?

[Ampster]

Back to the point of the thread - I read an article that wholesale prices in TX surged to $9,000 MWh, so the $9 kWh blows out the peak of 47 cents I saw. The article mentioned "normal" costs for TX are around $50 MWh, which is simar to the 5 cent kWh prices seen here in IL.

I find that ironic. In California, I am still paying a charge on my bill for a bond that was used to bail out our utilities when a Texas company (Enron) gamed the system twenty years ago.

To the point of the thread, are your TOU rates floating or fixed? By fixed, I mean published in a tariff and fixed until that tariff is updated.

[J.P.M.]

JPM - any comments after your review of the information I posted?

Not yet. Keep it in your pants. Life and other priorities get in the way.

Preliminarily, I'm sifting through what you posted and other stuff on Ameren and Com ed's sites. My guess is there's more to it than you may think. POCOs are universally good at making their rate tariffs and policies difficult to interpret much less understand and the task is understandably viewed very parochially by most homeowners, but I'm muddling through. As soon as I wrote that I'd look into it, I regretted my words. Got to be more careful about what I commit to.

I do note Bruce's numbers from his post of 12/19/21 A 1124 hrs. seem more in line with the little I know of IL rates, and those are, depending on the application and life cycle cost parameters used, some pretty cheap competition for a lot of applications where residential grid tie PV is under consideration which was the point of my comment which you seem to have misinterpreted as an attack on your knowledge of what you were writing about - which it was not.

[ajzwilli]

My guess is there's more to it than you may think

The fact is the supply cost is as simple as I've made it out to be. There are a few rate structures and riders for the total cost, but this thread has been focused on the residential supply rate, so I'll help you out on the total cost:
Ameren has 4 rate structures for delivery (DS1,2,3,5), 4 rate structures for supply/generation (BGS1, 2, 3, 5) with 1 - Residential, 2 - Small General Service, 3 - General Service, 5 - Lighting. The have the following riders: HSS (Hourly Supply Service rate for non-residential), NM (Net Metering), PER (Purchased Electricity Recovery), PSP (Power Smart Pricing, which is an optional add on for residential TOU rates), RTP (which is residential TOU plan). There are a couple adjustments (supply cost and purchased energy) to the rates, but it is minimal (less than .1 cents and can actual be a credit to lower the rate even more). The net metering policy (which I have read the entire 14 pages and have a good understanding of) does have 3 billing methodologies and took me a while to understand and was probably the more complicated part of the financial analysis I did before deciding to go solar.

In regards to Bruce's comment, my post prior to his specifically indicated I was talking the supply rate and subsequent post have indicated that I'm fully aware of the distribution, taxes and fixed cost portion of my bill. I clarified in a post why I was focusing on supply rate only for this thread. I will continue to stand by the fact that an Ameren customer is paying 4.55 cents for supply for the first 800kWh (as it is even cheaper over that amount) and will pay that rate until summertime rates (which the previous summertime rate was 4.4 cents for the first 800kWH). In addition an Ameren customer pays a few cents for transmission, distribution, and taxes. I understand Ameren's rate structure so well, I can calculate my bill to the penny from the usage and the DLF (distribution loss factor) as that factor changes each month.

I would agree with you that at 4.55 cents total cost, grid-tie solar with a stable grid and stable prices, likely would not make financial sense. However, I never made the claim the total cost of electricity was 4.55 cents. You were drawing that conclusion and questioning if I was sure about the rate. Since the supply only cost was provided, one would need to understand the net metering policy of the POCO, the SREC program and the total rate structure before making a blanket statement that at those rates their wouldn't be a solar PV industry. It appears you are digging into the rate structure piece as you can't believe rates are that low (trust me they are). If I would have said total cost was 7 to 8 cents (which is the actual variable cost) for an Ameren customer, I'm guessing you may have made a similar statement, but maybe not. My point is, at least in IL, with the net metering policy (which isn't the best nor is it the worst), with the SREC program (which is good), with the federal tax credit, and with a total variable cost of less than 7 cents for me personally due to TOU rates pre-solar, my payback is less than 3 years. I'll admit, I don't know what the average payback period is (I seem to see 5 to 7 years more frequently) or what you consider it needs to be (or whatever other metric(s)) for the PV industry to be in place, but I am happy with a <3 year payback so IMO a PV industry can exist at a 4.55 cent supply rate or a 7 cent total rate. To head off comments on the payback, the payback period was based on my usage staying flat (even thought I oversized the system for future use of a EV and expect usage to increase) and rates staying flat and factoring in reduced output each year with an allowance for some repair costs (may or may not be enough, but time will tell). I have learned from this thread that warranties are likely not of much value when the time comes to need one and even if I'm lucky enough to get it covered, I'm likely at no / reduced production until the situation is remedied, which in terms of warranty can take months from others experiences.
So far, for this 12 month net metering period that started in April, I have paid a total of $9 (as TOU plan allows credits to offset fixed meter/customer charge)compared to over $1,000 I would have paid on a TOU plan without solar. Without solar on the the fixed rate, my cost would have been over $1,100. In April the credit balance (or in Bruce's case the kWh credit), is reset to 0, nothing is paid out.