CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion

[wwu123]

GE used to make a line of LED flood lights as direct replacements for GX 4-pin fluorescent lights. They work well enough, but have very dim flickering after turning off for a few minutes as the ballast denergizes.

Philips has a product too, but the bulbs aren't flood light shaped, but they also don't flicker after turning off.

I decided it was easier to use these bulbs rather than redoing the cans and bypassing the ballast.

I have used the Philips one with good success - 10-watt LED replacing 26W 4-pin CFL. My builder was required to put the 4-pin CFL housings in the laundry room and all the outside soffit downlights. The worst thing about those CFL's is the bulb shape shoots most of the light to the sides of the can, very little of the light shoots down towards the room. The Philips bulb has the LED's directionally pointed down from the end only, so they are significant brighter and I find mimic a regular flood light much better than the 4-pin CFL's did.

One day I'll go in and bypass the ballast so I can use my choice of LED bulbs/fixtures, I recognize they are somewhat accessible, as ballasts do die and have to be replaced without ripping out your ceiling drywall. Maybe when these Philips bulbs die out. But my duty cycle on the laundry and outdoor lights is so low, that could be decades from now.

I did experiment a couple of years with some 4-pin to E26 socket adapters I got from a China import hobby site, they can't bypass the ballast though. I tried to find E26 LED bulbs that could be compatible with the ballast - I know it's technically possible, as in the garage, I have retrofit 4' LED tube lights that plug in fine even without bypassing the flourescent tube ballasts. However, I only ever found one early E26 LED bulb I'd bought in Japan that worked fine with those socket adapters, and there was no way to ever find more of those again....

EDIT: I re-checked, and evidently I forgot I apparently bypassed the ballast and installed the 4" wafers on the cans in the laundry and one downstairs bath that had the CFL sockets. But I do use the Philips LED bubs on the outside soffits, as many of those cans are 12' off the ground...

 

[Redhill_qik]

I received an email form PG&E this morning with the subject of "New Solar Changes Will NOT Impact Your Solar Billing". Well they wanted it to change, but they didn't get their way and I'm still under NEM 2.0 for the next 17.5 years, so yeah no change. This is likely in response to some of the fear mongering headlines in recent articles related to NEM 3.0.

Beyond that bit of non-info there was also the following:

Additional Battery Storage Incentives Coming Soon​

To help you keep your electricity bills low and avoid outages, adding battery storage to your rooftop solar system may be a good option. In mid-2023 new CPUC incentives are expected to become available to assist in making this technology more affordable. We will share updates once these incentives are live.​

It is unclear if this means more programs like the VPP or rebates for installing ESS.

and then this

Save by Monitoring your Energy Usage​ ​

To help you maximize bill savings, we have relaunched an improved Solar Summary tool where you can:​

•​ Track usage visually over time to make adjustments prior to your annual True-up •​ Gain insights into weather impacts on how much energy your solar system is generating •​ Plan for your next True-up to avoid billing surprises

Access and explore the Solar Summary tool by logging into your online account.​

Note: link change from email tracking cookie to static link to pge.opower.com where it resolves to.

I don't recall every seeing a "Solar Summary" tool and I can't find one on the opower site either. Has anyone seen something like this?

 

[getakey]

I received an email form PG&E this morning with the subject of "New Solar Changes Will NOT Impact Your Solar Billing". Well they wanted it to change, but they didn't get their way and I'm still under NEM 2.0 for the next 17.5 years, so yeah no change. This is likely in response to some of the fear mongering headlines in recent articles related to NEM 3.0.

Beyond that bit of non-info there was also the following:

Additional Battery Storage Incentives Coming Soon​

To help you keep your electricity bills low and avoid outages, adding battery storage to your rooftop solar system may be a good option. In mid-2023 new CPUC incentives are expected to become available to assist in making this technology more affordable. We will share updates once these incentives are live.​

It is unclear if this means more programs like the VPP or rebates for installing ESS.

and then this

​ Save by Monitoring your Energy Usage​

To help you maximize bill savings, we have relaunched an improved Solar Summary tool where you can:​

​ •​ Track usage visually over time to make adjustments prior to your annual True-up •​ Gain insights into weather impacts on how much energy your solar system is generating •​ Plan for your next True-up to avoid billing surprises

Access and explore the Solar Summary tool by logging into your online account.​

Note: link change from email tracking cookie to static link to pge.opower.com where it resolves to.

I don't recall every seeing a "Solar Summary" tool and I can't find one on the opower site either. Has anyone seen something like this?

got the same email and agree have not seen a Solar Summary tool

 

[aesculus]

No solar summary but they do now provide a very detailed explanation of how to read your B/W bill.

https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/solar-and-vehicles/green-energy-incentives/solar-and-renewable-metering-and-billing/net-energy-metering-program-tracking/NEM-bill-explainer.pdf

 

[h2ofun]

No solar summary but they do now provide a very detailed explanation of how to read your B/W bill.

https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/solar-and-vehicles/green-energy-incentives/solar-and-renewable-metering-and-billing/net-energy-metering-program-tracking/NEM-bill-explainer.pdf

That is not the huge bill I get every month, just the little one

 

[Redhill_qik]

That is not the huge bill I get every month, just the little one

The second page is the first page of the huge B&W bill summary for NEM-PS/NEM-MT accounts. It has 95% of the information that you need, but understanding your cumulative kWh can only be found on the second page. The rest of it there to frustrate @holeydonut and can be safely ignored.

 

[holeydonut]

The second page is the first page of the huge B&W bill summary for NEM-PS/NEM-MT accounts. It has 95% of the information that you need, but understanding your cumulative kWh can only be found on the second page. The rest of it there to frustrate @holeydonut and can be safely ignored.

I used to reconcile my b&w bill to the penny. I wasted so many hours...

 

[tfan2018]

Which page shows the cumulative Monthly Minimum Charges on the B&W bill?

 

[Redhill_qik]

Which page shows the cumulative Monthly Minimum Charges on the B&W bill?

The first page does, but only for the month with your annual true-up.

 

[wwu123]

I don't recall every seeing a "Solar Summary" tool and I can't find one on the opower site either. Has anyone seen something like this?

What I recall is that for many years, there was a collapsible window on the Energy Details page that showed the cumulative NEM balance, similar to this one from the simple paper bill, that sat above the regular monthly use/cost graph for solar users. And to collapse it, you had to click a button that said "I got it" to acknowledge you understood their explanation of how you might be accruing until your annual true-up:

A month or three ago, they redesigned the Energy Details page, but it now says at top that the page "includes your Solar Summary information". The cumulative graph is gone, but they added a huge collapsible "Learn How Solar Billing works" window with a wall of text to infer from the monthly cost graph whether your NEM balance is growing or shrinking. The actual NEM balance is just stated instead of graphed right above the monthly cost graph that non-solar users also see.

At the end of the day, it was all to explain that only Minimum Delivery Charges were being billed each month, but that there was an actual accruing balance that might give a large shock, if positive, on the annual true-up bill....

Some of this may be presented differently online for folks with ESS and related billing plans. I just have solar panels, and the Solar Summary is/was there for years and years.

 

[Redhill_qik]

What I recall is that for many years, there was a collapsible window on the Energy Details page that showed the cumulative NEM balance, similar to this one from the simple paper bill, that sat above the regular monthly use/cost graph for solar users. And to collapse it, you had to click a button that said "I got it" to acknowledge you understood their explanation of how you might be accruing until your annual true-up:


View attachment 912278


A month or three ago, they redesigned the Energy Details page, but it now says at top that the page "includes your Solar Summary information". The cumulative graph is gone, but they added a huge collapsible "Learn How Solar Billing works" window with a wall of text to infer from the monthly cost graph whether your NEM balance is growing or shrinking. The actual NEM balance is just stated instead of graphed right above the monthly cost graph that non-solar users also see.

At the end of the day, it was all to explain that only Minimum Delivery Charges were being billed each month, but that there was an actual accruing balance that might give a large shock, if positive, on the annual true-up bill....

Some of this may be presented differently online for folks with ESS and related billing plans. I just have solar panels, and the Solar Summary is/was there for years and years.

Playing around a bit with the Opower Energy Usage page I did notice that the Electricity Cost tab is now working whereas it has not been available since I switched to solar.

There appear to be some bugs in the cost calculations, at least for E-TOU-C. In my 12/23-1/24 billing period it has 12/30 and 12/31 highlighted as exceeding the monthly baseline and being Tier 2, but the baseline reset to 0 on 12/23. Looks like the cost calculation is based on a calendar month instead of the billing month.

 

[getakey]

I cannot even get to a "Bill View" in PG&E; only yearly view for usage

 

[wwu123]

Playing around a bit with the Opower Energy Usage page I did notice that the Electricity Cost tab is now working whereas it has not been available since I switched to solar.

There appear to be some bugs in the cost calculations, at least for E-TOU-C. In my 12/23-1/24 billing period it has 12/30 and 12/31 highlighted as exceeding the monthly baseline and being Tier 2, but the baseline reset to 0 on 12/23. Looks like the cost calculation is based on a calendar month instead of the billing month.

Funny you mention, as usually the tool displays things OK, but right now the monthly and daily charts are not working at all for me, only the default annual chart.

In any case, I think what you're seeing there is very common if you have a mid-month billing cycle (which is never consistently on the exact same day of month). Anytime there is a change in rates, seasonal baseline quantities, whatever, all of which always happen at the 1st of the calendar month, your billing month, along with your monthly baseline, is broken up into two halves, the part before the 1st, and the part starting the 1st - the baseline quantities are allocated proportional to the number of days. Then your usage is also split into two parts, and evaluated against the partial baselines for each of the two parts - so it is entirely possible to go over baseline for one of the two halves, even if you wouldn't go over the monthly total if both parts were added together.

I see this frequently in the gas portion, as the gas baseline quantities change 4 times during six winter season months, not to mention their gas billing rate changes every month due to the actual procurement cost - so EVERY winter month, your baseline is split into two parts. But it's true, if less frequent, for electricity too.

What is peculiar though, is even though I have a smartmeter on both electricity and gas meters, so they both read and show you your daily consumption, they do some sort of weird smoothing of your actual usage over the two partial months, rather than using the actual usage. So for gas, even if I stay within my 1.55 daily therms for end of March, and 0.48 therms as it warms up in April, they will still "smear" my higher March usage across April and take me over baseline. Even if I stayed within 1.55 therms for March, and used ZERO therms in April, they would still allocate March usage to April plus take me above April baseline.

Back to the online charts, you will only see the actual billing details in the paper bills, the online charts have their own quirks, where the start and end of the monthly graphs do not necessarily always align to the exact day of the actual billing in your paper bill. This is especially true for the breakpoint of the current month. And further realize your electricity and gas do not necessarily break billing on the same day mid-month, on the same bill; they are frequently different by a day or two. It is as if there is one employee at PG&E whose sole job it is to stare at the calendar every day, and arbitrarily decide, "yeah, that looks like a whole month" and change over the billing month to the next one...

 

[holeydonut]

Back on the NEM 3.0 thing... did you know that PG&E is doing their best to protect you all from "unscrupulous solar vendors"?

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M502/K757/502757134.PDF

... The Joint Utilities submit that the Contractors State License Board (CSLB) and Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) are better positioned than the investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to protect consumers from the unscrupulous practices of some solar vendors.

What sucks is there is no one to protect consumers against PG&E being absolute d-bags. Since they are a monopoly that can murder and bribe with impunity and crap on individual homeowners to their heart's content.

 

[aesculus]

Playing around a bit with the Opower Energy Usage page I did notice that the Electricity Cost tab is now working whereas it has not been available since I switched to solar.

Mine when away when I added the PWs but it's been back for the last several months again.

 

[aesculus]

The Energy Usage Details - Energy Costs > Year View would probably be the closest to a summary but you would have to add it up yourself.

For some reason this is still broken on my OPower pages but the Bill View works fine. Almost impossible to do anything more than just a mental map since numbers are not provided.

 

[Redhill_qik]

Back on the NEM 3.0 thing... did you know that PG&E is doing their best to protect you all from "unscrupulous solar vendors"?

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M502/K757/502757134.PDF

... The Joint Utilities submit that the Contractors State License Board (CSLB) and Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) are better positioned than the investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to protect consumers from the unscrupulous practices of some solar vendors.

What sucks is there is no one to protect consumers against PG&E being absolute d-bags. Since they are a monopoly that can murder and bribe with impunity and crap on individual homeowners to their heart's content.

Actually, it is the opposite. The IOUs are saying that they don't think that they can monitor for fraud better than the CSLB or DFPI and want to be removed from the solar vendor watch list process.

 

[Redhill_qik]

The Energy Usage Details - Energy Costs > Year View would probably be the closest to a summary but you would have to add it up yourself.

For some reason this is still broken on my OPower pages but the Bill View works fine. Almost impossible to do anything more than just a mental map since numbers are not provided.

When I select Year View, I get a period from July 2020-Feb 2023 with data that is only populated with my pre-solar months in 2020. It looks like it would be the last few months from the graph, but hovering over the data bars shows that each month if from 2020.

 

[holeydonut]

Actually, it is the opposite. The IOUs are saying that they don't think that they can monitor for fraud better than the CSLB or DFPI and want to be removed from the solar vendor watch list process.

I keep forgetting you actually read.

Well the IOUs are doing their best to put solar companies out of business - which will include the unscrupulous ones.

 

[aesculus]

When I select Year View, I get a period from July 2020-Feb 2023 with data that is only populated with my pre-solar months in 2020. It looks like it would be the last few months from the graph, but hovering over the data bars shows that each month if from 2020.

View attachment 912323

Mine is from March 2020 to July 2020, so it must be a systemwide issue. Maybe related to the ESS "situation" of our system.