CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion

[sunwarriors]

Yes, they are stupid recommendations. Feel better?
The TV brightness makes me smile every time I see it. Plasma, sure, CRT, sure, modern LED TVs, um... not enough to notice. Or the recommendation to

• "Challenge everyone in the household to gather around one television a few days each week, and turn off the others." (Daily savings tip)

Gather round and do what exactly?
You really couldn't make this stuff up. Plus the wonderful advice for us to eat by dim candlelight. (Great advice for fire zone residents, truly outstanding! Brought to you by the same folks who overpressurized the San Bruno gas pipeline, and started forest fires, plural. And these days "fire zone" includes many suburban areas, e.g. San Ramon, Superior, CO...)

The commercial advice isn't any better; installing LED lighting and ECM fans is about the only advice that isn't at least 40 years old, and air handling is rarely in the top ten energy uses in most businesses.

Yes, room for improvement, on multiple dimensions. Did I mention that power was out for more than 12 hours last week for us and three hundred odd neighbors? Due to "equipment failure"? On a calm, warm, sunny morning?

Don't get me wrong changing organizational cultures is hard, and changing corporate direction hard as well, but there is a ton of low hanging fruit.

Maybe the most honest suggestion they can give is simply: "Instead of giving $$ to us, your monopolistic/price gouging utility, pay yourself with a solar and storage system under NEM2.0 and your bills will go down."

I just saw a video of some guy in Carlsbad (SDG&E, link below) who had a < $300 bill in Oct 2021 and it was ~$1050+ in Feb 2022. His solar ROI will pay off in 1-2 years. Even though it's winter, sun was out down here yesterday and I had 40+ kWh generated yesterday. It's silly that utilities can get a guaranteeded 10%+ income profit on all capital investments meaning massively large scale investments will always be desired.

Nothing like massive power bills to get people to install solar and cut out the utility as much as they can. I would love to do a wind turbine if that's allowed.

(Some of this is of course, gas, but my bill was < $100 for gas).

 

[Merrill]

Utilities out of control, before I added my 2 powerwalls my true up was $400, I’m all electric and with the powerwalls they pushed me from E6 NEM1 to ETOUC and NEM2. Since then (July 2021) for the first 7 months I’m already at $1,000 and that is with the powerwalls providing power from 4 to 9. Not sure how I can lower my bill any more. Thanks Pacific Graft and Extortion!

 

[holeydonut]

I just saw a video of some guy in Carlsbad (SDG&E, link below) who had a < $300 bill in Oct 2021 and it was ~$1050+ in Feb 2022. His solar ROI will pay off in 1-2 years. Even though it's winter, sun was out down here yesterday and I had 40+ kWh generated yesterday. It's silly that utilities can get a guaranteeded 10%+ income profit on all capital investments meaning massively large scale investments will always be desired.

This is one of the most infuriating aspects of what the CPUC has allowed the utilities to do. I believe that when a homeowner has a seemingly out of control energy (either electric or gas) bill, the utilities should have a mechanism to help gather data at the home to clearly explain to the homeowner where their specific energy consumption may be causing waste.

But instead, the Utilities simply say "our meter is fine, you go figure it out". PG&E provides a "home energy report" (HER) which is only useful to tell a homeowner the total usage across the meter. And PG&E offers a "self-service home energy checkup" (HEC) which includes all the stupid recommendations that BG Breeder posted on the previous page.

There is a huge logical fallacy in play where if a homeowner gets a HER that seems abnormal, then that homeowner can somehow use the HEC to isolate where the problem is. This is beyond stupid and completely ineffective. The homeowner needs to learn know how to collect specific data in the home and actually measure where the therms/kWh is headed. Without providing that data, all the recommendations are useless.

It'd be like if a health patient complains of abdominal pain, then the doctor hands a triage list stating things will get better if the patient follows a list of health guidelines like brushing their teeth and eating more broccoli. Solving a problem requires data collection; not just a generic list of stupid behavior recommendations.

In that news video, the bill they flashed up said the guy used 1,521 kWh of electricity and 158 therms. The a-holes at the utility probably think this guy has a massive Christmas light show, bitcoin mining, and a thermostat set to 80F. It's easy to just blame "bad behavior" and then shift everything on the homeowner. Instead, SDG&E should be required to actually educate this homeowner on how to collect real data. This could be with energy monitors like an Emporia Vue or providing a subsidized HERS test + gas furnace efficiency evaluation.

Since his bill is already massively above normal, he's paid enough "fixed costs" (for the portion of his volumetric bill that has nothing to do with commodity prices) that the utility is actually profiting from him. The CPUC needs to require the utilities to actually help people instead of telling him to pound sand and keep paying the bills.

 

[wwu123]

I just saw a video of some guy in Carlsbad (SDG&E, link below) who had a < $300 bill in Oct 2021 and it was ~$1050+ in Feb 2022. His solar ROI will pay off in 1-2 years. Even though it's winter, sun was out down here yesterday and I had 40+ kWh generated yesterday. It's silly that utilities can get a guaranteeded 10%+ income profit on all capital investments meaning massively large scale investments will always be desired.

The sharp rise in natural gas and electricity (much of which is still generated from gas) rates is real and shocking, but why do these media reports always sensationalize things by comparing one of the lowest seasonal months (Sept for his Oct bill) with one of the highest (Jan for his Feb bill), rather than a YoY comparison? There is always a sharp seasonal rise, even if rates stay the same.

He says he hasn't changed his usage or behavior much - he literally used 10X as much natural gas in Jan as in Sept, and 2X as much electricity (much of it probably powering the furnace blower). Though he acknowledges using heating liberally due to work at home. Just saying if costs are largely based on usage, a lot of what he is paying is his "fair share" - his usage is twice mine, for a home half the size. I'm not saying he's not justified in using it as he wants, and his climate is probably way more extreme than my area of California.

I think the larger argument is the >$1000 amount, that heating/power should be basic sustenance items for everyone, rather than approaching where folks have to make hard financial choices. Unfortunately no amount of burden shifting between demographics and geographics around is going to solve this, if the inefficiencies in the utility system keep increasing.

 

[BGbreeder]

Wouldn't we all be better custodians of the planet of our homes had more insulation, IR resistant windows, house wrap, and caulking? Adding insulation can be quite expensive (new roof, walls), ditto windows, and it doesn't have the cachet of "new battery"; I understand why it isn't at the tops of our collective do list, but for society/the planet, it is an investment that pays back long into the future.

Reminds me that I need to renew all of the weatherstripping on my windows, which leak air like a sieve.

All the best,

BG

 

[holeydonut]

Wouldn't we all be better custodians of the planet of our homes had more insulation, IR resistant windows, house wrap, and caulking? Adding insulation can be quite expensive (new roof, walls), ditto windows, and it doesn't have the cachet of "new battery"; I understand why it isn't at the tops of our collective do list, but for society/the planet, it is an investment that pays back long into the future.

Reminds me that I need to renew all of the weatherstripping on my windows, which leak air like a sieve.

All the best,

BG

I've been contacting my elected reps to try and get them to put agenda back to encourage the types of investments that would reduce consumption like what you mention. I never hear back though hah.

Bauer-Kahan seems only interested in pushing her battery/DER agenda and I don't know what Glazer does lol.

I've said a few times on this forum that the old Energy Upgrade California program is what this state needs to help homeowners make the "smart forward-facing decisions" that seem like no brainers... except for the fact they're expensive as hell. Unfortunately the IOU backed houses were allowed to lead the look-back study on the societal benefit of this program. And of course they found that the "ROI was poor." This findnig was so much short sightedness... of course the payback was poor when assessing a few years of performance and energy savings. The payback for energy home improvement is decades.

Plus, more insulation doesn't hurt poor people and better caulking doesn't necessitate expensive transmission/distribution investment by CAISO.

It's easy for people to say "be smarter" but it's tough to actually create a mechanism that enables smart thinking. An initiative to make home energy upgrades more attainable would be amazing. And a great way for the utilities to give homeowners a real path to address heating and cooling costs instead of just telling people to sit in the dark surrounded by candlelight.

 

[Dave EV]

In that news video, the bill they flashed up said the guy used 1,521 kWh of electricity and 158 therms.

That's a lot of energy to use in San Diego, but if you look at current rates it's easy to see how that's ~$1000.
If he's on the DR plan, his electricity costs 40-50c / kWh - assuming daily avg is 45, that's ~$700. Gas is $2.03-2.31 / therm, so there's ~$325 of gas in that bill - boom $1000+ utility bill.

That is quite a bit of energy consumption - FWIW, my total usage for my most recent billing period (Jan-Feb) was about 1,100 kWh. And I use a heat pump for heating the house and water, so no gas. And used about 322 kWh to charge the Tesla. And work from home. But thanks to a bit of solar (generated ~275 kWh - need more!) and EV-TOU5 rates (10c/kWh super-of-peak), bill for the month was about $215.

 

[holeydonut]

That is quite a bit of energy consumption

Yes for sure... the shown energy usage (kWh and therms) seems very high. Unfortunately, there are three groups of general assumptions that permeate any time you see discussion about high energy usage. Please note, I did not say a high bill cost. I said high energy consumption. If someone talks about high costs, the IOUs simply blame commodity prices. Lame. So, let's talk about his high usage that resulted in high costs (due to volumetric pricing)


1) Assume the homeowner is doing something blatantly stupid to use a bunch of energy. The IOUs have developed these general responses through decades of propaganda around usage. Those that buy into the propoganda will easily convince themselves that this homeowner is running a bitcoin farm, growing weed, having a 20 foot tall Christmas tree (with lasers!), running space heaters, and charging an EV. Basically, blame the homeowner for being an a-hole-energy-waster. The reason I know this is a real perspective is that PG&E told ME I was an energy waster and accused me of doing stupid things to shame me. They couldn't care less what I was really doing. They only cared to create false context to validate their standard position that the homeowner is always the problem.

2) Assume the homeowner has a broken meter. This is what the homeowner in the news segment wishes were true. Because it's one of those deux ex type of things that will magically solve all problems. 99% of the time, the meter is fine. But, the 1% of the time the meter is the problem gives the 99% false hope. You can see in the news segment that SDG&E resisted this option because to them, it's never the meter.

3) Assume there is an issue going on in the home that is using more electricity than normal. Unfortunately, finding this issue requires data. While TMC may have some amazing Smarty-McSmarties, your average homeowner simply does not know how to measure home energy consumption at the appliance level. I posted a new story a while back about an older/retired woman who lived in a condo and could not for the life of her figure out why her electricity usage was so high. A utility with a $30Bn market cap should be able to help get someone to this lady's house and plug in a home energy monitor and/or do a leak-down test to assess spots that could be wasting energy. Instead, PG&E told her to unplug her TTY phone machine and to take a lantern into the bathroom so she doesn't turn on the lights. And I distinctly remember some TMC posters saying she just needs to get smarter because it's her energy and her responsibility. If the CPUC wants to make an impact, then require the IOUs to help enable people to really manage their energy at the trade of the IOUs keeping their monopoly.

 

[sunwarriors]

San Diego does have the highest energy costs in the nation. That doesn't help compared to any other city in the USA (including Hawaii).

That Carlsbad person probably needs to wear jackets indoors which sucks, but I certainly put layers on at home. As the bill payer in the house, you can bet I'm the one always lowering the thermostat in the winter and raising it in the summer. My therms was a bit less than 50 last month. Energy was negative due to solar.

I was originally going to go EV-TOU5 too, but gave up since I don't want to pay that extra $6/month minimum (and WFH means little/no car charging needed anymore).

 

[Dave EV]

A utility with a $30Bn market cap should be able to help get someone to this lady's house and plug in a home energy monitor and/or do a leak-down test to assess spots that could be wasting energy.

Absolutely - every home should have something that can measure energy utilization at the circuit breaker level at least. Even if it was only just real-time whole-home energy usage, it'd be easy enough to go around to each breaker and turn them off-on until you found the culprit.

San Diego does have the highest energy costs in the nation. That doesn't help compared to any other city in the USA (including Hawaii).

That Carlsbad person probably needs to wear jackets indoors which sucks, but I certainly put layers on at home. As the bill payer in the house, you can bet I'm the one always lowering the thermostat in the winter and raising it in the summer. My therms was a bit less than 50 last month. Energy was negative due to solar.

I was originally going to go EV-TOU5 too, but gave up since I don't want to pay that extra $6/month minimum (and WFH means little/no car charging needed anymore).

SDG&E does have a pretty accurate "Pricing Plans" tool to let you know which plan is the most cost-effective. Though for most people, this is still too complicated and they don't know about it.

It doesn't take much super-off-peak usage on the EV-TOU5 plan to offset the minimum (it's $16/mo) to offset the fixed cost. Compared to the EV-TOU2 plan, you save about 13c / kWh on super-off-peak rates, and even save about 3c / kWh on off-peak and peak rates. Though if you have solar, that means generating 3c / kWh less as well, mostly on off-peak rates.

 

[Southpasfan]

I've been contacting my elected reps to try and get them to put agenda back to encourage the types of investments that would reduce consumption like what you mention. I never hear back though hah.

Bauer-Kahan seems only interested in pushing her battery/DER agenda and I don't know what Glazer does lol.

I've said a few times on this forum that the old Energy Upgrade California program is what this state needs to help homeowners make the "smart forward-facing decisions" that seem like no brainers... except for the fact they're expensive as hell. Unfortunately the IOU backed houses were allowed to lead the look-back study on the societal benefit of this program. And of course they found that the "ROI was poor." This findnig was so much short sightedness... of course the payback was poor when assessing a few years of performance and energy savings. The payback for energy home improvement is decades.

Plus, more insulation doesn't hurt poor people and better caulking doesn't necessitate expensive transmission/distribution investment by CAISO.

It's easy for people to say "be smarter" but it's tough to actually create a mechanism that enables smart thinking. An initiative to make home energy upgrades more attainable would be amazing. And a great way for the utilities to give homeowners a real path to address heating and cooling costs instead of just telling people to sit in the dark surrounded by candlelight.

As one thing I learned in this discussion is that the utilities cannot stand actual conservation, because of volumetric pricing used to support grid costs, conservation like Energy Upgrade is simultanously (a) good for the environment, but (b) a total con-game as to the relationship between customers and utilities - because any conservation reduces income and the utilities cannot handle that.

Rooftop solar is a form of really efficient conservation, and the utilities are trying to kill it. They would go alone with Energy Upgrade because they know its really just marginal savings.

 

[slcasner]

Absolutely - every home should have something that can measure energy utilization at the circuit breaker level at least. Even if it was only just real-time whole-home energy usage, it'd be easy enough to go around to each breaker and turn them off-on until you found the culprit.

There are services like bidgely.com that supposedly can analyze a home's energy consumption based on smart-meter data. It would analyze the patterns of usage (duration, level and time of consumption spikes) to distinguish the refrigerator, cooking, heating, etc. A few years ago I learned about this (perhaps from some PG&E mailing) and tried to sign up, but they were not prepared to handle homes with net metering at that time.

 

[sunwarriors]

Florida issues:

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/sx399b

"The problem is if you institute the minimum bill at the levels they talk about — they’re talking about $25 or $35 a month — it has so little effect,” he said. “There’s so few customers who are below that level, that it really doesn’t raise much revenue at all."


I notice that comment having higher minimums on solar customers doesn't even do much since they are so few compared to the general energy customer population (since non-solar customers are all paying more anyways, but more solar in CA vs. FL). I suppose if it was a separate line item charge (hard for non-solar or any customers to stomach in this high gas cost environment), it might raise more since it's simply say, 8 million customers * $10 more = $80 million per month = $960 million per year).

On that Carlsbad guy, it was reported that his thermostat was miswired so when he turned on the heat, his AC also went on, hence the high/crazy bills.

 

[Big Dog]

Florida issues:

https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/sx399b

"The problem is if you institute the minimum bill at the levels they talk about — they’re talking about $25 or $35 a month — it has so little effect,” he said. “There’s so few customers who are below that level, that it really doesn’t raise much revenue at all."


I notice that comment having higher minimums on solar customers doesn't even do much since they are so few compared to the general energy customer population (since non-solar customers are all paying more anyways, but more solar in CA vs. FL). I suppose if it was a separate line item charge (hard for non-solar or any customers to stomach in this high gas cost environment), it might raise more since it's simply say, 8 million customers * $10 more = $80 million per month = $960 million per year).

On that Carlsbad guy, it was reported that his thermostat was miswired so when he turned on the heat, his AC also went on, hence the high/crazy bills.

The Professor is being disingenuous, as he has to know that raising much revenue now is not the purpose of establishing a minimum fee. (Hint: it will grow over time as more Floridians install solar. Hint 2: once established, it's easy to raise the minimum fee in a few years.)

 

[slcasner]

"The problem is if you institute the minimum bill at the levels they talk about — they’re talking about $25 or $35 a month — it has so little effect,” he said. “There’s so few customers who are below that level, that it really doesn’t raise much revenue at all."

What has been proposed several times in this thread is not a minimum fee but a fixed fee for all (not just solar customers) that is charged in addition to the volumetric pricing. That would raise significant revenue, which would make a downward adjustment in volumetric pricing appropriate.

 

[cwied]

Utilities out of control, before I added my 2 powerwalls my true up was $400, I’m all electric and with the powerwalls they pushed me from E6 NEM1 to ETOUC and NEM2. Since then (July 2021) for the first 7 months I’m already at $1,000 and that is with the powerwalls providing power from 4 to 9. Not sure how I can lower my bill any more. Thanks Pacific Graft and Extortion!

You might consider trying to switch to EV2-A instead. If your Powerwalls can cover power from 3pm-midnight, you'll end up paying only 21 cents/kWh you consume. Those with batteries are eligible on a pilot basis even if they don't have an electric car. See Special Condition 8 at the bottom of this document: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV2 (Sch).pdf

The bigger difference between on-peak and off-peak prices in EV2-A helps make the Powerwalls more effective than with the ETOU rates.

 

[Merrill]

You might consider trying to switch to EV2-A instead. If your Powerwalls can cover power from 3pm-midnight, you'll end up paying only 21 cents/kWh you consume. Those with batteries are eligible on a pilot basis even if they don't have an electric car. See Special Condition 8 at the bottom of this document: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV2 (Sch).pdf

The bigger difference between on-peak and off-peak prices in EV2-A helps make the Powerwalls more effective than with the ETOU rates.

I do not think I can do that since I have a separate meter for my Tesla’s on EVB

 

[miimura]

I do not think I can do that since I have a separate meter for my Tesla’s on EVB

If your Powerwalls are on your house meter, you are eligible for EV2-A. The fact that you also have a dedicated meter for EV-B is irrelevant.

This is the relevant part of the EV2 Tariff:

 

[Merrill]

If your Powerwalls are on your house meter, you are eligible for EV2-A. The fact that you also have a dedicated meter for EV-B is irrelevant.

This is the relevant part of the EV2 Tariff:
View attachment 772642

Thanks for the info did not know that I will do some research on EV2-A

 

[dailo]

You might consider trying to switch to EV2-A instead. If your Powerwalls can cover power from 3pm-midnight, you'll end up paying only 21 cents/kWh you consume. Those with batteries are eligible on a pilot basis even if they don't have an electric car. See Special Condition 8 at the bottom of this document: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV2 (Sch).pdf

The bigger difference between on-peak and off-peak prices in EV2-A helps make the Powerwalls more effective than with the ETOU rates.

Yikes can’t believe off peak is up to $0.21 now. Crazy when comparing to other states that have such low off peak rates.